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Published: July 15th 2009
Or how we got stuck in east Nusa Tenggara.
As I’m writing this we’re sitting in the departure lounge of the airport of Denpasar, Bali. We’re not having a nice coffee, we’re not having any food. We’re not even having a plate of nasi goreng. What we are having is lukewarm water and cookies. The reason for this is that we had to leave our last few rupiah at the airport in Bima, Sumbawa for an unexpected departure tax and all the ATMs at this airport are broken. Since I left my US dollars in my backpack by accident and my backpack is in transit between planes, we’re stuck here without any money.
Before I tell you the story of all the wonderful things we’ve seen and experienced over the past three weeks, I’ll elaborate on the second title of my blog. As I wrote at the end of my last blog, we were getting ready to board a boat to Flores. This boat brought us to Labuan Bajo, Flores, on the 6th of July. Our plan was to catch the bus up to Bajawa and on to Maumere on the 8th. However, the 8th was election day and
everybody -local and tourist alike- found out on the evening of the 7th that there wouldn’t be any buses running the next day. Even though we already had tickets for that bus. Similarly, one of our fellow boat travelers had a ticket for the ferry to Sumbawa and showed up at 7am only to find out there was no ferry, again due to the elections. Not to worry, we would sit around for another day in Labuan Bajo and catch the bus on the 9th. Except that first I and later that night Janine got quite sick, with fever and nasty intestinal things and so we couldn’t really sit for 12 hours in a minibus. This put something of a damper on our plan, since that wouldn’t leave us enough time to get to Maumere and see the various sights along the way. So instead we opted to go back to Bali a bit sooner and spend two more days there. Well, that was the plan anyway. When we went around to check flights, they were all full. And not just for the 10th, but all the way through to the 16th or 17th and our flight out of Indonesia
is on the 14th. We called around and found out that we would be able to catch a flight from Bima, on Sumbawa, 8 hours by ferry and 2 hours by bus away from Labuan Bajo. But we couldn’t book a ticket unless we were physically in Bima, so the next morning we boarded the ferry at 7.45am as it was supposed to leave at 8. We were crammed in the economy class with all the locals which was fine except for the one who brought a big pile of dried squid, some of which was still drying and producing a very fine aroma in the process. Anyway, we secured a mattress and some space between the benches and settled down and waited. And waited. At 9.45am the boat still hadn’t moved and more people were coming on. Sure enough though, just after ten, the boat departed. The trip was fine and we actually arrived in Sape after only 6 hours. Then it got really interesting. We’d booked tickets on a tourist bus from Sape to Bima, figuring that it would be nice to have a comfortable AC coach, not really feeling 100% and all that. When we disembarked though,
there was no AC coach. Just a small bus, with the name of our bus company on it (Langsung Indah, so be warned). Inside, the bus was full, but there were about thirty people still waiting. This would appear at first to be a problem, but it isn’t in Asia. Whoever doesn’t fit inside (and they can fit a lot of people in a bus here) just goes on the roof. I was one of those lucky people and so I spent the next two hours looking at the world from four meters above the road. This would’ve actually been a really nice experience -fresh air, great view- except for the fact that there were about twenty of us on the roof, including all the luggage. I was sitting half on a bag of rice, with one leg over the side of the bus resting on the roof rail. My right arm was stretched in between two people sitting back to back next to me so I could hold onto a piece of another bag of rice and keep from falling off. On top of that I had to keep a sharp eye ahead for tree branches, power lines and
banners which kept trying to take my head off. The Lonely Planet says that after traveling Asia you should have at least one 'I almost died' story, so this will be mine!
