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Extreme
Tourism
Central Sulawesi is one of those exciting destinations with a Foreign
Office health warning on it. On its website the FO politely suggests
that her Majesty’s citizens would really be better off avoiding this
part of the world. In fact, the part of it to avoid is very small – a
large town called Poso and its environs. A couple of years back the
local Christians and Muslims (as the joke goes) had another fight over
who had best imaginary friend. Anyway, the scrap got a little out of
hand and in an appropriately biblical (or Koranic) fashion, the Poso
River ran red with blood and decapitated corpses were found bobbing
around in the local lake. Still we’d spoken to a number of people,
both locals and foolhardy tourists and decided that, as long was we kept
out heads, we’d keep our heads.
Despite the exciting and ever-present threat of religious strife, the
journey began beautifully. Sulawesi is roughly the size of the UK but
has a fraction of the population and also has far better mountains. So
the first part of our drive wound through vast stretches out uninhabited
land – soaring peaks covered in virgin rainforest and lush valleys. I
was just getting into this and generally digging all the biodiversity
when out our bus gave a funny little jolt. Looking back, it appeared we
had clipped a motorcyclist who was now wobbling dangerously. Then, just
like they do in the A-team, bike and rider executed a graceful
somersault off the side of this high mountain road. The bus stopped and
naturally we all got out to have a good gawp at this potential fatality.
But even more amazingly (and also uncannily like the A team) both bike
and rider had landed three meters down the hillside in a bed of sort
ferns and were completely unhurt. So we pulled him back onto the road,
then fixed a rope around his bike and hauled that back up too. No
apparent harm done to either. Back home, of course, this would be the
starting point for a lengthy lawsuit. But in less litigious Sulawesi
both driver and rider shrugged: these things happen.
From this (literal and metaphorical) high point things went swiftly
downhill. The road wound down onto a steamy coastal plain through a
nausea-inducing series of bends. And our bus started stopping every ten
minutes, largely so the bus driver could give lifts to his innumerable
mates. He seemed to have a lot of friends in these parts and no wonder
– he was prepared to act as a taxi to anyone he knew along the route.
Then we entered an area called sector C. I had no idea what sector C was
but judging from the number of police checkpoints, my guess would be
that sector C was a place where very bad things had happened and
recently.
Still the only very bad thing that happened to us was a switch of bus
drivers. Driver no 1 had been a confident go-getting type, casually
flipping his vehicle round hairpin bends but his replacement was another
Indonesian who thought hills were best tackled in fourth. Naturally this
strategy was causing the bus to overheat and every time it did his
mechanic buddy would go into the engine compartment and spend half an
hour fiddling around. This would give the engine time to cool down and,
sure enough, when they tried it again the problem would be ‘fixed’.
Now climbing back into the hills, the bus was boiling and full of smoke
and sweat, the driver’s mates were, if anything, more irritating than
he was and his driving style added an (entirely unnecessary) extra six
hours to our journey. So it was in a thoroughly foul mood that we
pitched up in Tentenna at 2am. Then, as a perfect end to my perfect day,
I stepped in an open sewer. One of those great moments that makes you
very, very glad, you’ve had your hepatitis jab.
Extreme Cuisine
Naturally at 2am in ‘towns’ in the boondocks most hotels are closed
but, after making a lot of noise, we found a scuzzy looking place where
we managed to wake someone up. He was a weird, twitchy looking guy with
a Keith Richards shock of frizzy hair and a left hand that looked like
it might have leprosy – a sort of deformed Norman Bates. But we had no
choice so we checked into Deformed Norm’s fleapit and hunkered down
for the night. The next day the town seemed decidedly spooky. Everyone
walked around with sickles and the town had an uneasy, tense feel to it.
We were starting to feel decidedly uncomfortable until we met a bloke in
the market with a cage full of bats, all greedily snapping at bananas.
‘You want to try?’ he asked me.
