Sitting in the upper-floor dining area of a seafood restaurant in Baubau, having one of the freshest and most delicious grilled fish dishes that had ever passed my lips, I suddenly had a series of revelations. The very fish I was eating was probably, until a few hours earlier, still swimming in the waters around Buton (where Baubau is located), a small island off the southeastern coast of Sulawesi – one of Indonesia’s biggest islands that appears on maps like a scraggly-looking letter K. These waters at the heart of the vast Indonesian archipelago have been known for being home to abundant marine life, thanks to its location between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. And because of this, strong, nutrient-rich currents flow continuously around thousands of islands in this region, creating the perfect conditions for a multitude of tropical fish species to thrive.

Sulawesi is also home to the world’s oldest figurative cave art to date, which is at least 51,200 years old. While ancient cave paintings exist in other parts of the globe, the ones found on this Indonesian island are significant and particularly thought-provoking because of its location. The islands in the western part of the country (including Sumatra, Java, and Borneo) were once connected to mainland Asia, while those in the far eastern corners of Indonesia were a continuation of Australia. Sulawesi, however, has always been an island on its own. How humans got there is still a mystery. Did they arrive by boats? Did they swim over? Or did they accidentally drift away on dead tree trunks? But one thing is for sure: the figurative paintings they created are important pieces of the great puzzle in understanding the evolution of art.

In the relatively less distant past, Baubau, as the main port of Buton, benefitted from the lucrative spice trade thanks to its geographical location between maritime trading hubs in the west of the archipelago (especially those in Java, Sumatra, and the Malay Peninsula) and the Spice Islands (the Moluccas) in the east – the world’s sole source of nutmeg, mace, and cloves at that time. And like in other port cities, peoples from different cultural backgrounds who once frequented Baubau left their marks on this relatively remote corner of the world in many forms.

Throughout our week-long trip to the island of Buton (and neighboring Muna) last August, when we were not savoring delicious seafood, James and I were busy exploring the streets, forts, and beaches of Baubau. Apart from the unique local architecture, we noticed one intriguing decorative element that was ubiquitous on government buildings and some houses, as well as in city parks: pineapples and dragons. Why did a fruit native to South America and a mythical beast revered in East Asian mythology become a much-loved symbol of this small city of less than 200,000 people?

In an oft-recounted version of the origin of this pictogram, the pineapple is an allegory to how the Butonese people are expected to be: able to thrive wherever they are planted in the world, just like the fruit itself. Meanwhile, the Chinese-looking dragon is often cited as a reference to the first ruler of the Kingdom of Buton who is believed to be a Chinese woman. What are the chances of a polity formed by local lords (themselves descendants of Malay settlers) who agreed to elect a non-indigenous female ruler as their head of state in the 14^th century? Unfortunately, historical records from primary sources are scarce and what we know today about her is mostly based on oral tradition. It is said that she was one of only two women who ever ruled this kingdom before it became a sultanate in the 16^th century, following the conversion of the Butonese king to Islam.

Baubau, and the island of Buton in general is not really a place people have in mind when they think of a vacation. When we were there, we rarely saw other Indonesian tourists, let alone international visitors. Those who make their way to this city usually stay only briefly before continuing their journey to Wakatobi National Park – reputedly home to among the best diving spots in Indonesia. Even I, for a long time, only knew Buton as a top producer of bitumen, and only learned about its fascinating historical sites in the past decade or so.

However, despite Baubau not being well-known as a holiday destination, we still went anyway because we knew there are things worth checking out. Its relative obscurity in fact made this corner of Indonesia feel refreshing and exciting. Among the places on our list is a former palace situated in a leafy plot of land tucked away in the middle of a mix of houses as well as government and commercial buildings in downtown Baubau. Malige Palace was built in 1929 under the administration of the penultimate sultan of Buton. At the location, we were mentally prepared for only taking photos of the building from the outside, for I had read prior to the trip that access inside the palace is rarely granted to the public. But when we thought we’d taken enough photos and were ready to leave, a middle-aged lady emerged from inside the palace and waved at us, inviting us to come in.

As we went up the wooden stairs at the building’s entrance, the doors were opened, and the woman in a flowing violet daster (a loose dress typically worn at home in Indonesia) was standing inside waiting for us. Then she started speaking in English, and was surprised when I replied in Indonesian and told her that we came from Jakarta. “I thought you were foreigners,” she said to us while pointing at the guestbook for us to fill. “I actually wanted to call the kids outside to come to my house and help me with the water pump, and then I saw both of you. I thought you look like nice people, that’s why I invited you to come and have a look.” We couldn’t believe our luck. Later she explained to us that she is one of the grandchildren of the last sultan of Buton who passed away in 1960. For a fee, she allowed us to go to the upper levels of the structure which were mostly empty, leaving the first floor as the only part of the building that is occupied. She even said to us that we could take a look at her bedroom, but James and I agreed it would be unnecessary. After the brief exploration of the palace, we bid adieu to her and thanked her for granting us access inside this special building.

A short walk away was Kamali Beach where a giant dragon head appeared to have emerged from the ground. Of the many dragon statues in Baubau, this is arguably the most striking. Its tail is located further uphill, giving the impression that the creature’s long body is hidden underneath the city. I like to think of it as a metaphor of Baubau’s openness to foreign cultures, adopting and making them uniquely Butonese by weaving them deeply into people’s everyday lives.

