I Love Manado, Manado Love Me - Part 2

After the day's excitement, we arrived at the resort right around dinnertime. Although it was a relatively small place (capacity of 15 or 16 people a night), the grounds were immaculate. The landscaping was beautiful, and since it was on the side of a hill looking out over the ocean, there were lots of steps. We quickly put our stuff in our rooms and met up with the rest of the guests in the dining hall.



A view of my bungalow from beside the pool.

Lumba Lumba Resort (Lumba means dolphin in the local language) is owned by a Dutch couple, who have been in Indonesia for about 17 years. Before that they owned a dive resort in Sri Lanka but were forced to move due to the civil war. Turns out civil war isn’t good for tourism.  It just so happens that most of the other guests at the resort were from the Netherlands as well. Now that I think about it, one couple might have been from Denmark. I get confused between the two. There was also an Australian author, Rusty (who apparently has a book called Marching Powder that is being turned into a film by Brad Pitt’s production company and starring Don Cheadle), and his Mexican girlfriend Lulu. Add in the local staff and you have quite the motley crew of people in the resort. They employed their own kitchen staff that cooked us great local food every night. It was very interesting just sitting around with people from different lands and all different walks of life and getting to know their stories.

View from the main hall dining area.



Us on the boat with our new Dutch, Australian, and Mexican friends!

 The next morning after a quick breakfast, I donned my tight fitting swim trunks and we were off on our first ocean adventure. I should probably explain that Jayme and Andrea are avid SCUBA divers, and therefore this vacation was mostly planned around that. I was just tagging along. I am not certified to dive, so therefore was relegated to snorkeling. Being on a boat where everyone else was putting on their diving stuff while I was sitting there with my snorkel mask and fins kind of made me feel like I showed up to Sturgis on a moped. I soon got over that though, because the snorkeling was absolutely amazing.



Cool picture of our dive boat with the volcano island in the background.



Having lived in Hawaii for a year, I was no stranger to awesome snorkeling. This was just as good, if not better. There were amazing reefs and countless species of marine life, including many that were new to me. The coral formations were breathtaking, and the reefs were much bigger than those I had experienced before. Basically I just hopped out of the boat wherever they dropped off the divers and followed the reefs until the boat came by to pick me up. The water was so ridiculously clear that often times I could see the divers down below me a few dozen feet or more.  One of our Dutch friends had an underwater camera, so we were able to steal a few pictures from her.



There were bagillions of fish of all kinds. Yes, that's a real amount.



Saw a few sea turtles, and they were frickin huge. Much larger than their Hawaiian cousins were.



The very first morning we were out on the boat headed to the dive spot, we came across a huge pod of dolphins that we followed around for a while. There had to have been somewhere around 40 or 50 dolphins. We were able to go to the front of the boat and watch them swim right in front of us and all around us. Every once in a while one of them would jump (? not sure what word to use here, seems like it would be hard to jump without legs…can’t really say swim either because you can’t swim when you’re out of water) really high out of the water. Unfortunately you never knew which one was going to do it so it was hard to get pictures. Luckily one of our boat mates got a good shot, because all of my attempts failed miserably. It was a really cool experience. I’ve never been to sea world or anything of the sort, but I imagine there's no comparison to seeing it in the wild like this.



Looking down off the front of our boat.




This one is one of my favorites from the trip.



Luckily Rusty was able to snap a good shot of a flying dolphin.



For the most part, we were in Bunaken National Marine Park, which is a protected area. There are lots of rules to follow, but that’s a good thing because they are trying to protect the natural beauty of the park. For the first dive the second day, we went all the way to the volcano island that’s in the background of a lot of my pictures. At the base of the island, there was a little fishing village with a few scattered cool looking buildings and crude residences. There was even a church built on the island. Christianity is actually the prevalent religion of Manado, which is in stark contrast to the rest of the country. Anyway, I just fell in love with this little village, and I really wish I could have explored it.



Sitting where the boat dropped us off for snorkeling/diving. Amazing reef just below us!



I was pretty obsessed with this little pier. I really wanted to sit on the end of it with a lawn chair and a cooler of Busch Light.

 

Love the yellow house in the middle of this shot.

Impressive little church for a tiny island!

Small fishing boats ready to head out.




You can see the fisherman standing a ways out. I just like the blue-ness of this photo.



