Marbel & Lake Sebu T'boli Cultural Tour

High in the Tiruray Highlands of South Cotabato, at an elevation of 300 metres above sea level, a system of three connected lakes — Sebu, Lahit, and Selutan — forms the homeland of the T'boli people. The T'boli are one of the most culturally distinctive indigenous groups in the Philippines: their music (the hegelung lute and t'nonggong gong), their brass jewelry of extraordinary intricacy, their beadwork, their language, and above all their sacred weaving tradition have been studied by anthropologists and collected by museums worldwide.

The T'nalak cloth is the T'boli's most celebrated art form and one of the most unusual textiles in Asia. It is woven from hand-processed abaca fiber by women who receive the designs not from inherited pattern books but from dreams — the spirit Fu Dalu appears to the weaver in sleep and shows her the pattern that the cloth must take. The weaver wakes and begins immediately, working from memory of the dream alone. The resulting cloth — dyed in rust red and black on natural cream — is a document of the unconscious as much as a textile, and no two pieces are ever the same.

The tour visits the T'boli Museum, a working weaving house where you watch a manlilikha (master weaver) at her loom, a brass-casting workshop producing the traditional s'bosaw bird pendants and t'mo bracelets, and the lake shore itself — where fishermen in dugout canoes harvest tilapia and mudfish in the highland mist. The Seven Falls viewpoint provides a spectacular overview of Lake Sebu with the forest-covered hills of South Cotabato receding to the horizon. This is one of the most culturally rich day tours available from anywhere in Mindanao.