Manado Yang Cantik (Beautiful Manado)

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In a nutshell... Laid-back city a stone's throw from one of the world's most beautiful dive sites and impressive dormant volcanoes.

Living quarters... This was my second trip to Barracuda Resort which consists of a cluster of bungalows in a rustic village atmosphere. The resort has no beach, but has a long jetty jutting through a small mangrove swamp. View's not fantastic but sunset on the balcony makes for a relaxing time. The common area - lobby/ dive shop/ dining area/ etc - is in need of some renovations. Otherwise, the rooms are quite spacious and comfortable. Staff here are cheerful and friendly and perhaps coz there were only 3 of us, they made us feel really at home😊

Under the sea... The diving in Manado offers plenty of choices. Just off the jetty of Barracuda's is a world class house reef worthy of special mention here. The sandy bottom here looks unpromising at first glance, but hosts a squatter colony of lionfishes of various sizes at a car wreck at about 10m. Noldi our DM told us with his poker face that he was the one responsible for the wreck!!! Haha! Near the bonnet of the wreck was a sandybottom dweller as well, busily burying itself in the sand to avoid our curious stares. We also found shrimps, juvenile striped eel catfish, triggers and an emperor angel at the wreck😊 Just minutes from the wreck, don't miss out of gaudy mandarinfish/ dragonets doing their dusk courtship dance amongst the broken hard corals! The highlight of diving at Manado has to be the Bunaken marine reserve - plenty of wall diving with impressive arrays of rock formations, corals, pelagics as well as shallower dive sites like Batu Hitam to catch sight of tiny critters, ghost pipefish, shrimps, crabs, etc. Of course, Lembeh Straits deserved a day trip where Mina, Asako and myself were thrilled to discover the amazing array of scorpions, lions, seahorses, crabs, leaf-fishes, frogfish and other uncommon creatures😊

Apres-dive... Manado city was just pure traffic mayhem but we managed to zip in quickly to the Grand Puri Hotel with Odo's deft driving for our well-deserved post-diving pampering. I went for the two hour Swedish aromatherapy massage while the girls had the traditional Indonesian massage. The service here is good and the prices are reasonable for a 4-star hotel. My treatment only set me back by USD 25 or so😊 We were served the local ginger tea (Teh Jahe) after the treatment - fragrant and spicy although a tad too sweet for me...Manado is not particularly a shopper's paradise although there are medium size malls dotted along the coastline of the city (with more coming up in the near future). I was surprised to see the Singaporean brand Bata in one of the malls we were at! We were hooked on the local coffee and loaded on packs of these at a supermarket to be brought home😊

Yum yum... Barracuda serves simple Indonesian fare like local seafood, noodles and the like. Everyday's a different menu. Out on the boat where we have our lunches, spicy fried tuna, eggs with marinated curry and stir fried cucumbers are some of the yummy food that we had in between dives. On our last night out, we went for a local restaurant in town called Wisata Bihari. There's a wide variety of seafood and other local delicacies to choose from. The fresh steamed fish, crunchy deep fried prawns, stir-fried vegetables etc are actually quite Chinese in the cooking style. I guess the distinctive North Sulawesi flavour didn't quite come across. On our way back, we picked up a few made-in-Manado durians for dessert. These are not as sweet or fleshy as the Thai or Malaysian ones and are also less pungent. Mina didn't really fancy them but the rest of us were certainly glad to have her share!

Final impressions... This is my second time here and certainly won't be the last...

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Photos

Nudibranch
Pretty little thing...

Diving Buddies
Noldi, our dive guide, Mina, Asako and myself.