As this was the first friendly overture I’d received in Tentenna I
replied ‘Sure’ and he led us into a Warung where he bought a plate
of curried bat for me and a piece of spiced chicken for Jane who
disapproves of eating the local wildlife. I was told that bat would make
stronger for running, fighting and, yes, that too - judging from the
number of purported aphrodisiacs in Asia, there must be a serious
impotence problem. But bat is actually delicious. The sauce, while
hotter than many vindaloos was undeniably tasty and the bat itself a
little like pigeon – dark, gamey and with a lot of small bones. It was
the best thing I’d eaten in weeks. Pronouncing it ‘bagus’ I
ordered a second plate to the astonished gasps of the local diners and
when I finished received slaps on the backs and cries of ‘Batman!’
And then the owner actually undercharged me. I suspect this was because
around 20 extra customers had stopped by watch the tourist eat bat.
I don’t know if my lunch put any lead in my pencil, but post-bat,
Tentenna seemed an altogether more agreeable place. We chatted with the
locals, haggled with the fruit sellers and swam in a beautiful local
waterfall. Back at our hotel and even Deformed Norm (who turned out to
be the cook) seemed to have become stand up sort of chap who made pretty
good pancakes.
Later that evening and the hotel’s owner, a pleasant yuppified sort of
guy was bemoaning the internecine violence in central Sulawesi. The
Muslims, he said, always started it, and it gave the area a very bad
reputation. He seemed a bit down, so, to cheer him up, I said that
things weren’t so bad, pointing out that Catholics and Protestants
were always fighting in northern Ireland. He was astounded, incredulous.
What he said, Catholics and Protestants fighting each other - it
couldn’t be – here they were the best of friends, united against the
Muslims. How could they possibly fight each other? ‘Perhaps’, I
said, ‘it’s because there are no Muslims.’
Angry Dan, The Worlds Angriest Man
After Tentenna we headed up to Poso where we had to wait for a
connecting bus at the terminal on the outskirts of town. I must say,
although the suburbs are the closest we ever got to central Poso, the
foreign office is bang on the money here. From what little we saw of the
place, Poso boasts a fine collection of burnt out churches and homes;
the latter make it look a little as like the KKK had been in town
recently. And the day after we were there three bombs went off.
But I will remember the bus station for another reason: it was there we
met Angry Dan. At first Dan seemed OK: he was a Canadian in his fifties
with a deep tan and steely grey hair and he was chatting to a pleasant
Dutch couple we’d met. But as the wait grew longer and longer, Dan
became more and more restless. Innumerable buses to our destination
cruised through, but all were too full. Though their fullness seemed
self-evident to us, this wasn’t good enough for Dan. ‘That’s our
f—king bus,’ he’d yell at the man in charge, who’d patiently
reply that it was full. The Dan would start fuming and swearing, telling
anyone who’d listen that we were being prevented from boarding the
bus, though this was hardly the case as there were also ten Indonesians
waiting.
Then the bus man offered an alternative: the five of us could charter a
car. It would cost Rp200,000 or around three pounds fifty each. And Dan
went apoplectic: ‘Can’t you see what he’s doing? He’s trying to
f—king rip us off! He says the bus is full so we’ll take f—king
his taxi and pay twice as much.’ Then he turned to the guy: ‘It’s
a f--kin’ stitch up job. Don’t you f—kin’ try and rip us off.’
At this point I became a little angry myself and tried to explain to Dan
that in my long career of taking taxis, they had always cost several
times more than public transport and that was because they were better.
Besides which, I added, we’re talking about three quid a head. Big
mistake – never tell a skinflint he’s arguing over peanuts. Now
choking on his own rage Dan replied, ‘Well that might be alright for
you, but I’m not f—king paying it!’
Our debate was cut short as another bus, also full, pulled in. Propelled
by self-righteous indignation Dan ran out towards it and charged on.
Unsurprisingly he was told there was no room. But this time he wasn’t
taking no for an answer. He forced his way in and, crab-like, wedged
himself in. The people on the bus tried to kick him off but he was
sprung in too tight. And eventually the bus pulled away with Dan cursing
and holding on for all he was worth. And although there are few things
less dignified than a watching real cheapskate in a country where people
are desperately poor, it’s one of the funniest and most ridiculous
things I’ve ever seen. Twenty minutes later (and proverbially enough)
three near empty showed up at once. We told Dan this when we bumped into
him the next day but it didn’t matter: even though he’d sat on a bus
floor for five hours, he was absolutely convinced he was right.