Our second to last day, we decided to take a break from the water and go on a rainforest hike. I was excited for this, but also slightly worried, because my last attempt at a rainforest hike didn’t go as I had hoped and the memory of that is pretty fresh in my mind still (for more on this, read my previous post entitled Mr. Cliff & Friends Go To Sri Lanka- The Womit). Our 3-4 hour drive to the rainforest was pretty much a very entertaining education on the ways and customs of the people of Manado. Our guide came from a different Indonesian island with different customs, so it took him a while to adjust. Much of the conversation revolved around the local cuisine. We always joked in the US about not knowing what kind of meat you were getting at certain Asian restaurants, jesting that it could be dog meat. Well, with some of the stuff they eat on Manado, a nice dog steak would sound pretty good. Sadly, they do eat a lot of dog there, and it’s not the most humane of processes they use to sell them. Apparently for birthday parties, sometimes you just go out to the back yard and roast up the family pooch.  Other than dog, we learned about eating monkeys, that bat meat is very expensive and quite tasty, and that you only eat the rats that came from the jungles with the white tails. Those are the good ones. If they don’t have white tails they are city rats, and you don’t want to eat those.

Ok, I’m going to post a couple of pictures taken by one of our Dutch friends at a local market that may be a little bit disturbing. So if you’re a little squeamish, just scroll down past them a ways.

This is sad, but I'll explain what's going on. You can see the roasted dogs on the table, with the live dogs in the cage at the bottom of the table waiting for their fate. The club on top of the cage is what is used to "put them down". The guy by the cage is, well....



....he is the guy that "roasts" the dog with the blow torch. Don't say I didn't warn you to scroll down.



Anyone for some roasted bat? Apparently this is a delicacy.

All in all, it was a lovely and edutaining (I mixed education and entertaining, I think that’s a word that should catch on) drive. We even pulled off to get a good view of the giant Flying Jesus statue that the locals are very proud of. It impressively large, I’ll give them that.



Interesting choice with the Superman theme.



We stopped for lunch on the edge of the rainforest park, at what appeared to be someone’s house. But as we drove further back there were some guest lodges and a tiny little restaurant next to a stream. When lunch was brought out I was very leery. The combination of remembering my Sri Lanka rainforest hike and the tales we just heard of eating all sorts of weird animals sapped my appetite pretty quickly. There was some meat that was supposedly “chicken”, and some fried fish that were still staring at me. So I filled up on white rice as much as I could.



The "restaurant" we stopped at. Wasn't sure if we were going to be eating that dog's brother or not.



I took a pass on the fish as well.



After lunch we pulled into the Tangkoko Nature Reserve and started our trek. The heat was sweltering, and it wasn’t long before everything I was wearing was drenched in sweat. I didn’t really care though because the rainforest was beautiful, and it wasn’t long before we started seeing some cool animals. There are a few main animals that everyone hopes to see in the park, and we were lucky enough to see them all. The trees were HUGE, so our first sighting of the Black Crested Makak (an animal endemic to the island) wasn’t very good as they were way up high in the trees. Our guide told us to be patient as they would move down soon, and he was right. It wasn’t long until we were nearly face to face with a few of them. Below are a few other animals we saw.

It's crazy how much they look like actual people.



Sunda Slow Loris- otherwise known as a Cuscus. It's a sloth-like animal with a pouch. A pretty rare sighting actually.



More Cuscus.



Saw a few hornbills. Really cool bird.




Tarsier- the smallest of the primates. To get an idea for the size, he is holding a grasshopper in his hand. They are cute litte guys!

 

Awesome jungle tree the seemed to be made up of other trees & vines.

 

This ferocious beast is the king of the jung......oh wait, that's just me standing in the doorway of one of the massive trees.

If we weren’t on a boat or in a rainforest, we were probably hanging out by the beautiful pool drinking a Bintang, which is a local beer. The pool also offered some pretty awesome pictures.

I love this picture because Jayme was actually going on a beer run to get us some more Bintangs.



Great shot of me being a third wheel ruining what otherwise could have been a very romantic moment. Hey, that's what you get when you invite me on vacation!

 Also, my luggage finally showed up on Wednesday evening. Of course they didn’t deliver it afterall. I called them on Tuesday evening, well after they said it would show up, and they told me it was sitting at the airport but they couldn’t deliver it to me because they didn’t have representation in Manado, which is BS. So one of the hotel staff was nice enough to drive into town to get it for me. I had a nice day and a half with my luggage!

