Today is June 18th, it is 1:40pm, I am at Manado airport waiting to board my flight to go to Medan, via Jakarta. Take off @ 2:45 pm, landing in Medan @ midnight.
While I was eating a nasi goreng at the airport restaurant, I had a little moment for pride. Two tables away from mine were sitting two Chinese girls, probably my age. One of them asked the waitress in English if she had some fresh coconut. The waitress did not understand...so after seeing that the Chinese girl was clueless as to how to use Indonesian words, I just said quite out loud, while looking at the waitress, 'kelapa muda'. She looks at me, then at the girl and tells her 'no have'. Half an hour later, the food the girl had ordered arrives on her table. The girl asks the waitress if she has any chili. Right away, the waitress reaction is to look at me for help, I tell her out loud 'sambal'. She gives me a big smile and goes to get the chili for the girl. Et voila...for about an hour, I felt like a fully integrated tourist-local. Sweet feeling to have!
OK, now...que paso after the Togians?
I left Sifa's cottage with two other French people (from Toulouse...holly cow what a strong accent they have...but cool, not the typical French travellers), at around 5:30am, by wooden little tuk tuk boat headed to Dolong, more than an hour away, to catch the supposedly 7am ferry to Bombulan. (The ferry didn't actually depart til 9am!)
The sun was barely starting to rise on the horizon...beautifully magical to be on the water at such hour and all alone gliding on the water as the sun is waking up.
We arrive to the very beautifully modest and simple fisherman village of Dolong, welcome, as usual, by the locals, as if we were superstars.
We finally embark the big metal ship,.,a long 5 hours airless steaming hot ride. Oh well...
All three of us finally arrive at Bombulan at about 2 pm...there, between lots of haggling, loss in translation, and simple patience, about two hours of sitting on the ground later, while threatened by the huge black clouds, we finally embark a kijang (mini van sitting maximum 7 people + driver), to Gorontalo. I had under my seat a live chicken. Oufffff...the ride was supposed to be a quick 3 to 4 hours, but ended being a very very long 5 hours...(only travellers can really understand the difference).
While on the way, I receive a txt message from Aslan telling me that both Mica and Jyrki are also in Gorontalo. So am totally thrilled as I will get to hang out some more with a few of the Kurva team! Eppaaaaa! Grande!
The first night in Gorontalo was probably the craziest. We arrive, check in at Sahara hotel ($5 a night for a room), then head straight to the main square to meet up with the two Finish. The square is amazing. Filled with young kids, boys and girls, doing break dancing tricks all over. Some battling, some practicing, some just chilling there. The usual evening hobby of the local youth there. I am fascinated. Gorontalo is just in the middle of nowhere. Seriously. Poor phone reception and bad internet signal. But yet, these kids manage to be totally up to date with today's youth 'hip hop' culture from NYC. When we got there, Mica and Jyrki are already pretty soaked in beer and arak. We get a quick bite, then the two French go back to their hotel and leave me with my kurvas, as well as Ednan, a local from Gorontalo, whom I had met in Kadidiri on my last day, and whom also drives a Bentor (local rickshaw). So what next? Hmmm...Ednan suggests the red light district. Keep in mind that Gorontalo is mostly Muslim...so to find the red light district we have to drive (on Ednan's bentor) quite far and off the main road...no road lights nor signs...hmmm
We get there by 1 am. Uffff...not many people at all for a Thursday night, but we will do with what we have. A few beers go down, some arak for Ednan, me trying to get the pseudo DJ to play some latin music, we made it home by 5am. Uffff.....a 24 hour day for me. The details of what happened during those 4 hours is between my Kurvas and myself. Lol wasn't remotely close to any sort of Vegas night at all. :-)
I stayed in Gorontalo about 4 days, enough to renew my visa for another month, thanks to Aslan who accepted to be my sponsor, see my little Lola and my family live via Skype for the first time in a month and a half, and attend Aslan's father in law's Muslim funeral diner celebration. Quite an interesting experience. Gorontalo is not so bad a city after all.
Day 5 early morning, I catch yet another 10 hour car ride, this time to Manado. That ride felt much shorter and faster than the 5 hour ride to get to Gorontalo.
Upon arrival in Manado, I checked in at the basic budget Rex Hotel. As basic as you can get: a mattress, a room twice the size of the bed, a piece of mirror on the wall, a window, bathroom in the hallway, no fan, no AC. Ha, and guess what!? Both Jyrki and the Turkish couple from Kadiri were staying there as well. So i spent the following 3 days in Manado hanging out with Jyrki. Tons of fun in this chaotic, polluted, extremely hot and not so interesting city. Basically many shopping malls (way smaller than basic american giant malls), lots of food places, and tons of street garages, hardware stores. Kind of like a typical souk in the middle east, but scattered all over the city.
Curious fact about Manado: it is a very very christian city, so for the very first time in my life, in the 'third world' all stores were closed on a Monday. What a shock!
(Little parenthesis here: the crew of one of the local airlines just walked by, wow! Nothing to do with the old, unpretty, unclassy crews of American Airline and the other US airlines. Lol end of the parenthesis)
(Parenthesis #2: the plane I will be flying is a Lyon Air plane...a plane from this company crashed a month ago. I thought that it would have the ticket prices to tank down, but it seems that it was not the case. So we will see what happens I guess...if I had a parachute it would make it fun at least...a free jump opportunity. Lol such a long time since my last jump, I miss it quite much. End of parenthesis #2)
I have decided to not dive in Bunaken. Yes it is supposed to be a top dive spot in Sulawesi. Bunaken is only an hour away from Manado. None of the forum posts I have read managed to convince me that it was that spectacular, and in all honesty, the giant city of Manado did not give me much of a good vibe that its close neighbour of Bunaken could be much better. So I prefer to save that money to dive in Sumatra and most importantly in Flores and Komodo.
My last morning in Manado, this morning, was actually a bit funny.
After waking up and brushing my teeth, I walked to the front desk down the hall to ask for my tea and morning pastry (both included in the price of the room) to have a sort of mini breakfast. As I walk in the sort of lobby, a big group of about 10 students welcome me as if they had been waiting all night for me to arrive. Hilarious! So I shout at them a loud 'selamat pagi!'
While I order my breakfast I sit down on the couch, quickly surrounded by all the students. And on they start their typical English class tourist interview homework. Lol it was so funny!
Et voila...then packing, and off to take two mini vans to make it to the airport! Bon voyage!
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