The next afternoon we arrived at a resort in the Togean islands called
'Kadidiri Paradise.' In fact, this is one of the few places that can
justifiably put ‘paradise’ in its name. It’s a handful of cottages
clustered round a small beach on an almost deserted island, surrounded
by fine coral in an azure sea. And weirdly for these parts the guests
were almost entirely Brits in their 20s and 30s. There were two couples
who were a bit like us and Steve and Brenda; she was our age, he rather
older. These two were more new age travelers than the regular kind and
had a distinct whiff of Greenham Common about them. Then there was Ray,
a Filipino-American who looked 25 but was 45 and Klaus, a German diving
enthusiast and his Indonesian wife. The place cooked great food and its
only link with the outside world was a satellite phone and a TV. It was
utterly tranquil and is exactly the sort of beach – The Beach – that
all those idiots in Thailand are looking for.
Real England Fans
The first evening, in the spirit of British bonding, we all got
horrendously drunk, tackling the local palm based liquor, Arak. And
while I had fun, Arak will join the list of drinks that I will never,
ever, ever drink again. Not in a million years. Out of drinking
practice, I was very, very drunk. But not ultradrunk, not uberdrunk. Not
drunk enough to feel as bad as I did the next day and the day after that
too. I think I was one of only two people who wasn’t sick and my
reward was a sheen of toxic oil on my skin for the next couple of days a
splitting headache and limbs that ached whenever I moved. At one point
it got so bad I was beginning to seriously entertain the possibility
that I’d caught malaria.
Still in the evening of hangover, day I, England were due to play
Argentina and we couldn’t get a TV signal. Perhaps the satellite was
down or the tuning was out…some of the men even muttered darkly that
football weary female staff might have sabotaged the satellite dish. The
management themselves were eager to see the match; worse still their
British guests were desperate to see their team play the Argies.
With kickoff fast approaching it was decided there was nothing else for
it: we’d have to take the hotel’s barely seaworthy boat to the
nearest village, some 40 minutes away. It was a tense journey but, after
the asthmatic engine had been coaxed back to life several times by our
patient skipper, we arrived, presciently enough, a minute before
Beckham’s penalty. As there can't have been more than couple of TVs in
town we watched the proceedings in a smoke filled concrete room (all
Indonesian rooms are smoke filled) on
a 14-inch portable with two thirds of the village. Actually it was an
unbeatable atmosphere, even if most of them were Argentina fans and half
the kids were wearing “Osama Bin Laden is my hero’ T-shirts.
Unfortunately we still felt so poisoned from the Arak, we couldn’t
face a single celebratory beer.
Soon after our arrival though the British contingent - many of who had
been there for weeks - began to drift away and were replaced by the
ubiquitous eurotourists. And, presently our little expat enclave was no
more. We were left with a pair of impossibly fat Germans, a rather eager
but pleasant Canadian and a Dutch couple. He was dull but alright,
Renate, well…. she was quite the silliest girlie girl I’ve ever met.
She cried about everything, at one point bursting into tears when she
found the water tank in her room was empty she started crying.
Impossibly sensitive and rather dull, she also had verbal diahorrea and
while her heart was in the right place, she was one of the most
irritating people I’ve ever met. Bless her, sweet as she was, she’d
definitely be on my desert island death list: that is people you’d
eventually have to murder if you were stranded on a desert island with
them.
More Anger
So six days after our arrival we left the Togeans on a very homemade
looking wooden. Twelve seasick hours later and we landed in Gorontollo,
a place remarkable only because it’s the current holder of
Indonesia’s coveted ‘best kept city award.’ I can hardly imagine
there’s much competition for this title but the Gorontollans take
their municipal appearance seriously. Streets are lined with flowerpots,
borders are meticulously maintained and there’s not a scrap of litter
to be seen – a sort of tropical Letchworth. And, as ferries only run
once a week it was no real surprise when we turned out to be sharing our
hotel with half the people from the islands, including Angry Dan, his
ire entirely unmellowed by a week on the islands.
Klaus, the German had injured his ankle and he and his wife intended to
rent a 4x4 and driver for the journey to Manado, the northern capital.
