2. Marine park, city life and ground shaking local culture!

My time on the jungle island drew to close and I moved to my next spot. Still in Sulawesi but this time based back on the main island, in the northern city called Manado. To get here involved the boat crossing from Bangka then road transfer round the northern tip of the island. As is to be expected, the driving is entirely rule-free and an adrenaline filled experience. Fortunately, the roads are fairly quiet, which is just as well since the drivers stick to the left unless there are animals, other cars or scooters, pot holes, humans or blind bends. Then they tend to stick to haring down the middle or sometimes to the right. Occasionally we’d meet another car coming head on but since this is the norm, they’re pretty good at being ready to slam on the breaks and move to either side just enough to pass each other by, more often than not, with bump to the wing mirrors. Every now and then, when the bump was more of a crashing bang, my driver would say ‘oof’. He wouldn’t slow down, seem otherwise concerned or let it change his driving style. It really more just an acknowledgement.

There are some significant hazards on the roads too, but they are dealt with in the same risk averse style. At one point, we drove past what had clearly been quite a major land slip with the hill side now by the road side and beyond into the valley. Part of the road on the left had fallen away, with a massive chunk of tarmac missing. Interestingly, the crash barrier marking where the road used to be end was still up, bridging the hole. Easily a car sized hole. There was no warning or cordon and again, just a quick slam of the breaks and a minor adjustment to the car’s path to skirt the massive hole - driving just along the edge of it which I would suspect didn’t have the most stable of foundations given the disappearance of the hill side the road was built along. A little while later, some men were out filling pot holes. They were mixing cement in the middle of road then directly filling the holes. Not sure if they were workers or just locals who fancied a bit of DIY. They didn’t have any high-vis or traffic cones. They’d just popped a couple of potted plants around their work site so cars knew to go round them. They’d then placed several car-destroyingly huge boulders further along where they’d already filled pot holes and presumably didn’t want cars driving over while they set. We avoided the holes and rock barriers by mounting the hill side and going round them.

Miraculously, I arrived unscathed at my next stop in the city. I enjoyed my time at Bangka but I knew after a few days living in the jungle shed, accompanied by a lot of creepy crawlies, humidity and lack of electricity, I’d be ready for a spot of luxury. This hotel is just that with a lovely room, entirely sealed from the bugs and creatures, fully powered throughout the night and with a hot shower. Quite a public shower though if you’re sharing a room. Could be a little awkward if you shared with a friend rather than a loved one. And even the ‘romance’ of being able to watch one another shower or wave through the glass, I’m sure, would be ruined slightly by also getting the experience of watching each other poo and other such bathroom activities! Still, these are fortunately not concerns for me. I’ve very much enjoyed the comfort and luxury and also the sea view pool, complete with an infinity edge, which actually drops down to the aircon for the entire hotel, which creates quite the monstrous hum to accompany a quick dip and pool chill out.

I spent one of the days here diving in the national marine park on a little island called Buneken. Getting there involved a 6am pick, drive through town and villages to the harbour then my own personal boat ride over to the island. A couple of very pretty dives along the coral edge of the island. My diving companions on the boat were quite the set of personalities. I was told I would be diving with with another experienced diver called Richard from the USA. I thought that could be fun…. Then along shuffled Richard, complete with socks and sandles, the type of American who talks endlessly but doesn’t listen and who, they’d neglected to mention, was around 75+. I’ve dived with some fabulous older divers; Richard is not one of them. Once aboard the dive boat, it took two guides to try and tug him into his wetsuit, which they had to swap for a larger size but not before Richard demanded we return to the dock so he could go back to his room as he’d forgotten to take his hearing aid out. So we waited again. Once water borne for the second time, the wetsuit tugging re-commenced. Despite being encouraged to several times, Richard decided to keep his coloured, button up cotton shirt on under his wetsuit and they eventually got him in and zipped up. Several minutes later, he damned it be stripped off as shockingly, the shirt wasn’t comfortable under his suit. At the dive site, the other group, a mother / daughter pair were long gone and I was bobbing about in the water with our guide waiting for Richard, who decided to put his fins on as far away from his dive gear as possible then needed help shuffling down the boat with them on to get the rest of the gear on. Not the usual order but there you are. 15 minutes later and after more fuss and ridiculousness, Richard decided to skip the first dive as he didn’t think his kit was quite right and finally realised that he’d held us up 30 minutes by then! Thankfully, off myself and the guide went for a very enjoyable dive!

