WOW…just WOW!!!! We literally hit the ground running. Our first night at port, after checking into the country, we were told there was a Sail 2 Indonesia (S2I) rally info session at a Hotel in a nearby town named Langgur….with dinner…why not..we were tied but if we don’t have to cook…it’s a no brainer!
We were all taken by bus to a hotel. We had no idea what to expect and there was mass confusion at the time of pick up…4:30, 5, or 6 pm. The rally organizers did their best. Trying to get 35 boats full of cruisers is like herding cats…no joke! But we all eventually got there, even with the misunderstanding of the time of the bus. Here I got a photo of the S2I rally sign and asked these guys if I could take their photo…they smiled for me.A proper meeting set up…I didn’t really know what think. I am sure we were not the only ones…We had many officials from Customs, Biosecurity, Immigration, Tourism board, and they were all here to answer our questions we may have about sailing around in their country. We also talked briefly about the anchorages we were to visit next. Let’s just say Trevor was a bit bored…..There was much talk in Indonesian…we did have a translator but there was much more spoken in the local language and lots of video taping going on. It was pretty evident that these officials were doing official business and traveled here from lots of different places to be here to greet us. Although some people thought this was a disorganized and not really helpful, we took a different stance. We saw a lot of effort put into this show of pride for their country and as bueratic as any government can be, these men and women were generally here to help. I think it is hard to understand that this country is as wide as the USA with thousands of islands, some we are visiting, that the job of keeping a consistent process is a hard and daunting job. Yes, the presentation was long and parts were cumbersome but we didn’t care…. their presence showed that they did welcome us, as tourist, to share their country and resources and in return they receive funds to improve living standards and infrastructure.After a buffet dinner there were a few of us who heard there was a bar in the hotel…just making landfall that day, Trevor and I have yet to wind down and headed for a local beer….Bintang!We expected to call a taxi to head back to the village of Debut but to our surprise, our “local coordinator” (Tuti) waited for us with a hired car to take us back. We felt so bad they waited but had no idea this would happen..otherwise we would of told him he didn’t have to wait for us. When we returned to Debut…the village children awaited us with our dinghies in hand and helped us out…..OMG…it felt like we were royalty!!!!! It was almost too much to take in on our first night!
Town of Langgur-The next day it was on to errands, as we are accustomed to by now: Bank, internet access, and fresh food. We decided to hire a taxi and go back into the town of Langgur to accomplish a few tasks, only a 10-15 minute drive.
SV Starry Horizons (David and Amy) and Craig off of SV IL Sogno (italian for “the dream”) and us shared the taxi.Very important…CASH!!! The Indonesian rupiah exchange rate is about $1 usd to 14,475 rupiah…we felt like millionaires…Headed to the market to get some fresh veggies and fruit…we were surrounded by the major mode of transportation here…the motorcycles/mopeds….they get very close to each other and I think the only rules of the road is eye contact!The market was very similar to those of Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. Lots of little vendors selling their home-grown items.Trevor making his first Indonesian transaction….Lots of new items…this is papaya flowers and you make a salad with it after blanching them. A little bitter but add coconut milk and other spices…it’s awesome!You can even get a …… rooster?!Next was to get a sim card…. easy? not really. The language barrier was very difficult and there are so many plans…we spent the better half of the day here with this guy who patiently helped us. We still at this point could not get phones to recharge (top up) our accounts. We later learned that some plans only work in certain areas so the sim card and plan we got did not work in other towns…oh well…the cost of a sim card is about $12 usd. … Not the end of the world.We were starving so we had our poor taxi guy who waited with us all through the day and found this great place on the water. We paid for his lunch. Everything cost about $4 usd…this is what we were waiting for…cheap and delicious food!A new favorite…seaweed salad…. not like the kind of flat seaweed we are used to seeing but it’s more like seagrapes but smaller..mixed with shredded coconut and coconut milk, spices and ginger….refreshing and yummy! Even Trevor liked it!
Welcome ceremony at another village called Wab – That night we were to attend a welcome ceremony at a village much farther, about a 40 minute drive away in the village named Wab. This being our second day here in Indonesia, Trevor and I were riding the coattails of all the other cruisers and had really no idea where/what/how anything was happening. So we just sat back and enjoyed the experience.
The rally organized buses to pick us all up from…. when the first flood of dinghies came to shore there was only 1 bus?! So we all packed ourselves into this little bus, sitting on the floor on wooden stools. It was hilarious! More buses finally showed but it was pretty funny to have 30 people in this little bus….. and that only about 1/2 of the rally participants!We even had a police/military escort?! We were all a bit surprised to see authorities here… were we going to or through a “bad” neighborhood? Or was their presence a show of safety for us tourists? It turns out that at this welcome ceremony, many officials/important people were in attendance and the authorities were mainly for them…and us : )While we waited for things to get a bit organized, we walked up the street and accidentally interrupted a soccer game. We were approached by the villagers who wanted to speak to us in english and take lots of photos of us. This did not happen in Debut or Langgur yesterday so we all were pretty eager to jump in and take a photo with them. The adults were almost as excited as the kids were!After multiple “selfies”…we were stopped in our tracks to watch young women marching. We asked what the meaning of this was and was told at the time it was practice for police marching. Later, after asking multiple times and after watching so many displays of this marching, it has become clear the kids are practicing for the Indonesian Independence day which is on August 17th this year. Each village/town/city will have their own parade and these kids will be performing and representing their village.