As, between the seven of us it would be little more than a bus, we
agreed to share. But by the next morning it was all going pear shaped:
the driver said with our luggage he could only take five. Naturally this
made Angry Dan, well, angry. He saw a stitch up, he saw a conspiracy, he
saw people trying to take his precious money. We saw a car that
couldn’t take seven people and their rucksacks. But eventually we had
to concede that angry Dan had - sort of - agreed to the car share before
us and that he and another (equally parsimonious) German guy were
welcome to it. Irked we said we’d make our own arrangements. But we
hadn’t counted on Dan’s tightness. The car was 450,000 Rp – about
five quid apiece between seven. But between five….my God, those
devious, thieving bastards were expecting Dan to pay 90,000 Rp to be
driven 500 kilometers. So Dan and the other bloke announced ‘they
weren’t f—king paying that’ and suddenly there were two free seats
which we jumped into. Klaus and his wife – who were a thoroughly
decent pair – even bought us lunch to thank us for sharing the cost of
the taxi.
From a distance the northern capital of Manado looks a little like
Naples, sitting as it does on the arc of a great bay with a volcanic
backdrop. Close up, it’s not that dissimilar either – a rather
grubby place with a bit of character and a reputation for good food. In
fact this is an understatement – Manado and its hinterland enjoy a
reputation for cuisine of the most extreme kind and its eateries serve
not only bats, but also rats, snakes and puppydogs. Manado wasn’t a
destination for us, rather a transit point: we needed to flying to the
southern Philippines to renew our visas. But our flight wasn’t for
four days so we decided to head up to Tomohon, a charming town in the
local highlands for a spot of R & R.
Tomohon was indeed pleasant, but it was also, as we would shortly
discover one of the wettest places on earth. On the day we arrived it
rained (and I mean tropical downpour, not English drizzle) for six
hours. The next day we climbed a volcano where it also rained and
visited some hot springs where it rained as well. The day after that we
sat on our porch and watched the rain. Indeed, the Mahissan highlands
are the sort of place where nothing ever dries: spend long enough there
and I have no doubt, you’d develop all kinds of exciting fungal
infections.
Bats and Dogs
But one morning the sun did make it scorching equatorial presence felt
and we decided to visit Tomohon’s bustling market. From the outside it
looked like any other country market – the usual mix of photogenic
fruit and veg. But pass through this vegetarian veneer and you enter the
grisly meat market, a place of almost mediaeval gore. I like to think I
have a strong stomach and Jane’s work has taken her into abattoirs and
meat factories, but nothing could prepare us for this.
The deal with most meat markets is that you usually get to see
pre-dressed meat, neatly cleaned and butchered carcasses. Here whole
animals were disemboweled in front of you. Decapitated pigs’ heads
stared sightlessly, one stall was covered in still hairy cows’ legs
and great piles of innards glistened nauseatingly. Plus there was the
smell – blowtorches were being used to singe the hair off the various
beasts and the smell of this mingled with the reek of punctured
intestines. I know I’d have been disappointed if I hadn’t been
grossed out – tourists come here specifically to be disgusted - but
the market exceeded my expectations in almost every way.
And in saved its best surprise for last. Just past the stalls selling
oven ready bats was a table with four strange looking animals on it. It
took a moment before I realised that this is what dead puppies look like
when you burn all their fur off. The dog butcher was a cheerful chap,
happy to pose for the tourists before he went back to skillfully
dismembering dogs with mutt splitting swings of his cleaver. And when, a
little unsettled by this I turned away, I could see the beef butcher
opposite him pretending to be a Viking. He was wearing the top of a
cow's skull, horns still attached, on his head.
It would be nice to tell my vegetarian chums that my experiences at the
market converted me to their cause. But I’m afraid there’s no hope
for me. Later on, watching Korea vs. Portugal, I showed my personal
support for the plucky underdogs by ordering a dish of ‘Anjine’ or
spiced mutt. But I can honestly say that the dogs of this world have
little further to fear from me. Man’s best friend (or ‘doorstep
deer’ as some Asians know it) is tough, unpleasant and not a patch on
curried bat.
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