All along the trip we were cheered on by the locals who seemed very amused by our mode of travel. As one of the English guys on the roof remarked: “This must be how David Beckham feels”. True, but I doubt he has to sit on the top of busses much when he travels. After two very interesting and tiring hours we got to Bima. We were tempted to get on the AC coach (which was waiting here at the bus terminal) and just keep going to Denpasar, but it was still 24 hours and we decided against it in the end. To put this into perspective: Labuan Bajo to Denpasar by plane is an hour and fifteen minutes, by ferry/bus/ferry/bus/ferry/bus it takes 36 hours. Instead we walked into town, found a hotel for way too much money and then went to get a ticket and get the hell out of there. Or so we thought. The flight for the next day was full, so was the
one for Sunday. Eventually we managed to get seats on the Monday flight, one day before our flight to Vietnam, so we’d have to fly straight through to Surabaya and wouldn’t be able to do anything on Bali. Then we got back to the hotel to find out we couldn’t stay in our room because the whole place was booked out by a group of government visitors since the town of Bima was celebrating some sort of anniversary over the weekend. So we had to switch to a junior suite for even more money. On the plus side, we had AC and a nice TV with movie channel. We were both still feeling a little under the weather so spent most of the time watching movies but I don’t think there’s too much to see in Bima anyway. Then this morning our taxi didn’t show up for a long while and for a moment we had visions of missing our only chance to get off the bloody island but luckily there was no problem in the end and we got to the airport on time.
So, that was the last week or so. I can’t say we’ve seen the
best of Flores and it has been more than a little frustrating. I don’t know if it’s bad luck or what but people have been trying to rip us off on food, transport and accommodation a lot more than before and everything has been very expensive. In Labuan Bajo they try to charge 250.000 a day for a motorcycle, whereas we paid 30-40.000 on Bali/Lombok.
Anyway, rewind to Bali, June 20th or so. Like I said we took the ferry, bus and ferry across to Gili Air, one of three small islands just off the coast of Lombok. After departing from our longboat we were met by a couple of locals who work at a hotel on the west side of the island, which is the most quiet side. We followed them and found Salabose to be a collection of nice beach front bungalows with a bar, a restaurant and plenty of peace and quiet. We got a huge bungalow with an outside bed for lounging at 90.000 a night and before long were enjoying a beer in the bar. The next day we went to check out some of the world-class snorkeling and were sold. Imagine this: An
island that you can walk around in about an hour. There are no proper roads except for one cobble stone path leading north to south. Instead there are sandy paths winding through huts, houses, bungalows and restaurants. There is no motorized transportation, just horse carts, bikes and your feet. The island is ringed with coral reefs absolutely teeming with life. The locals will learn your name in the first few days and will greet you as you walk around. All you have to do is get up in the morning to eat breakfast, walk around for a bit to find the place where you want to chill out in the shade and have a beautiful fresh fruit juice before you plunge in and feast your eyes on several different species of clownfish, unicorn surgeon fish, mantis shrimp, scorpion fish, and turtles, all just a handful of meters in front of shore. Then you eat a nice lunch -some fresh seafood maybe- with a coconut milkshake, before swimming and reading some more. Then there are cocktails, beers and of course dinner before you retire to your quiet bungalow and fall asleep to the sound of waves gently lapping against the sand.
Not too bad, right?
Well, that’s what we thought and so we stuck around a bit longer. On the second day we chartered a local boat with some people who were also staying at our place and the captain took us out for 6 hours to five snorkel spots near the three different islands. We had lunch on Gili Meno, the middle one, and were back at Air at 4.30pm. All for an incredible 60.000 each. 5 euro.
After talking about diving for a bit with Janine we went to visit one of the dive schools to get some information. After talking about it a bit more I decided to bite the (financial) bullet and start my PADI Open Water certification on Gili Air. Three days, four dives. I rocked up in the morning, not expecting to do much actual diving that day. I had a French instructor, Bibi, who seemed like a nice enough guy. I was also lucky as I was his only student. His girlfriend was also diving with us since she was training to be a Dive Master. So not only did I have a private instructor but I also had a certified Rescue
Diver as backup. Nice! Anyway, before the better part of two hours had elapsed I was in the water, just off the beach with a regulator in my mouth breathing underwater. What an amazing experience! My dive school didn’t have a pool so instead of doing the confined water sessions (experience and confidence building sessions) in a pool, I got to do them in the ocean. And that is so much better. On my first ‘dive’ after we did some skills we went for a little swim and saw a seahorse, a sole and some commensal shrimp, of which later more. I took to it like a fish to water and after a quick lunch we piled into the boat for my first real dive. What a glorious feeling! As on all our dives we didn’t stick too much to the curriculum, which meant we could go a little deeper and do some more cool stuff.
