Let's festival!

Or at least almost. There's a big culture festival at the Togeans every year. This time the location was Wakai, the main village. Of course I wanted to check out the happenings but at the end I spent only around 2 hours there mainly eating. Sometimes it's good to be a “bule” as you get offered stuff to eat what's not really meant for visitors.

During the festival the tourism office of Central Sulawesi organized a two days tour for photographers around the islands. Lucky me I had the chance to join them and to visit some spots I haven't been to before. First day we left at 3 am to Kabalutan, a bajo village in the north. We arrived by sunrise, what a view! Afterwards we visited a few other bajo villages and had a swim and sunset at Karina beach. Fantastic day without any sleep.

Next day we did a similar tour to the south, with the exception that we let around 8 am. After the tour the jury was presented the best photos and they chose a winner in human interest and landscape categories. I was feeling a bit sick so I had to go to sleep before the announced the winner so I still don't know who won. But surely not me, I think so much I would know by now. No matter what happened with the competition, I had two really fantastic days with a bunch of funny crazy photographers mainly from Palu. And on the way we catched a pretty big tuna, which I claimed for me :) Food for Hulopi family for a few days :)

Yes, there's my name inside the tuna!

Ok keep that one.

Pulau Papan. Preeeettyyy!

A stop over in Jakarta and too many days in Palu

After about a month back in Togeans we left to Jakarta to check out some dive gear as we want to start exploring new dive spots around Bomba as soon as possible. I got into contact with a few companies and ended up doing business with Divemasters, who supplies f.ex. Aqua Lung. Good choice, the staff was extremely helpful and we got a good deal for a bunch of stuff. Also a compressor is now on the way to Sulawesi.

Otherwise now I know I don't have to visit Jakarta any time soon, there's not really anything to do except to breathe pollution and hoping you don't get stuck anywhere in the traffic. Not a nice big city, but when are big cities in Asia actually nice?

We flew back with some extra luggage to Palu, where I wanted to extend my visa. Easier thought than done. Last time my good friend and sponsor could do it alone, I just had to sign a few papers and leave him my passport. Now there are new regulations, they want to take your fingerprints and a photo. Well ok, no problem, so let's take them and I'll get on my way and my friend picks up the passport when everything is ready. Just one obstacle: the boss has to give his signature before they can take my photo. Excuse me? Just take the photo, save it and add it later? Nope, cannot do that.

So I sat in the office for a few days waiting that the boss mercifully comes down back to earth and signs one f'***n paper. Oh yes and they also still kept the old system, so I also had to provide two normal passport photos. But this time with red background. Surprises, surprises, let's make the life of tourist as difficult as possible and make them feel we don't want to have them here. It would be so much easier to stay in Malaysia, Thailand, or basically any other Asian country. Or maybe next time I just should add some rupias between the passport but then again corruption is really not something I want to support.

I got the passport back after hearing “sabar, Pia, sabar” for a few days. We almost run to the afternoon bus and were on our way to Ampana and back to Togean. Or not quite yet... The ride from Palu to Ampana usually takes around 10 hours. And sometimes, like this time, 17 hours... Nope, the road was fine and we had to wait only around 1 hour at one bridge. The drives decided to stop at a coffee shop (or a hooker joint) for a few hours chat and then take another “customer” to the car. And then to have a nap for 5 hours. Take a guess who missed the ferry back to the islands. Yes, I was happy and also let the driver to feel that. Mitra touna, next time I'll choose some other company.

I think I took one photo in Jakarta and none in Palu, so I'll just add a few photos of Sami here, he's more interesting than cities anyways.

Racing :)

  

High season - Tempat munta tamu

Back in Sulawesi! My plan to stay in Finland from June until end of August got changed quite quickly and I came back already end of July. In the middle of high season here. Originally I wanted to avoid this time of the year coz all places are full and prices a bit higher. But I also don't have to stay in a resort if I don't want to.

The trip back took me 3 days. Flight to Frankfurt, wait there 12 h, then to Jakarta with a stop over in Kuala Lumpur, forward with Garuda to Luwuk via Makassar. After 2 nights in planes I was too tired and didn't wanna wait for the bus so I chartered a car to Ampana. Good choice, at least I got into town in decent hour and had finally a good sleep. Next day we found a boat passing Bomba so I could already get back to Togean and relax at Poya Lisa. Luckily the highest high of high season hadn't started yet.

Fantastic to be back in Poya Lisa, and especially to play with Sami! My doggie! Who is huge already for a ”puppy” only 3 months old. He's a monster, anjing gila play-biting everything: books, sarongs, wood, shells and now also toys I brought him from Finland. When I'm not in Poya I really miss that crazy creature. Photos will be added here later…

Picnic at the beach...