We drove through many small villages and it gave us some perspective to compare to the village of Debut and the town of Langgur and the difference between access to resources and the remoteness. Additionally, each village seems to be identifiable by the color of their mini wall or fence that lines their village alongside the road….we were told it is a way for people to locate their village that some may not know they name of but could get there following the “one road” on the island and arrive at the right place by the colors. No idea who decides the colors or in which order the colors are applied but there must be some order to it?
Arriving at the village of Wab, we all were greeted by the village elders and a company of boys who performed a war dance. I will post the video on Facebook : )
We were blessed with coconut water (they throw fresh coconut water at the group) and speeches. The road was lined with the rest of the village.We all were then paraded, literally, through colorful flags while the company of boys lead and danced us through their village and down to the beach.This was the start of an amazing but tiring display of curiosity and delight of the villagers…. This photo is just the beginning of the…dare I say “onslaught”, of selfies we all experienced over the evening. Every child and parent wanted to take photos with any of us..multiple photos…it was like the Paparazzi! However, as tiring as it was, it became very evident that this village did not see many tourist here (hence the 40 minute drive) and our arrival marked an important event for them. The village hosted all of us, meaning they all took part in cooking, decorating, organizing, making all the outfits for the children performing, etc…. and we later learned why the official were here too. From what we understand (which is very little) is that this event was to display/demonstrate that their village has the ability to host and is “worthy” of government support to help their community economy bring tourism to them. We heard there was an “investor” present that night as well…I can’t imagine the pressure?! Yes, things were a bit disorganized to our standards, but overall, considering the resources, effort, and dedication it must have taken to put on a show like this, we would consider it a huge success! Time will tell if they will see any benefit from all this work.On the beach, chairs lined a circle where the nightly activities were to take place. The girls came out this time to dance for us. How different this dance was in its slow and methodical swaying of heads and hands compared to the boys war dance of jumping to fast paced beats of the drum and swift hand gestures with bow and arrows.Dinner was buffet style of local cuisine: Seaweed salad, papaya flower salad, fresh fish, cassava bread (like a sweet potato but when cooked it’s like the consistency of tapioca), spicy vegetables and sweet potatoes, chicken on the bone, and lots more!
After dinner, there were more speeches and the village started to let loose, as they should after putting on such a huge show, with dancing and music played both with a karaoke machine and an electric piano. We were all getting pretty tired, it was way past cruisers midnight (that’s about 9 pm) and even the bus drivers asked us to help round-up the rest of the cruisers. We loaded up the busses with the entire village waving goodbye and headed back to the dinghies…..exhausted but thrilled!
Sean on SV Cintana and Tamara from SV IL Sogno made a quick speech to the village from all of us….. Sean got a lot of attention for wearing his “captain” attire…later we found out it was a stripper outfit…with velcro and all!!! Simply hilarious : )
A walk around the village of Debut – We decided to stay another day to just recover, do some chores, and to walk around the village of Debut before heading off to the next rally destination.
Speed bumps…made out of rope….ingenious!Amy on Starry Horizons found this cool Hindu (we think) temple on one of her morning runs so we thought we would take a better look at it. Unfortunately it was locked but looked well cared for.Amy also saw this colorful platform from her boat and at night would light up and she could hear music being played…. Trevor and I didn’t even notice the music or lights even though we were anchored right by Starry Horizons…way to go us for being observant! ….to our surprise it had many little seating areas built of bamboo over the sea-shore. Currently men were working on building a sea wall around this colorful structure. There was this cute “sign” of LOVE looking towards the anchorage. Here (Left to right) is David and Amy (SV Starry Horizons) and Linda and Carlos (SV Mirniy Okean).A man passed us on our way back from the Hindu temple. I guess he has chores to do too : )Trevor back at the wharf near our dinghy, he handed out hard candies… he even said an elderly woman came to accept a handful… Love it!We saw these little “discs” dring in the sun in lots of homes. We finally stopped to stare at them more closely and a woman kindly offered us 1 to try. It is made out of Cavassa, the sweet potato looking but when cooked it turns into a consistency like tapioca, then is pressed and dried. It tasted like…nothing… a combination between a wafer and white bread.Can’t forget to mention the Mosques….. 5 times a day….that’s right….. these many mosques play their prayers through loud speakers, sometimes we can hear 3-4 different ones at the same time. Maybe to some people this could be annoying but we don’t mind it. at least not yet : )
It was a fast and furious stop for us with so much activity in such a short amount of time…again with a splash of chaos…being treated like royalty and the warm and kind welcome we received at Debut was a pleasurable beginning to our adventure in our first South East Asia country. We must say, the most significant difference and what stands out the most to us are the children…. Just look at these beautiful children!
At Debut anchorage, the rally boats would be visited by the local kids in their canoes. One day we had them on Slow Flight and Trevor got out our mini Polaroid and took “selfies” with the kids and gave them the photos…. everyday since they, collectively, came back to the boat asking for “selfies”… we opted to give them hard candy instead which brought more canoes full of kids. Finally on our last day, we had to say no so that we could get some chores done….
But it’s hard to resist the warm smiles and kind presence of these kids…. adorable!
Fabulous Kimmi,
You write beautifully.❤️
Lesley