By that time, it didn’t matter much. I was happy to have it, but the entire week was so much fun and so relaxing that I pretty much just forgot about it. It seemed that Friday morning came much too soon and it was time for me to fly back to Jakarta to work for the weekend. Even though it started off a little rocky, the vacation was incredible. It was just a reminder that much like the rest of my time spent in southern Asia, things go wrong all the time. You just have to roll with the punches, and everything seems to work itself out. After everything shakes out you’re left with some pretty good stories, awesome memories, and enough material to write some lengthy blog posts.

Indeed, I love Manado. And I’d like to think Manado showed me a little love as well.  

I Love Manado, Manado Love Me - Part 1

I was due. I knew that.

I’ve been on well over a hundred airplanes since graduating college, on many weird trips that have given me the opportunity to spend time in airports in such exotic domestic locations as Wichita KS, Newark NJ, Buffalo NY, Sacramento CA, Kona HI (ok, can’t really complain about that one), Columbus and Cincinnati OH (well technically the Cincinnati airport is in Kentucky…), Harrisburg PA, and too many more bigger airports to count. Internationally I’ve flown into Kathmandu and Pokhara Nepal, Nagpur, Bangalore and New Delhi in India (numerous times), Frankfurt, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cancun, Sri Lanka, Dubai, Jakarta, and probably more I’m forgetting. I’ve seen a lot of airports all over the world, but never once had an airline lost my bag until this trip. It used to be a streak I’d only cautiously allude to, not wanting to wake the baggage karma gods. I knew my number was coming, so as I sat in the Jakarta airport staring hopefully at the baggage belt, my heart sank as I saw everyone around me reach for their own luggage and the area slowly clear around me. Soon it was just me and the same pink Dora the Explorer bag making circuit after circuit on the merry-go-round of precious possessions, begging to be claimed. Even it was finally hauled off by a frustrated mother with a couple screaming kids in tow. I had to face the music. The streak was over.

Rewind a couple weeks; I was pumped because I had just received my confirmation email from the Lumba Lumba dive resort in Manado, North Sulawesi, Indonesia for my stay, telling me not to worry about the deposit as long as I promised not to be a no show. My friend and co-worker Jayme had planned a vacation for himself and his wife and invited me to tag along, as we both had to be at our Jakarta office on different consecutive weekends. It was going to work out perfectly just to meet somewhere nearby for a few days in-between. Not bad for a last minute vacation.



Pretty much right on the equator!

Indonesia is a confusing country geography-wise. I wonder how the decided which parts of which islands belonged to whom? I'm sure there were wars fought over it.

Everything was set, or so I thought. Since I was going to Jakarta for business, I booked my ticket to there through work, and bought the ticket from Jakarta to Manado myself, with just a couple hour layover. Everything was working out swimmingly.  Until I got to the Bangalore ticket desk, and heard them say, “Ok Mr. Olander here is your ticket from Bangalore to Singapore, but we see you’re on standby for Singapore to Jakarta.” Ruh roh. Not good. So I pulled out my confirmation itinerary from my travel folder (I am very well organized when I travel, as anyone who has traveled with me can attest to. I’ve been made fun of numerous times for my “travel folder” in which I keep two copies of every piece of travel documentation you could ever need) to show them that I did in fact have a confirmed seat. It said so right there on the paper from my work travel agent. Seat 4A. Confirmed.

“No sir, our system shows you aren’t confirmed, and the flight is full.” So I call up the travel agent (of course they don’t have their “A team” working on what is Sunday morning in the US) “Well, Mr. Olander, everything looks good on our end. I don’t know what to tell you.” Awesome. So I passed my phone to the Bangalore ticket desk people to talk to my travel agent. Guess who wins when the travel agent says you’re confirmed and have a seat, and when the airline says you don’t? I was determined not to leave and board the first plane until I had a seat on the airplane for my second leg. And I think the girl at the airline desk could sense that as well. So she comes over a few minutes later and says “Ok, they will have a ticket for you at the transfer desk in Singapore.” I wanted to believe her, but I knew she was probably lying to me to get me out of her hair. When you spend enough time in India, you learn the dark art of skepticism (aka bullshit detection) very well, and my Spidey Sense told me that she was full of bullshit. I asked her to print my ticket here, but she said that the system wouldn’t let her. Resigned to the fact that there was nothing else I could do, I boarded my first flight knowing I was probably screwed when I landed.



Had there been a BS alarm handy, I would have pressed it.