If you’ve never been diving before it’s almost impossible to imagine how incredible it is to be in such an environment for close to an hour at a time. To be able to stick your face into the coral and look up close
and see all the little things that live there. To swim next to a turtle, or be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of small fish while bigger predator fish swoop through the school. I was really lucky with my instructor and the fact that we could work one on one with no one holding us back. He taught me a lot of things and not just about diving but also about the underwater world. He normally works in Cambodia with scientists and the government and studies mainly the macro aspect of underwater life; the shrimp, crabs and all the symbioses that exist in a reef. For instance, he pointed me towards a hole with a fish sitting next to it. At first I didn’t see anything but then, after a few moments, I saw a little shrimp clamber out of the hole with a little rock in its claws. It deposited this outside the entrance and then went back to emerge a few moments later with another one. These commensal shrimp live in a symbiosis with the fish, or sometimes multiple fish. The fish protects the hole and keeps other fish from eating the shrimp. The shrimp in turn cleans
the hole. How cool is that?! Anyway it’s safe to say that Bibi and I saw eye to eye on many things and got along great and before I knew it three days had come and gone and I held in my hand my Open Water PADI certificate. So then came the obvious question: “What about your Advanced?”. If I did my advanced course at the same dive school, they’d give me a 10% discount and besides I would again have a private instructor that I knew was really good. Of course the decision was not so much mine as Janine’s since she would be sitting around all day by herself. She didn’t mind so I signed up for another three days and five dives, consisting of a deep dive, a night dive, a navigation dive, a buoyancy dive and a wreck dive. Good times, good times. I never wanted to leave that island. Get up, have breakfast, take a nice 20 minute walk to the dive center, prepare the gear, hop in the boat for a chilled thirty minute ride, dive for an hour, come back, prepare the gear for the afternoon dive, have lunch at ‘our’ warung with
the ever friendly and entertaining Fatima, chill for an hour or so, climb back in the boat for another nice ride, dive again, take a shower, grab a beer or cocktail while you watch the sunset, eat, sleep, rinse&repeat. If that's not paradise I don't know what is.
The dives were also great. The deep dive was first. We went down to 36 meters, which is quite a bit deeper than you’re supposed to go but it was an interesting experience. The deeper you go, the more colors of the light-spectrum get lost so everything is blue and yellow. We also had a very strong current to swim against at 30+ meters and it’s amazing to see how quickly you burn through a tank of air.
The night dive was the most exciting one, just because it’s so strange to be in the water in complete darkness. The moon is usually quite bright here but it was two days after dark moon so there was basically no light except what we brought with us. You see a lot of different things at night; all the cephalopods (squids and such) and crustaceans come out so we saw beautiful little
cuttlefish, decorator spider crabs that look exactly like they were constructed out of the dead coral that lies around everywhere and many other things.
On my navigation dive we saw probably my favorite thing so far: a reef octopus. We played around with it for a while. We hid behind a coral outcropping and so it snuck up to peak over the top and keep an eye on us. They have an amazing ability to blend in to their surroundings. Not only do they take on the color, like a chameleon, but they also adopt the same texture. So the octopus became the rock. Same color, white and red, with little bits and pieces sticking out like polyps. When we got too close the most amazing thing happened. Inside of a second it turned completely smooth and black and back again to camouflage, as a warning. It did that twice more and then when we really got too close, it jumped off the rock, turned black, and swam away squirting ink at us. Fantastic.
