TRAVELOGUE_Sulawesi Selatan, Bali, Nusa Tenggara Timur
18 July- 10 August 2010
By John M. Gorrindo
Indonesian Correspondent, The Seoul Times
Global warming may not only be the "rage" and consequence of man's folly but the real deal for whatever its reason. The reason is found in the season or lack thereof. The weather here in Indonesia is strange and very widespread. Rain has persisted through the dry season and nearly every day here in Manado as well as in Bali and even Eastern Indonesia from whence I just returned two nights ago. Overcast weather and rain showers were frequent wherever I traveled.
I flew out of Manado on July 18th and landed in Makassar ninety minutes later. Rendezvousing with a younger American guy living and working in Vietnam, we expats spent a couple days in the saucy city before heading out to Pantai Bira for nearly a week. This was the beach town I cut my teeth on five years ago, serving as a very green and ignorant volunteer teacher, all the while living in a small room for let from Riswan and his wife Irma for five dollars a day all meals included. The Buginese couple became my springboard into Indonesian life and it was high time I payed them a visit to pay my belated respect for all the help they gave me.
Rain had soaked Bira all summer and the place was so verdant and the trees so tall and their canopies of leaves so lush that I barely recognized the place. Tourism has proved to help the ocean environment it appeared. The beaches were much cleaner for one thing. Very little garbage was found strewn on the sands of the six kilometer stretch along the hotel developed side of the cape. Certainly my snorkeling experience there included many turtle sightings, a real rarity during the seventy-five times I paddled around the same waters five years past. And the reefs out at Liukang island offshore from Bira were surprisingly pristine and even magnificent.
Over the past few years the Karaoke Bars and their staff of embarrassingly young prostitutes had been pushed to the outer boundaries of Bira's resort area, and though the local Muslim population most likely would rather have the girls all exiled their ability to generate cash still trumps moral outrage.
Riswan is still the single minded entrepreneur and dead-set business man he has always been, and he stills worries enough for five hundred Indonesians. His stomach churns and still gives him trouble. Rarely does he crack a smile. His advice is almost always cautionary in nature, and for a foreigner it's advice almost unfailingly important to listen to and take heed. So rarely does anyone care to share the truth here that when you hear it, you damn well know it. At least Riswan speaks up and he happens to be wise to more than just about anyone I know in this mind boggling country.
He took me out to one of his teak wood plantations which was some distance from the ocean and required a healthy hike to reach. The "kabun" or garden of his is located in the Tanah Beru area which is the last real Buginese stronghold of pinisi wooden boat building. He also has stake in a pinisi boat being built in Tanah Beru's ship building district, and we visited that as well. Iron wood, possibly the world's strongest and best wood for building a wooden vessel, is now so expensive that the keel of his 32 meter boat cost more than fifty thousand American dollars. Deforestation and illegal logging are quickly bringing the harvest of iron wood to the end of its earthly course it seems, and when iron wood goes, so too will a thousand year tradition of Buginese boat building.
Naked boys ran along the beach begging me to take their picture amidst the whirring of saws and thuds of traditional wooden hammers that drove 18 inch long hard wood spikes vertically deep into the iron wood planking, serving as dowels that held the ships' side planks together.
A couple of days before this I took a trip out to the neighboring seaside town of Ara, which used to be the central location for Buginese boat building before moving to Tanah Beru just a couple of generations ago. Now the town's beaches revealed only one boat in construction. Most of the people were barely surviving, living off of the harvest of sea grass, which is sold to make "agar" or vegetable gelatin used for cooking throughout Indonesian. The real reason for my journey was to look up an elderly retired public school principal, Abdul Hakim, a fine gentleman I met five years ago. On that first occasion we visited his house in order to take a look at his library of books, and that is why I returned. He allowed me to photocopy three books which dealt with boat building as well as two more by an anthropologist who lived with Abdul Hakim while doing research a decade ago. An American university professor, his two books explore mystical themes concerning traditional cultural and leadership practices in South Sulawesi. He was enthused by my visit and ability to converse with him in Bahasa Indonesian. So enthused in fact that he invited me to return and stay with him. This is a rare invitation for a foreigner in Buginese country; one I considered an honor that must be fulfilled. I'll go just about anywhere in order to find a good book. I'm starved for them here.