For the second dive, I joined the mother daughter pair and left Richard  alone and with a 1:1 with the other guide. This was a much more relaxed affair although, I realised fairly quickly either that I was on a different airmix to the others or they were far deeper for longer than they should have been. It didn’t really matter to me as I just stayed a little shallower and above them but it was quite the puzzle as I couldn’t work out how I’d got a considerably shallower maximum depth limit than they had. (You can tell this because your dive computer works out how long you’ve been at various depths and calculates how long you can safely stay at your current depth before too much nitrogen builds up in your system. This is shown as your NDL (no decompression limit) countdown. You never want your NDL to fall to zero - as that means you go into ‘deco’ (decompression) and have to do more stops at various depths for longer time as you ascend to dissipate the nitrogen). I don’t let my NDL fall below 5 as a general rule. I was hovering around 5 all dive and was shallower than everyone else. Once we did start to ascend, it became abundantly clear that the mother/daughter, far from somehow having higher NDL than me, had in fact gone way into deco - and had absolutely no idea what that was, how to tell and or what to do about it!

Once back on the surface, the guide gave them a proper telling off for being too deep, although he didn’t actually explain anything to them so it didn’t really help and they hadn’t done their full deco stops so their dive computers were beeping like mad and errored them both out for 24 hrs. Back on the island, Richard decided to collect his guitar and attempted to lead the kitchen staff and any guests who’d like to join in, in a rousing chorus of …. Old MacDonald had a farm! I declined and watched as everyone edged away and noted that by the 5th verse, with the goats, even the kitchen staff had given up politely trying to join in and got on with getting lunch ready.

Once we’d all had lunch, I chatted to the daughter to make sure she was ok. She knew she’d done something wrong but had no idea what. We had to sit down, with her dive computer, with Google to show dive profiles and I explained it all to her so she could understand what had happened and how to read her computer properly and avoid it in future and dive more safely. I didn’t even tell her than I like to refer to my NDL countdown as ‘the death clock’. Particularly not since she hugely exceeded hers then didn’t do the right stops on the way back up to fully negate it all.

They asked if I’d like to return for a second day diving but I decided to pass on the offer and instead have a day by the pool and enjoy a morning that didn’t start with a 6am get up! It would have been a good plan except I was rudely awoken by a little earthquake at 5.30am, which was a very minor one although enough to wake me up, make the building creak and definite feeling of the movement. I was not a huge fan of that at all! Where I am was just on the outskirts of where the quake was felt so was very feint here, fortunately.

So with my unexpected free day, I decided I’d get out and see a bit of the local area and experience the culture …. After some research, I headed out - which of course involved a short walk and crossing a road where I remembered culture dictates you confidently just walk out into the 4 lanes of traffic and expect the cars to either stop or go round you - that’s after you’ve hurdled the mid-road barriers they’ve erected across the laughingly labelled pedestrian crossing! First stop was for a traditional Indonesian breakfast, which turned out to be essentially a Nutella toastie in a little roadside cafe without aircon or fans to speak of, which felt like about 40°C. Quite a lot of research more and I found the only other thing the locals really do here is shop or spend time in the massive shopping malls - which include various chain restaurants & cafes. It’s all got a sky painted on the ceiling to make the people feel like they’re outside though!

Despite being on the coast, there are no seaside walkways or any outdoor living at all really. It’s quite different to European culture in that way. And in fact, I realised - and then spent a lot of time looking out for them to check - there don’t seem to be any westerners at all here. In two days of looking, I’ve seen one other western family. By western I mean not Asian so European, perhaps American or Australian. I notice that a lot of people do look me, mostly smile and loads wave and say hello. This is clearly not a touristy place, which would be interesting except, it seems, that the culture for the locals is to either to be asleep propped up on a bench (outside) or glued to a mobile phone. There are generally an average of more than one mobile per person. Groups and couples seems to meet up … so that they can all sit and interact only with their phones and rarely each, often watching videos, streaming or playing games at extraordinary volume. Not a headphone is sight. If there are walking, they at the very least hold their one (or often two) phones and are usually staring at the screen. One family were all eating together - and they’d set up a phone to video or perhaps livestream them doing it. After my slightly disappointing local Indonesian breakfast, I decided against more chicken or fish and rice and went for pizza for dinner where I got a salad bowl which included some jelly lumps and ordered a Fanta which was luminous red!