End of July was also the end of Ramadan and we went to celebrate it in Wakai with the Hulopi clan. It was all about food, meeting people, doing day trips, having chats and well, sure of course some arak and drinks I brought back from Finland. It was kind of like a mix of our christmas and new year, just a bit more louder and crazier with fireworks and motorbike parades. And this is a small village I'm speaking about. Idil Fitri lasted about 3 days and afterwards we left back to Poya Lisa. Which was starting to get crowded. 14 bungalows and over 30 people. When we arrived all the bungalows were taken so we had to sleep in the boat for the first night. Doable, not comfortable.

Boat = bed.

After a few days we took a few spanish girls to Malenge and stayed also there at Malenge Indah for a night. We slept in the boat again, as that place was also more than full full full. The 4 girls had to share one small room next to the restaurant as all bungalow were taken. Next day we went to check out the newest place in Malenge: Sera. Which is very similar to Malenge Indah, similar cottages, similar food, similar beach. Both great places.

On the way back to Wakai we stopped at Katupat for a chat with friends and ended up staying also one night. This time we had the option between boat and losmen in the village as also Fadhila Cottages were almost having a waiting list for free bungalows. Really, next year at high season I hope I have an own place to stay at or I'll spend it out of the country. Every place is just a bit too full for my taste. But also, this is still very little and very far away from what's happening in the actually touristy places.

Now I'm in Ampana for a few days for internet and also to enjoy some western luxury (= A/C & good shower) in the new Lawaka hotel. Highly recommended, the best value for money in this small town. Located near the evening market and still this is the most quiet hotel I've been in in Ampana. I did sleep well :)

And of course I didn't take my camera with me so this blog update will be without decent photos, just with the few I had in my phone. More will be added later.  

Done with divemaster :)

Might sound funny but it actually can get boring to live in an island paradise. It is fantastic to swim, dive, hang out in the village, sit under a coconut tree, but after some months it can make you feel like you just wanna run and scream. Have to do something!!! Too much energy!! Too much hammock time! But to do what? Maybe I should do something useful, for body, brain and future, like divemaster.

I did rescue diver with a local instructor from Ampana and we worked well together so I decided to continue to divemaster with him instead of going to one of the resorts here in Togean. Anyways is better to have a teacher who actually has time for you and doesn't have to take care of tens of other divers at the same time.

Checking out a new dive spot near Ampana. And the village was checking us out.

Snorkeling 800 m and enjoying an octopus show underneath me...

We did theory, confined water exercises, DSD and a few dives in Ampana and surroundings and the rest in Poya Lisa in Bomba and in a dive centre in Wakai. Might sound stupid but my biggest concern was that I have to open my eyes in the water. Yea I can take off the mask and dive without it, but blind. In the water my eyes burn, burn burn... But as it had to be done, it was done. And now I know I can open the eyes, I don't like it, I don't see much and there's more tears in my eyes than sea water. But I can do it.

The rest went pretty well, I learned a lot and now I'm done. Divemaster :) yay!

Yes, a long and informative blog update again. See, I am getting lazy…

And I got a boat...

It's fast :) And ugly, dirty, scratched and yellow.

Looks like I'm more or less stuck in the Togean islands. In a good way, very good way. But as we are speaking of islands, the transportation is more or less only with boats. Unless you want to try out some jungle roads with a scooter.

After Lembeh I met up with Elly in Gorontalo and we went to check out a speed boat in Tilamuta. A local mechanic found a good engine and the boat was more or less a present, if I decide to make the buy. And why not, I do need a vehicle if the public boats are not running or I just want to visit a beach by myself while staying in Wakai. And the price was more than reasonable. And I've never had a boat, unless a rowing boat counts. And girls need toys. Enough reasons!

The mechanic checked & cleaned up the motor before we took off from Tilamuta towards the islands. Pffff. A bit scared, first time doing the long trip in a small boat and the waves do tend to get quite big. We spent the night in hammocks in a small island in front of Tilamuta and left early in the morning. All good, engine worked and after 6 hours we arrived in Malenge. Short lunch break and forward towards Wakai.

So now I have a boat. It already made some money bringing tourists to Katupat but now I have to put in on ”dry dock” as it looks just as old as it is. It needs some boat make up, badly. Or maybe I'll fix it to a dive boat as I just started with dive master training :) More about that later...

Arrived in Wakai :)

Bunaken

Lazy me. But again I haven't really been doing much in the last month, just hanging around in Wakai, Bomba and Malenge. This time also with finnish people. Why are they so much nicer when you meet them abroad?

And another finnish person was coming over, Tanja got 10 days off from work and came over to Bunaken and Lembeh for some diving. Yea. Finally a reason to upload some photos. Lazy writer rather speaks with photos...