While the sea breeze was pleasant, Baubau felt significantly hotter than Jakarta. And despite our penchant for exploring new places on foot, at midday we thought it would be wiser to go around Buton’s largest city by car. Online taxis are common across Indonesia, especially in urban areas, and naturally I ordered one through the same ride hailing mobile app I use in Jakarta. Little did we know that this would later bring us to a person from whom we learned a lot about this place.

On my smartphone screen, it said the person who picked my order was Arif, and then it showed the distance from his car to where we were waiting, which was quite far, and I wondered why. But we were not in a hurry. A short while later, his small car arrived, and once we got in, he drove the clean vehicle to a café where we would spend hours just chilling while having cold drinks to escape the heat before going to the imposing Buton Palace Fortress in the afternoon. (More on that impressive site on a later post.) Later that day, when I ordered a ride to bring us back to our hotel, we were surprised to find out that it was Arif again who picked up the order. Along the way, he explained to us that apparently most people in Baubau use another app (which I downloaded later), and only people from outside the island use the same app as I did, which explained the rarity of drivers registered with the latter.

“In the future, Buton will become its own province, separate from Southeast Sulawesi,” he told us and quickly added that today it takes around five to six hours to get to Kendari (the provincial capital) from Baubau by boat. Becoming the capital of a new province would not only make it more convenient for the residents of Baubau, but it would also create jobs, he argued. “A government minister [from Jakarta] also said that a bridge would be built connecting Buton and [the nearby island of] Muna.” We could clearly hear the enthusiasm in his voice, but we know politicians do what politicians do best: they make promises that are often too good to be true.

On another day when Arif took us places, I asked him about the signs I saw the afternoon we arrived in Baubau warning residents of crocodiles. “Is it true that there are crocodiles in the rivers on this island?” I inquired. “There are, but so far only the juveniles have been spotted,” he said to us while reassuring us that no one has lost their lives to the reptiles, at least according to him. “But in the island’s south, a python did kill a person and swallowed him.” He mentioned a case I also happened to read about a few weeks before leaving for Baubau. Our conversations, however, were not only about us trying to wrap our heads around life in Buton. “I’ve been to Jakarta once, in 2013,” Arif shared with us and explained that he went to Tanah Abang to buy clothes to be resold back home in Baubau – referring to what was often dubbed the largest textile market in Southeast Asia before the pandemic. “But I don’t like the traffic jams,” he laughed, citing what is probably the singular reason that makes Indonesia’s biggest city hard to love at first sight. We convinced him that it is a somewhat better city now, thanks to the MRT, the LRT, and the widened sidewalks, among other upgrades.

The thought of sighting a crocodile was a little nerve-racking, I must admit. However, the prospect of seeing a white sand beach just southwest of the city, especially after noticing how clear the waters were in the downtown area, was too hard to resist. Arif drove us through Baubau’s hills before joining the main road, and before long we arrived at Nirwana Beach. Reading that it could get quite busy on weekends, we went there on a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The weather was perfect, the sand soft, the waves lapping gently. Except for a few local children frolicking on the beach, we only saw a handful of other visitors. It was bliss.

Two days before the end of our week-long trip to Buton, we asked Arif’s help once again to take us to a place on the island that is probably among the most unusual corners of Indonesia. Visitors at Karya Baru, a village roughly half an hour from Baubau, would probably be confused with what they see. On the one hand, it doesn’t look dissimilar from other small towns in the country. But on the other hand, something seems out of place. In addition to Latin script, the residents also use Hangul (the Korean alphabet) for street names and signboards. Is this because of the popularity of K-pop, K-drama, and K-beauty among the local population? This aspect of South Korea’s soft power has undoubtedly reached millions, or even billions of people across the globe. But the usage of Hangul in this place is born out of necessity, not a trend.

Cia-Cia is one of the main ethnicities of Buton. However, the Cia-Cia language – which is spoken in Karya Baru, among other places on the island – didn’t have its own writing system, and this put it at serious risk of disappearing in the future. In 2005, a symposium was held in Baubau to address the issue, and one of the participants was a representative from the Hunminjeongeum Society, an organization based in Seoul dedicated to promoting Hangul to minority, unwritten languages primarily in Asia. Upon hearing how the Cia-Cia language is spoken, he told the mayor of Baubau that phonetically it is similar to Korean. In the subsequent years, the first teacher from South Korea came to Baubau to teach Hangul, followed by a program which facilitated local language teachers from Baubau to study the letters in South Korea.

Before going to Karya Baru, I stumbled upon a video on YouTube by a Korean who had lived in Indonesia for many years. He was also curious about the Cia-Cia language and decided to go to Baubau. In the city, he met with three Cia-Cia students who showed him a text in their native language that is written in Hangul. When the YouTuber read the sentences, they were all shocked and commented on how his pronunciation matched that of a Cia-Cia person, even more so than how a Wolio (the language of the predominant ethnic group in Baubau) speaker would sound when reading a Cia-Cia text that is written in Latin script. Apparently, the introduction of Hangul also sparked interest among young Cia-Cia people in learning the language of their parents and grandparents. It’s still a long way, however, to say that Hangul has successfully saved the Cia-Cia language from extinction, but from what I read there seem to be some promising results.

We didn’t linger too long in this village as there was not really much to see apart from the Hangul signs. But on the way back to the city I was reminded about what I had in mind when I was having that delicious grilled fish in Baubau. This relatively unknown part of Indonesia has indeed been a confluence of different cultures which were then incorporated into the local people’s unique way of life. The result is a fascinating place to explore and learn about, and there is no better place to understand the history of Baubau than the imposing Buton Palace Fortress. That’s where I will take you next.