I can’t include any pictures of all this as I obviously don’t have an underwater camera, but I’ve added some from when we were
diving on Komodo and two of the guys in my group had cameras with them. When I say ‘we’, I mean me and some of the guys from the boat. After several bad experiences related to her back problems while diving in Australia, Janine tried to dive again on my third Open Water dive since part of the reason for me to get my PADI was so we could dive together, but her back is still not alright and below 9 meters she gets serious back pains. She did do a nice dive off the beach with Bibi but unfortunately for now she can’t come diving with me.
So, at the end of six fantastic days I had my Advanced Open Water PADI certificate which means I can dive anywhere in the world up to 30 meters deep (on paper...). We stayed on Gili Air for one more day, had some absolutely amazing snorkeling sessions before saying goodbye to Bibi (although I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be seeing him again before long) and the beauty of the Gili’s. It’s one of Indonesia’s top diving and snorkeling destinations and this is a reputation that’s well deserved. Combined with the
laid back island life and accessibility of the reef it’s second to very few, if any, places in the world.
We took the diving boat back to the mainland. They have a daily shuttle which costs less than a third of what the shuttle companies on the island charge and so before we knew it we were suddenly in Senggigi, surrounded by cars, motorcycles and noise. Very strange after ten days of peace. However, we’d go back to a measure of peace soon enough as we’d board the boat for Flores the next day. We left Senggigi at noon, after meeting the other twelve passengers (four Dutch, five English, one Scottish, one Spanish). It took us four hours to cross Lombok on a bus, stopping every now and then to pick up fruit, vegetables, three live chickens and rice before our final stop at an ice factory where we actually saw the ice being made while we waited. Then we arrived in Labuan Lombok and were faced with what seemed at the time like a tiny boat to cross that much water in for such a long time. It turned out to actually be fine once we got settled
in and used to the boat life. No cabins, a squat toilet over a hole in the boat and a big covered deck area were to be our home. We left the harbor with the sun setting behind us and everyone getting to know each other over cold beers.
After dinner and nightfall we stopped for a few hours at an island and all jumped in the water to swim to the beach; it was right out of a movie. We got a few hours sleep before the boat got underway at 2.00am. I didn’t sleep much over the next four nights. The sea was quite rough at times, the diesel engines loud and the mattress hardly worthy of the name, but it was the best boat trip ever. We all just sat around talking and smoking, the food was good (fresh chicken on the last two days) and the scenery just breathtaking. You get a real feel for what a strange country this island nation is when you sail through it. We stopped off at various places for snorkeling, trekking, climbing or just to drop off or pick up crew members. After our morning stops on the first
day we sailed for 18 hours straight across the open sea, through pretty decent swells. Amazingly nobody got sea sick, although a couple of people turned in early that night.
On day three, after a nice morning snorkel session, we arrived at Komodo National Park. But no dragons. It’s dragon mating season now which means they all go into the jungle to find mates. Just our bloody luck. We walked around the island but had to make do with a couple of deer and wild pigs. However the ranger assured us that the next day we would see dragons on one of the other islands, Rinca, which is also part of Komodo NP. We were skeptical but spent a nice evening near a colony of fruitbats where we fished. One of the other passengers had his own hand reel but was slightly upstaged by me pulling a complete fishing rod with reel out of my backpack. We fished for a few hours but caught nothing but small snapper and other tiny fish. Still, good fun.
After a quiet night we steamed the last two hours to Rinca the next morning and on arrival it already looked more promising.
A nice little dock with a hut next to it, a troop of monkeys to welcome us; we felt sure we were going to see some dragons and sure enough, as soon as we got to the ranger station there were three of them basking in the early morning sun. Wow. There’s just something completely surreal about seeing them in real life, I mean they’re just so David Attenborough, aren’t they. We had all decided to do the long (2 hour) walk around the island and were rewarded when we saw no less than 10 dragons in total. We saw them walking, sleeping, drinking and stalking a water buffalo which had been bitten. We met some people a few days back who were on Rinca just after us and said the buffalo had since died and been devoured. Watching them walk around, tasting the air with their tongues and generally completely ignoring us would have been worth any amount of hardship; it was crazy.