We stayed 4 nights in Bunaken, but I did only 3 dives (somebody is short on money, please send me some!). We took bungalows at Panorama, a great place, fantastic food and dive guides with magic eyes. Highly recommended! And go to see mating mandarines :)

Visa run from hell

What was I thinking of? Pizza, pasta, cheese, cafe latte, hot shower... And a slack line. Was it worth it? Without the slack line hell no... I had a 60 days tourist visa for Indonesia which I could extend 4 times for 30 days each either in Gorontalo or Palu. But I decided to fly to Kuala Lumpur, get a new one for 60 days & eat eat eat something else than rice & fish. Good plan, not so good execution.

My flights to KL were really cheap, around 40 e total. Ok, the 10 h bus ride from Ampana to Palu is never a bliss but this time I had company at least, thanx Randhy for the chat. I found a nice small hotel in Jalan Alor, THE food street in KL though it is quite asian so I ended up eating mostly in the food court of Pavilion mall. They have a decent italian restaurant and a subway. All good so far.

Not so good anymore at the Indonesian embassy. I was there really early in the morning, delivered all the papers they wanted just to find out the next day that they give me a visa only for 30 days but for the same money as the visa for 60 days. Which is double amount to visa-on-arrival, which is also valid for 30 days. No thank you. And no explanation why. If you do this shit on purpose please put the information on the website, saves many tourist the trip to KL.

I was pissed off, booked a flight to Jakarta for the same evening, what the hell, I'll just take a VoA, even though I can extend it only once. So I waited, waited, waited in the airport until I got the notice, that the flight is cancelled. A volcano in Java is erupting. Yea. Nobody of course knows what's gonna happen in the next days/weeks, and I still remember too well the shit going on when Eyjaflallajökull in Iceland made the flight traffic in Europe to stop for quite a while. I did a quick check in the internet and found out there's still one flight to Kota Kinabalu on the same night but from the other airport. And it can't be booked online anymore.

So quick quick quick, bus from LCCT to KLIA and then I had to wait for an hour in the line for the Malaysian Airlines ticket counter. Luckily I got a really nice lady who put me in front of the waiting list so I got my ticket (yea, expensive) and could board the plane.

The weekend in KK was really nice, just hanging out with my old buddy Cliff and some of his friends. Cold beer!!! I also managed to finish some work. Then I decided to try out with visa in Tawau, which has a reputation of being efficient, fast, and easy... Some people go in and out in one hour. I flew to Tawau on Sunday and went to the consulate early in the morning. Only 2 tourist were applying for a visa so I thought this is going to be more than fast. I waited. And waited. At one o'clock they were closing the counters for a lunch break so I went to ask what's up. They told me Jakarta is offline and being so they can't process visa applications. And no idea when they'll be online again. I went back to town, had a lunch and took a bus back to the consulate in the afternoon. And met a smiling clerk who wanted 170 ringits from me and handed out my passport with a 60 days visa. Hell yea!

The consulate in Tawau was anyways very different from the embassy in KL. They didn't wanna have any photocopies as they also have a printer and they took the photos directly at the consulate. No onward ticket? No problem, they just took a photo copy of my credit card. No plans what to do in Indonesia? No problem, here's a letter, just copy this and put some other information & dates in it. And everybody was more than friendly, unlike in KL. I can only recommend this place!

The next problem. Booking flights at last minute is really expensive. There would be a ferry to Tarakan on the Indonesian side but it leaves around noon. Which means I for sure would have to spend a night in Tarakan. If I take the Maswings flight I could still connect with Lion Air to Palu via Balikpapan the same evening. Still, 85 e for 40 min flight in this continent is loads of money. And I'm paying... I also cannot book the forward ticket online as Lion Air flights inside Indonesia cannot be paid with foreign credit cards. So they also will be extremely expensive.

Weirdly Maswings told me at check-in that Tarakan has some new regulations and I should have an onward ticket out of there. Well I don't have as I cant book them online. But I do have a visa already. Nope, I need on onward ticket. Luckily I had booked a really cheap one from Jakarta to Singapore as I had planned to go back with VoA and they for sure want to see a ticket. That was sufficient for Maswings, I hope it's also okay for Indonesian immigration in Tarakan. I'll find out in a few hours...

No photos again. I took only one and it was of food in Kuala Lumpur. I don't think anyone else than Tanja would want to see it.

And coz Tanja wanted to see it here it is. My only asian dinner in KL. Sushi doesn't count as asian. The western food was in my belly before I could take out my camera/phone.

The circus attraction returned to the beach

As the few people who reads this blog knows from the previous update, I went to Ampana to do some work online. I finished the job in a few days and wanted to go back to Bomba/Poya Lisa as soon as possible. Easier said than done. It's been a quite stormy December/January and the waves continued to prevent boats from leaving the dock. The boats going to Bomba are quite small and made out of wood, so I really don't wanna be stuck (again) in one when the storm begins in open sea. So I waited. And waited.