Ara is situated on a steep hillside, some two kilometers up a steep road from the ocean, and in between the town and the ocean is a nearly intractable low montane rain forest that would rip you to shreds if you were fool enough to attempt penetration. Pythons and rather evil macaque greys (monkees) are in healthy abundance. So to are caves, as the entire area is limestone bedrock. We descended down a road, parked, got out in a rain storm and walked a few meters off to the mouth of a cave whose entrance took us down a perilously slick and steep pitch of razor sharp limestone on to a subterranean pool of ground water. Swimming in near darkness I used my underwater flashlight to explore the submerged stalagtites and stalagmites. So finally I had my first experience cave diving.
My American acquaintance was someone I had met in Manado along with another friend of his a year ago. He teaches music in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City), and his friend is independently wealthy, living in relative boredom in Thailand. The second American couldn't make the trip, and I had volunteered to help out the one who could. Though our agendas were very divergent a good bit of the time, we got along very well, and it was good to have someone to travel with all things considered.
Leaving Bira we flew from Makassar and transited the same day in Bali. By afternoon we found ourselves in Labuanbajo, Western Flores. Flores is the gateway to Nusa Tenggara Timur, or southeastern Indonesia. The aim was to explore Komodo National Park, and certainly all the real interest was to be found amongst the scores of local islands, and nearly none whatsoever in the port town itself. Aside from the hundreds of boats that were moored in the towns three or four dock complexes, the town didn't trade in any terms of endearment. Local government was obviously corrupt and/or bankrupt and missing in action. The seaside was not much more than a stinking trash heap and the main drag a road of ruin full of muddy divots and endless pits. The traffic meandered like a quickly veering snake writhing along the "boulevarde," doing its best to avoid holes that could likely take out a vehicle's suspension.
Yet what I saw in Labuanbajo was the unseemly birth of a new Bali in reality. Komodo National Park has become the latest cause celebre, and sure to accompany the push to vote in Komodo as one of the world's seven natural wonders is the inevitable call for the jet set to put in a rank and file permanent appearance while everyone waits in anticipation for the world body vote to make Komodo world famous forever and for everyone. The metropole feeling saturated the place as the streets were replete with the young and self-consciously hip and beautiful tourist crowd. Some of the restaurants were natural draws, designed for only the beautiful people: Such as new age eco-friendly brick oven pizza palace called "The Lounge" whose pizzas were too thin and crisp, and whose sound system played a too eco-friendly too neo-ethnic island music arranged on top of a sonic bed whose sounds were live samples from the rainforest. The waitresses were smooth talking and highly trained locals, repeatedly asking if everything was alright and smiling with effortless charm, however manufactured. The owners had to be foreign, though I can't vouch for it. Such restaurants are "hot spots", offering free, WI-FI internet access for those who carried lap tops, iPhones, and Blackberries. Many young tourists were lounging on couches built into the walls of the restaurant (hence its name); most of them predictably glued to their electronic telecommunication devices.
But take one step back on the street and the stench of toilet-fouled gutters and randomly tossed garbage hit one's senses like a handful of mushy rot in the face. With such a bad infrastructure in place and good travel and accommodation information difficult to come by, the lowest form of life called the "calo" thrived in such conditions. The "calo" is the inimitable Indonesian middle man or broker who preys on tourists. Some are competent guides and some admittedly even have official licenses for working as a qualified guide, but many are no better than pimps and con men. As I know Indonesian and live in the country, they tried their hand with me but soon realized I was a poor take and not worth the time. Some were pimps first and above all, something I'm not used to in Indonesia. They were quick to try and sell sixteen year olds to me at first blush of conversation, and it was all I could do to be civil while brushing them off. I didn't wish to create a scene in my friend's homey Padang style restaurant, truth be told.
The trip to see the dragons was a good one, and the day happened to be beautiful. Good luck all the way around as guides on Rinca and Komodo islands are quick with the disclaimer from the very outset, "I can't promise you you'll see a dragon today." Yet we saw at least 25 that day. We went to the closer island of Rinca rather than Komodo, a spectacular two hour boat ride from Labuanbajo which takes one into the heart of the Komodo archipelago, passing literally scores of small islands. If the setting hadn't been oceanic and tropical, the islands' natural ground cover would have suggested the African velt, as there were rather barren of trees and covered in tall grasses turning brown as the dry season struggled to establish itself. This is perhaps Indonesia's driest area, and everything about it's natural environment is unique to the Indonesian experience.