We had one more scheduled stop before arriving in Labuan Bajo, Flores and according to the guide it was ‘good for swimming, not for snorkeling’. Of course that didn’t stop us doing it anyway and
boy was it ever worth it. In a completely unassuming patch of seagrass with some half-dead coral we saw almost all of the species of clown fish (nemo) that exist here, no less than four lion fish of two different species, one of which I haven’t been able to find in any of the books at dive centers, and all kinds of other cool stuff. Goes to show that when it comes to snorkeling or diving, beautiful coral reefs aren’t necessarily any better than a supposed wasteland.
However all too soon the trip was over and we were back on shore in Labuan Bajo. We’d all decided we wanted to dive Komodo and so the first order of business was to find a dive school and organize a boat. This took a bit of doing as we were a big group with some advanced divers but also just open water divers and one person who wanted to do in intro dive. After I nearly punched out one of the people at Dive Komodo for openly admitting they had price arrangements between the schools and thus refusing to give us discount even though we were 11 divers, we found a
more flexible mentality at Divine Divers; a Dutch owned school. Before long we were all fitted for equipment and booked to head out to Castle Rock and Crystal Rock, the two most ‘famous’ dive sites at Komodo the next morning.
Before that however we had to have a little party in the Paradise Bar; the only real bar in Labuan Bajo. Between us and some people from one of the dive centers we took over the place and played some great tunes and generally made fools of ourselves. At around 2.30 we stumbled back to the boat (we were unable to find accommodation, at least not at less than 175.000 for a room without a proper toilet, with a broken shower and a dodgy bed and so decided to stay another night on the boat) chased by the local dogs and got a few hours sleep before reporting for duty at 7am the next morning. The boat they took us on was great; pure luxury compared to our own boat, with great big mattresses to chill out on, a little bar with coffee, tea and soft drinks and a huge proper toilet. It took about half an hour for
most everyone to fall asleep upstairs so I sat downstairs with Floris, one of the Dutch guys from our boat and had some coffee and talked about Australia as he still wants to go there. It's strange and perhaps telling that Janine and I both still don't really miss Europe but we already miss Australia after 1,5 months. It took about two hours of beautiful sailing to get to the dive site and then before I knew it I was back in the water, for the first time without Bibi. We were immediately surrounded by massive giant trevally and several white tipped reef shark.
I won’t bore you with too many details but it was an interesting dive with lots of big fish and cool stuff and not too much current (for which Komodo is notorious). I’m personally more into the small stuff so I’d love to come back here some day and try some of the other 50-odd dive sites as it’s a place that’s well known for the variety of marine life that’s unique to the area. Before then I’ll have to find the funds for an underwater housing as combining photography with diving would be amazing.
During our boat trip I more or less convinced Jim, a 62 year old guy from England, to do an introductory dive and he did so in between our dives. It was so cool to see him come out of the water all excited about what he’d seen and his encounter with the giant Napoleon Wrasse. I’d barely been diving two weeks myself and had already infected someone else with the virus.. great stuff, haha.
Well the rest of the story you already know. We finally managed to find accommodation outside of town that night. It was still expensive for the quality but then I guess that’s just the general trend in that part of Indonesia. Then the trouble with transport started so after that I don't have anything interesting to report.
Meanwhile we’ve arrived in Vietnam which so far seems to be pretty awesome, so we may have to change our plans a bit again and stay a bit longer. From here on out we can pretty much do what we want as the next deadline is Janine’s flight back to Frankfurt on the 27th of September. For people considering coming to Asia towards the end of
the summer: AirAsia have some amazing specials on now, they fly from Kuala Lumpur to London for 120 euro’s including taxes.
Catch up with you soon!
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joncasssouthkorea
Jon Wick
Yahtzee
Some stellar underwater photos! Keep it up!