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Published: November 27th 2016
Lembeh
Daniel's Island and Lagoon Resort, view from my cottageMoney, I seem to talk about it a lot in my blogs, or rather the lack of it. I realise this, and I wonder whether my readers think that money is all I ever think about. It is, alas, the bane of the budget traveller, the eternal enemy on the road. It mocks you from that resort on the perfect white sandy beach surrounded by turquoise waters which you know you can never afford. It teases you with activities that are actually beyond your meagre resources, but which you really, really want to do. It lures you in by taking you to far-away places and then presenting you with the bill, knowing full well that when you have come all that way you are unlikely to forsake whatever made you come there in the first place, even if the price is triple what you expected it to be. It tires you out, having to think about it every step you take, always searching for ways to keep within your means yet do what you want to do, the constant choices you have to make between two equally attractive alternatives. And sometimes it tickles your pride when you manage to do the
Lembeh
Just a lion fish... same or more than others on a much higher budget than you.
So, yes, I guess money is always on my mind when I travel. If it wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t actually be able to do all that I do. Even if that is much less than I would like to do. And yes, at times I am jealous of those who don’t have to think about every penny. It seems so much more relaxing. But I am perfectly aware that my lack of money is a completely voluntary choice of mine. If I write about it a lot in my blogs, it is not because I am complaining about this fact of (my) life, even if I rue it sometimes, but because it is such an integral part of my travels. Leaving it out of my blogs would be disingenuous, as if my trips are plain sailing from one idyllic spot to the next, with no worries, no problems, only happy smiles and blood red sunsets. The truth is that as often as not I can’t do what I want to do and end up either sitting in my hotel room, or wandering around town aimlessly, trying hard
Lembeh
A pipefish I think not to spend any money.
Frequently on such a day I end up wishing I had somebody to travel with, even if only for a short while. Because travelling on a budget is hard, but travelling alone on a budget is harder. Especially out in the sticks where chartering transport might be a necessity to see whatever it is you came out there for, and accommodation is sometimes more expensive because of lack of competition. The 30 euro for a day trip on a longboat to those off-shore islands wouldn’t be such a problem if you were with two, and the 15 euro room would be only half price. The bliss! But wait, I am in the sticks, there are no other travellers. Or maybe there are, maybe somebody was here yesterday, or somebody is coming tomorrow, when I am out on that 30 euro day trip. How often have I not heard from locals that there was another ‘white guy’ in town just the other day. Like me chasing ghosts, wishing, perhaps, that he or she had somebody to share the expenses with, or a meal… or the constant attention which accompanies you everywhere, or even that picturesque
Lembeh
That's not a piece of a coral but a well camouflaged crab moment. It’s a bit of a daydream, invoked during long hours in hotel rooms, or sitting on seaside quays staring at the water, trying to equalize my budget after yet another budget-blowing experience. Besides, even if I did find this mythical other to share things with, it would mean compromising. Just as likely that the person wouldn’t want to come out in the sticks with me. What then? I think I’ll just keep to daydreamin’ about it.
Maybe now when I tell you that I did some ‘muck’ diving in Lembeh, and it really broke my budget, you will understand why I added the breaking the budget part. In other words, I spent a lot of time doing nothing (and eating less) after those dives.
I had never done muck diving before, somebody told me it was good, so I tried it. Muck diving is, as the name suggests, diving in muck. It is not pristine corals, it is sandy bottoms, at times litter strewn. It is murky water and strange, often small, critters. As far as I understand it, people muck dive to see animals they don’t normally see elsewhere. They aren’t looking for parrot fish, or
Lembeh
Orangutancrab blue spotted rays, but for things called hairy frogfish, or Ambon scorpion fish, or some rare sea-horse or a miniscule well camouflaged crab. These are divers who have often seen it all, with a gazillion dives on their name and are now looking for something different… And me. I can now say I have seen an Ambon scorpion fish, and an endemic Lembeh somethingorother fish (that’s not actually its name). One looked like a scorpion fish, no surprises there, the other looked, well, colourful. Half the time I couldn’t actually see what they were pointing at, though the guy with the enormous underwater camera with enough spotlights for a small football pitch, made me suspect there was something small and highly rare posing for him.
Lembeh was my final port of call in Sulawesi. An overnight ferry, a final look back to sultry Sulawesi in the setting sun, before setting my eyes firmly towards the east and the rising sun over the volcanic cone of sweltering Ternate in the northern Maluku’s. Opposite Ternate lies Tidore, another volcanic island. Ternate and Tidore were one of the reasons the Dutch came to Indonesia. They were powerful Sultanates. Powerful through the trade
Lembeh
Snake or eel... in spices. Cloves to be exact. Once worth their weight in gold. The Dutch wanted a slice of that trade. Actually they wanted more than a slice, they wanted the whole cake. A trade monopoly. They got it. By brutal force obviously. There are plenty of forts to remind one of those days. Cloves aren’t much of a commodity anymore, all that is left are some fine views from one island to the next. Green traffic cones plumped into the sea, one after the other.
Next door to Ternate and Tidore lies the much larger, sparsely populated and historically insignificant, crazy k-shaped island of Halmahera. A half an hour boat ride brings you to its shores, a four hour shared jeep takes you up north to Tobelo, with tropical islands sprinkled at its doorstep. You just sit in your hotel room in town, because the ride up and the room itself have pushed you over your budget, and you were already over it due to that dive in Lembeh, notwithstanding sitting quite a bit in your hotel room in Ternate too. You walk around the dusty port, you watch those islands from the pier, you sigh and go back
Lembeh
Crabs on a piece of coral to your room and think about it all.
Tomorrow you are going to Morotai, not one of those islands outside Tobelo, but further out. You read that a Japanese soldier was found there in its jungle covered interior in 1973 who hadn’t heard the Second World War had ended 28 years earlier! Poor man. You cheer up, things could be worse. You are still in a tropical paradise, and you do actually have money, you just don’t want to spend it. In the morning you take the boat to Morotai, it is twice as expensive as you expected. You shrug. You come to Daruba its capital, the cheaper places are full. You take a room that is too dear, because well, you have to sleep somewhere. Yet again you are over budget without actually having done anything. You wonder if there are cheaper places further along the coast of the island, maybe at some beach. But you don’t know, and you can’t afford to find out. Because the next day you are going to charter an expensive longboat to take you around a cluster of islands on a day trip, to stand on soft white sand, swim in turquoise
Lembeh
Some kind of fish, possibly special, or not... I don't know waters, snorkel over reefs, and take pictures of tropical dreams for your blog. So you walk around another dusty port, sit in another hotel room, and sigh again, thinking, ‘this whole budget thing isn’t quite working out at the moment.'
But then the magic happens. That moment where the universe opens up for you. That feeling of total happiness and satisfaction. And it happens often when you travel. It is that sun-set over Tidore, that perfect piece of beach outside Morotai, that turtle swimming towards you while snorkeling, that moment of tranquility sitting on the walls of a fort in Ternate, the constant smiles of the locals. Budgets, money, travel partners, way worn cares, they all melt away. And you remember again why you travel. Because of the magic!
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Tim
non-member comment
Don't tempt me please, I'm trying to eat my dinner
I'd happily buddy up and harpoon rare tropical fish with you if it wasn't for this pesky day job. And I fully share the pains of limited budget. Keep moving slow ox. Polynesia is waiting.