To make a long story…well…. longer, I was right…no ticket when I got to Singapore. I went to three different transfer desks and made a couple more calls to the travel agent before I found someone who was helpful. This fine young gentleman found a way to move me up to #1 on the standby list, as long as I was willing to sit in coach. As I sat there playing scenarios over in my head, I was becoming pretty depressed. If I missed this flight, I would miss my flight to Manado for sure, and I would be out a $350 non-refundable ticket, and since the next three flights were full as well, probably miss out on the majority of the vacation portion of my trip altogether. Finally, the flight attendants did their final checks and there was one spot left that they thankfully gave to me. The counter supervisor had me hop in the little golf cart airport trolley and before I knew it he was driving like Dale Earnhardt (for lack of knowledge of any southern Asian NASCAR drivers) through the terminal towards the gate.

Fast forward back (if it’s possible to fast forward back to something, seems somewhat oxy moronic) to me sitting at the Lost Luggage Desk in Jakarta. It was a zoo. You can imagine how difficult it is to communicate to people at luggage desks in Indonesia. Looking back, it was a longshot for my bag to make it onto the plane since I barely made it myself before they closed the airplane door. After listening to their apologies, I explained to them that I was taking a different airline to Manado, but they assured me they would have it delivered to me the next day at the resort once it arrived from Singapore. My bullshit alarm goes off once again, but once again there’s nothing I can do. So, I put on my MacGyver hat and take stock of my possessions to see if I could survive for five days in a tropical location. I have jeans, a t-shirt, the pair of boxers I was wearing, flip flops, and my computer bag complete with a half pack of gum. Survive, yes. Comfortably? Most definitely not. So I find a Polo store in the airport and purchase some shorts and another shirt so I at least had one change of clothes.  

Soon after I found Jayme and Andrea roaming the airport, as we were on the same flight from Jakarta to Manado, and I tell them about the last 12 frustrating hours of my life (first world problems…I know) over a Starbucks coffee (anytime you can grab normal tasting coffee over here is a delight). We make our way to the gate and board the plane. At that point, I’m just happy to be there and on the flight. When I thought about the alternatives, not having any luggage didn’t seem so bad.

The flight over the different Indonesian islands also helped cheer me up a great deal. It’s always fascinating to look down on strangle lands and take in everything from a bird’s eye view. We flew over hundreds of small islands with beautiful beaches and water the brilliant colors of blue & green you only find in the tropics. There were rivers winding in and out of rainforests and rice paddies, emptying into their respective seas. It was very beautiful scenery, even from a window seat in the back of a Garuda Airlines jet. Upon landing we were met by an employee of the resort who was there to pick us up. After explaining my luggage situation to her, she drove us to a local mall where I was able to pick up the essentials like a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, contact solution, and sunblock. I also found a department store where I got some underwear & a swimsuit.

 Of course I have a slightly different body style than 99.86% of the people in Southern Asia, so it’s difficult to find clothes that aren’t of the “skinny fit” variety. Now, you’ll never catch me wearing skinny jeans. Call me old fashioned.  I’ll walk around in a loincloth before that happens. But when your swimsuit is lost somewhere between Singapore and Jakarta, you have to make do with the limited options you have. So I bought some skater-punk skinny fit board shorts, which is all they had. They will not be worn again. I also wanted to get one more t-shirt to wear, just in case my luggage didn’t show up the next day when it was supposed to. And when I saw the shirt that read “I Love Manado, Manado Love Me” with a big heart in the middle, I couldn’t resist. I just hoped that buying the shirt would prove prophetic. Spoiler alert:  It was.



My awesome new T-Shirt and less than awesome trunks.  

After our side trip to the mall, we made the beautiful drive to our resort, watching the sun set over the Celebes Sea. The roadside was dotted with local roadside vendors selling their grilled fish, probably pulled out of the ocean that morning. Other vendors were selling roasted ears of corn. Other vendors were probably selling meats from other animals (more on that in the next post). Finally we pulled up to the resort gate, and I could finally relax for the first time in 24 hours. Skinny shorts & all.


The sunsets were quite striking. This was taken from the pool right by my lodge.



Once again I have taken an occurrence that could have (and most will probably argue should have) been summed up in one sentence and turned it into its own 1500 word post. I really don’t set out to turn every adventure into two separate blog posts, but it seems that is becoming the theme. But what fun would “The airline lost my luggage, and I nearly missed my flight. I had to buy some new clothes until my luggage was delivered.” have been? No fun at all. Some of you will probably be pissed that you read this far and that’s all that happened. You’ll just have to deal with it.

Tune in next post for our ocean and jungle adventures, complete with many exotic animals (both for viewing and eating)!