posts tagged "indonesia"

the indonesian island of flores is wonderful! however, since it’s not very touristically developed, compared e.g. to bali, we’ve found it fairly hard to come by information for independent travelers, like times and prices for public busses or boats etc.
here are some bits of inforamtion that were *not* easy to find out even while we were on the island:

komodo national park: staying on komodo island
almost anybody will try to sell you a 1 or 2 day trip to komodo island and surrounding sights. be aware that you’ll likely only have about an hour on each island, so any real hiking or quality time looking for dragons is more or less impossible. there are official hiking routes taking up to 5 h round-trip, and you can even get a guide for the day and arrange any length of hike.
if you want to stay on komodo island (there are homestays in komodo village, and a cabin that’s run by the rangers), there are several options. in order of descending easiness and price, you can… [more…]

ever since writing my trip report about the togean islands in central sulawesi, and two reviews on tripadvisor, i’ve received quite a few questions for more details concerning this remote group of islands in the midst of the gulf of tomini.
i’ve assembled my responses into an FAQ-type blog post, in an attempt to make this information generally available. (will add new parts as they come up.)

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previous parts:

• part 1: the northern part of north sulawesi (bunaken, tomohon)
• part 2: togean islands, sulawesi
• part 3: fancy foods and foreign funerals (tentena and rantepao)

welcome to lombok
compared to sulawesi, lombok was very different in many respects: in sulawesi, what stood out above everything else was the friendliness of the locals, even when they weren’t going to try and sell you anything. in lombok, we suddenly felt we had to be very careful who to make eye contact with, because almost everybody seemed to just want our money.
coming from makassar, both of us were still at least partway ill: we had caught something “stomach-flu-ey” one or two days before. maybe that explains part of that (very mild) “culture shock”. it is also the reason why we coudln’t do a multi-day rinjani trek and see (and camp near) the crater of indonesia’s second highest volcano.

we took a taxi from the airport to bangsal, and our initial destination was as at least bad as it’s described in the travel guide (“beyond annoying”): bangsal harbour was crawling with touts trying to sell virtually anything. even at the official ticket office for public boats, we were ripped off and got a “special” ticket – with the original price crossed out and twice the price handwritten below it.
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previous parts:

• part 1: the northern part of north sulawesi (bunaken, tomohon)
• part 2: togean islands, sulawesi

taking the public boat out of the togeans, we arrived in the little town of ampana, which if i’m not mistaken, is pretty much only there because there are public boats to the togeans.
we had been warned not to trust a woman called “ufa” or a man named “mr. coral”, and it didn’t take long until a woman with an american accent offered to help us find our way. however, she turned out to be the owner of “island retreat”, the second of two accommodation options in bomba, and she did indeed help us by making a few phone calls.

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previous part: indonesia part 1: the northern part of north sulawesi (bunaken, tomohon)

we had planned on staying in the togean islands for about a week, but as lonely planet says…

yes, it does take some determination to get to the Togean Islands, but believe us, it takes much more determination to leave.

this turned out to be true because of both motivation and possibilities, but let me start at the beginning:

endless journey
we decided to go south “the local way” from manado and took the public bus. 400 km, more than 10 hours later and a bit richer in indonesian experiences, we arrived in gorontalo. there, we just had a quick dinner, went to the last ATM for some time (no ATMs in the togeans), and continued on to the harbour to catch the once-a-week night ferry. in 2011, it left gorontalo every friday at 7 p.m. and arrived in wakai around 10 a.m., but schedules are said to be changing frequently.
in wakai, we were approached by a local woman called “uni”, who we were a bit suspicious about at first. it turned out, she’s a very honest person who can absolutely be trusted. after we declined on having a look at her new cottages about 20 minutes away by boat (we already had plans), uni offered to host us until the connecting boat to malenge island would get there in the afternoon.
a 4-hour ride on the next public boat brought us to malenge island (northeast of the main islands), where we were approached by the owner of one of the two accommodations of the island: malenge indah, which also offers cottages now (not mentioned in lonely planet yet). so, another boatride of 40 minutes in the beginning night (adding up to 36 hours of continuous travel) finally brought us to our destination: a small, very remote bay with 5 cottages.

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let’s see if i can get those photos from our trip to indonesia online within a reasonable amount of time…

part one is about the first of just over 5 weeks (roughly 4 weeks on sulawesi and 1 week in lombok), in which we visited the island of bunaken and the cities of manado and tomohon.
as we found out, bunaken is one of the top diving spots in the world – and there’s a reason for it: we enjoyed some splendid reefscapes (both diving and snorkelling) and incredible drop-off walls up to 50+ meters deep. the corals were some of the most beautiful i’ve ever seen (which isn’t really to say that i’ve seen that many). apart from nudibranches, which always enthuse me, we saw a wide variety of wildlife, including green turtles (chelonia mydas, pictures) and the undescribable mandarinfish (synchiropus splendidus, pictures).

back on the main island (sulawesi), another must-see place was the market in tomohon. the local minahasan people are said to eat “everything with 4 legs, escept for the tables and chairs”, and what we found at the market was gross at the least (you may want to skip some photos at the end if you’re feeling sensitive).

regarding accommodation, we stayed both at the worst hotel that i’ve ever, EVER seen, and at one of the nicest ones of our entire trip: [more…]

this pair of orange skunk clownfish or yellow anemonefish (amphiprion sandaracinos, de: östlicher weißrücken-anemonenfisch) was living in one of the most beautiful and diverse reefscapes i’ve ever seen, near bomba in the togean islands (sulawesi, indonesia).
they seemed a bit too big to hide in their anemone, so it was quite cute when they tried continuously to bury themselves in the tentacles.

the ecology of clownfish and their symbiosis with sea anemones exhibit many interesting features: for instance, anemone fish are protandrous, meaning that all the fish are born male, and later change sex to female. there’s only one female per anemone, and it’s the largest, dominant fish. when it dies, the second largest (male) takes its place, gains weight and becomes the female. [more…]