We took a six kilometer walk on Rinca, a loop that took us through more lowland forests and then on up to a most beautiful view atop a tall hill barren of trees. Along the way there were the dragons as well as gigantic water buffalo and monkeys. A longer hike might have yielded sitings of wild horses as well, but four hours in such blazing sun would have been too much. The fauna was captivating, to be sure, but I was more taken with the flora. The island's palms were absolutely unique- of the Lontar variety- and nearly every plant we saw was most likely endemic.
The ten days we spent in Labuanbajo gave us opportunity to visit several other islands, most of them offering beautiful beaches and good snorkeling. None of the reefs rank with Bunaken, but their biodiversity were unique as all memorable reefs are. The preponderance of clams was striking as were the giant barrel sponges, some of which looked like a cistern the size of which Diogenes the aesthetic Greek philosopher could have lived in if he had been born an large aquatic merman.
For the better part we cut out the calos and went straight to the docks to do some hard haggling with the boat captains and owners for daily rentals. The costs were fairly expensive, and we did our best to recruit other tourists to accompany us while driving hard bargains to bring the costs down to something reasonable. Running the gauntlet was half-fun, half-treacherous.
My travel mate Davis went diving a couple of days while I did other things- like sleep. Davis regailed me with not only the wonders of the underwater world but also the rigors of Komodo's currents. Three dives a day starts tearing away at human flesh- he was coughing up blood and both his eyes were blackened from an ill-fitting mask while under a few atmospheres of pressure at 30 meters.
But while getting some rest I was wisked away by my hotel security guard to watch a good ole fashioned Manggarai whip fight with fighters in traditional costume. Along with the ceremonial attire, the dancing and singing accompanying the "rounds" of whip-against-shield looked and sounded decidedly Native American. Being officially half-blind due to advancing age, I didn't realize until later while reviewing photos that one fighter I had photographed had a nasty laceration that cut across his stomach a good ten inches long. It was fresh alright. And all the fighters were covered with upper body scars.
Only once did we travel inland, and that was a journey into the town of Ruteng, situated in the cool mountains of interior western Flores. The famous hominid called the "Hobbit" which Nadya studied was unearthed in a remote cave located only 20 kilometers outside that small city, but the incessant rain made it unfavorable for hiring a car and then trekking off-road into the jungle. It was cold and wet in Ruteng, but I took a walk to the local catholic church, nunnery, and catholic high school, where I was quickly scooped up off the street by a vigilant English teacher and asked to visit his English class and teach a quick lesson. Flores is one of only a handful of Indonesian islands that is predominantly catholic, and I am happy to have had the chance to interact within this Indonesian-catholic cultural setting in complement to teaching in Indonesian public schools, madrasahs, along with a few other types of schools during the past five years.
Lots of betel nut in Ruteng- the pinang (nut), sirih leaf, and kapor (limestone chalk) readily available at the traditional market. Some pychotropic substances make for high flying- but if the nut is fresh- the great betel will have you flying fast and LOW...................And in the meantime spitting up endless gobs of irridescent red saliva is just the kind of fun kids of all ages die for.
Bidding fond farewell to our hotel (which was quite a good place), we flew back to Bali and parted ways. Davis (my traveling companion) chose to hazard Kuta Beach while I spent three nights in the heart of Denpasar, staying in the apartment of my best Indonesian friends, Agus and his girl friend, Gemi. Agus is the only Indonesian I know that is a true conversationalist, and we talked about every subject under the firmament for ten solid hours the first night I was there. Needless to say that three days later I was completely sleep deprived and left with tongue wagging and neural synapses gel-like, flaccid and non-responsive from overuse.
What can one say about the last leg flying home? I wish I could have
started a food fight in the plane, but I would have been deported. The
Indonesians don't yet know the thrill of such things. Wink-wink-Nod-nod: What's up with this?? Not a shred of food nor drop of water on the plane! Go LION AIR!
Booty: pearls from Komodo; Ikat from Ruteng; four paintings from Bali's Sukawati art market (bizarre?)
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TAGS: Indonesia, Nusa Tenggara Timur, NTT, Flores, Timor, Timor L’este, Kupang, Labuan Bajo, Labuanbajo, Ruteng, Pandar, Alor, Roti, Sumba, Denpasar, Bali, Komodo, Komodo National Park, Rinca, Gili Motang, Manggarai, Paradise Bar, Lombok, South Lombok, Kuta Beach, Gili Trawangan, komodo dragons, lontar palm, pinisi, live aboards, TransNusa Air, calo