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Tomohon market
pythons for sale Between the 3 of us Skoda the Czech, Tomas the Slovenian and me decided to hire a car and guide, Jeck to take us to Tomohon from BatuhPutih, we bid farewell to the French mother and son. About 2 hours it took us to get to Tomohon but before then we visited an old graveyard with sarcophagi that has intricate carvings, Minahasan ancestors are buried here I think it's called Waruga but I could be wrong. Then from there we went straight to the Tomohon market, it's busy but not overwhelming, we went straight to the exotic meat market and this is not for the squeamish! Right away we saw bats cut up into pieces, some in the process of being chopped up, these are big bats, I think fruit bats and they look scary with mouths open showing their sharp teeth, they look awful really like a rat. Then we saw the dogs! already dead they look like they were burned first the ones we saw were black from being scorched, some had been cut up, me and Skoda felt squeamish and wanted to get out of there right away, Tomas was still clicking away! We saw wild pigs cut
up as well, alas no snakes but we will try to come back tomorrow to see.
This is normal for the locals this is their way of life they eat these animals, we're just not used to seeing them. We also visited the fish market and the veggie market, everyone saying hello Mister to us, Tomas bought some sweet coconut based sweet to the delight of the locals. Having seen enough already we headed to Mount Mawahu to see the crater, we were told as visitors we can plant Mahoni trees and a plaque will be put next to it with our names and other infos, which we thought were cool, we did not pay a thing actually either they forget to charge us or it really is totally free.
The climb up was a bit steep took us about 10 minutes and then when we arrived at the viewpoint the tall grasses in front kept us from getting a good view of the crater below so I asked Jeck to come with me to get closer, Tomas and Skoda opted to go back to the entrance. So we headed down as close as we could get to
take a good photo, the path is slippy and with loose, crumbly soil and we are in flip flops so it took us awhile, the view here is better and I saw writings in the mud below, graffitis of people who were able to get down to the dirty green lake below. When we got back to the car park we planted our trees and we moved on to the next destination, the scenery to get to this mountain is great, fields of corn and other veggies dot the hills. We continued on to Lake Linow, before then Jeck called the Happy Flower resort to make sure we have a room to stay later after the sightseeing. We have to pay to enter Lake Linow area, 25,000 rupiahs each and also to get to the resort and have cake and tea. The grounds are well manicured and the lake is very dark green and is brilliant! Nevr seen a lake so green before. We enjoyed our tea at a coffee house near the lake, we went closer later to have a look at the boiling mud.
Tondano lake is not as interesting for us so we did not stop
to take photos, we are hungry now so after having a quick pass at a village with huge potteries we found a Minahasa restaurant for us to try some exotic meat, they sat us down and the dishes started coming, there must be a dozen of them,they lay them all out in the table they pointed to us which is which, we have pork, veggies, pythons, bats, and dogs! Tomas wanted to try the dog but chickened out the last minute especially when 2 pet dogs from the restaurant walk around us. I wanted to try the bat but Jeck said it does not taste good so I opted out, he did not like the way they cooked it. It was Skoda who had a go with the python. Jeck had the bat and dog. All the while the whole restaurant is watching us trying to see perhaps how we will react to the food.Somehow after we finish they manage to figure out which dishes we had and charged us for it and the rest we did not touch perhaps goes back into the kitchen, strange set up.
After the food tasting episode we stopped at Woloan to have
a look at how they make traditional houses here, it's quite unique because they are "knockdown houses" .These "knock down" houses can be transported to a site of the purchasers choice and the style is particular to this region. Then we were dropped off at the resort, Happy Flower, quite nice with nice garden, they have a small pond, they have rabbits about and ducks too! Our room is big and quite nice, Skoda and I shared one king sized bed, leaving Tomas to sleep by himself in a big king sized bed. We walked to the main road to find internet but power came off just as we are leaving the resort, we walked in the dark and the locals looking at us all the way. We found a restaurant and asked for beer, they only have 2 big bottles of Bintang which we shared between us while having dinner. We found an internet place that is open and surfed for an hour before getting back to sleep. At 5am we got woken up with this loud voice singing it's not the Moslem call to prayer it's some Christian church thing, quite annoying especially the woman sings out of
tune and quite loud, woke up the whole neighborhood. We took a blue van collectivo to the bus station where we dropped off our bags at the Manado bus while we walked back to the market to see the snakes and we saw them! 3 big pythons dead on the table and about to be butchered,and cut up into pieces, I felt sick,looking at them, I asked the guy selling it if there are plenty still in the wild and he said yes, hmmm.. I think they are endangered..
On the way out of happy flower resort the next day we were stopped by a "crazy" woman, she gave Tomas some money, at least tried to, and we could not figure out why, of course we declined it but we thought she felt so bad for us we all look grungy and poor she is giving us money so we can buy some decent pair of clothes! We can't understand her as she speaks no English but we all laughed at the situation and moved on.
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