The midnight assault on our hotel compound comes with no warning. Six rangy figures race through the darkness, each hauling a long, tube-like canister across a boggy marsh no more than 50 metres from the hotel garden.
A minute later, an ear-drum-bursting 'KAH-boom' shakes the balcony, rattling the windows and sending me and other hotel guests ducking beneath our sweaty shirt collars. A second then a third blast light up the swampy darkness. We tensely await each 'shell burst'.
Beirut? Baghdad? Bogota? No. These are fireworks - local-style - in Sulawesi, the curiously shaped Indonesian island midway between Borneo and the Spice Islands.
The 'heavy artillery' pieces are the playthings of giggling village teenagers, who call them barattung. They are large sections of hollowed-out giant bamboo into which droplets of petrol are inserted then ignited with a taper. The resulting explosion of fumes sends nothing but a puff of white smoke into the air, but December's inter-neighbourhood barrages ensure restless nights for travellers during the end of the rice-harvest season, when celebrations reach their peak.
While the real-life bomb blasts that have plagued the area, amid sporadic sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians, since 2000 have been anything but a cause for celebration for the tourism industry, provincial administrators are reporting a cautious comeback by foreign tourists to central Sulawesi and hot spots such as the Togian Islands scuba-diving site near Poso.
Tana Toraja, a highland province with a unique heritage, remains a favourite for those brave enough to endure the eight-hour bus trip from the port of Ujung Pandang, in southern Sulawesi. High up in mist-shrouded valleys, the predominantly Christian province appears blissfully cut off from sectarian conflict, while the