In Ampana I basically can't go anywhere without being robbed out of all my energy in half an hour. They don't see many tourist in this part of Indonesia and the people are VERY interested in anything you do. Especially if you are alone. Sometimes even cars stop next to you just to have a chat in non-existing english or just to shout something clever at you, like Bule (white foreigner)! Or Tattoo! Yes to both and thank you of telling me, just in case I hadn't noticed. And I still don't get why random people want to be photographed with me, as they don't know me. Then again, I was showing some photos to a local girl here and on my laptop I had a photo of a pretty house in Estonia. She asked me who lives there. I said I don't know. She found it really odd/funny that I took a photo of a house of which I don't know the owner of. And here many people here want to take a photo with a person they don't know. Maybe we are all odd…

Puspita Sari, fastest connection from Ampana to Wakai. 

Never ask this boy "di mana kuching", where's the cat. He'll bring all the neighbourhood cats to your balcony.

After 8 days I grew so tired of being an circus elephant that I decided to skip Bomba and took a ferry to Wakai, the biggest village in the Togean Islands. I ended up staying there another 8 days, renting a room in the upper floor of a house owned by a lovely local woman and her english husband. And their madly energetic 5-year old son :) Hanging out in Wakai is mostly about eating crabs, fish, squid etc. and to flush the dinner down with a glass or two of Septikus. I don't really wanna swim in front of the village as the water is quite murky, but I did manage to go jogging early in the morning before the village wakes up. Running towards the sunrise on empty streets is quite fantastic.

Not a bad jogging ground.

I also scrubbed Ellys boat which has been broken for many months already. Not it's finally being fixed and after the wood work is done it can be painted, as the outside of the boat is bright and shiny. I did though escape from further work and went to Fadhila Cottages in Katupat for some beach&hammock treatment. Same place as when I was here in October. Nice corals in front of the beaches, excellent food and great staff. I forced Ida and the boys to play rummikub with me every evening and it was really interesting to follow how they try to cheat all the time but they still don't win. Hmmm... Maybe they should rather use the energy for following the game but hey, where's the fun in that.

I did two dives near Katupat but forgot my underwater camera housing in Wakai so no photos this time. Oh well... There will be plenty later. The internet connection is extreme slow here (2G with phone) so I'll add photos to this post later when I'm back in the main land.  

Rescue Diver

I finally did something! After being lazy too long I started with rescue diver course and it was definitely worth the time and money. There's so much more to learn about diving and this course is for sure much more useful as f.ex. AOWD, which is just a money making course by Padi imho.

 I did the theory and emergency first response -course in Ampana with a local dive instructor Anwar Dosi of Ody Dive Center. A few days later we moved on to Poya Lisa with all the gear and did the diving part there. All went pretty good, I managed not to kill my rehearsal partner (Elly) who was finishing his dive master at the same time. So now I'm a rescue diver. And thinking about continuing with dive master. But first I have to practice how to keep my eyes open in water, coz that f***ing burns!!!

Elly floating. Last 2 mins hand up.

And I also managed to do some work. Which was a bit of a drama as Poya Lisa doesn't have internet, the network in Wakai is not fast enough to run the programs I need to use online so the only solution was to head back to mainland for some days. Which is not easy when the sea is rough... My deadline was coming more near and near but the boats from Bomba to Ampana weren't leaving the harbor coz of weather. Finally after waiting too many days I had to drive 3 h with a scooter through the jungle to Wakai and move on with Tuna Tomini, a bigger ferry which (almost) always runs. That was a long day.

So now I'm back in Ampana. Doing nothing. Maybe I should at least have a look at the dive master learning material. I just wish I'd have a hammock. Maybe in Kuling Kendari, a small village near Bomba. One of the prettiest places I've ever been to.

Surfing is so much better than playstation.

Local fisherman making goggles for swimming/diving.

Bingo!

Back to the city. To a small one. After the paradise island of Poya Lisa I've been spending some days in Ampana, doing basically absolutely nothing. So far this trip has been about doing absolutely nothing. I hope soon I'll get some work to do, otherwise this might get a bit boring. Or I have to spend a few days in a dive spot.

Anyways, there is really not much to do in Ampana. Except to visit the fun fair and play bingo! And it's much more fun if you empty a few plastic bags of arak first, though it doesn't make understanding the numbers any easier. Luckily there was enough locals to help me out. Sometimes even too many.

Ampana doesn't see many visitors, usually people stay one night before moving on to Togean islands or vice versa. So sometimes it's quite annoying as everyone wants to speak with u, take a photo with you or you should be shouting ”hello” to every direction every 2 seconds. Fun for a day or two, a bit annoying after 3-4 days. So what to do now? I've got no idea... This seems like an extremely unplanned trip. Next blog update will be when I've actually something to tell.