16. Ring Around the 'Nesia

 

      I originally planned to write that this was the worst travel day yet. But then I started reflecting on other travel days, including the 17-hour international flight and the hot day in Sanya trying to find the train station. Every day that we switch locations has a particular combinations of characteristics that make it difficult. Today's particular discomfort was that we had four separate flights, all but one requiring us to acquire our boarding pass from a gate agent and go through security. This gets old after the first time. In addition, we left for the airport at 2:30 am and did not arrive at our final destination until well after 8:00 pm.

     The purpose of our circuitous route around the Banda Sea was so that Mom could go to two of the island groups that she had not yet visited. We had four hours between flights after arriving on Ambon Island, part of the Maluku Island group and didn't realize the airport was so small.  This is where travel felt hard. There weren't many food options and we hadn't eaten breakfast so I was getting "hangry." It took 30 minutes of walking from restaurant to restaurant to find one that would meet all three of our criteria: accepts credit card, has a vegetarian option that we can identify on the menu, not full of smoking members of Indonesia's armed forces. We eventually found a place that had fried rice, fried tofu, fried vegetable wontons, and fried tempeh. This trend has been par for the course during our time in Indonesia.

    The food helped, but since it was outside and we also wanted our morning latte, I had sweat dripping down my back and a damp undershirt. I decided that we needed see part of the island in an air-conditioned car to avoid spending the entire day in airports, and we still had two hours to spare. 

     A young taxi driver who approached us in the arrivals area was sitting outside the restaurant watching us. As soon as we stood up, he approached again asking if we needed a taxi. Using Google Translate, we negotiated a very unclear plan for him to drive us to a couple of places around the airport. Communciation was rough and I changed my Google Maps driving instructions to Indonesian to help him get where we were going.

     In the span of an hour, we visited Bendungan Negeri Laha, a waterfall, the shoreline next to the airport, and a monument for "Ambon City of Music." I attempted very awkardly to chat with the twenty-something-looking driver, who turned out to be 35 with two kids. All I learned during our chat was that he had not fully understood when we told him at the outset that we only had a Visa credit card and NO CASH. In the end, we gave him a $20 bill and expressed hope that he could exchange it somewhere. 

Ambon city of music

Spice cloves drying in the sun.

     Flight 2 was from Ambon to Sorong, another place on the list to get to but one in which we would have no time to tour. In the very short time transiting the airport, I learned that both leptospiridosis and monkey pox are local public health concerns, and that the skin tone and features of many at the airport were distinctly different from what we had seen on other islands. There are multiple tribes and ethnicities on each island, which is another part of the country of Indonesia that impresses me. According to our guide in East Kalimantan, the customs and the culture of different ethnic groups bind people together in a region and sometimes overrides customs according to religious affiliation. The indigenous Moi people predominate in the Sorong area, which explains my observation. 

Coming into Sorong, West Papua

      Our original plan was flying directly from Sorong to Jakarta to end our stay in Indonesia. However, if LionAir is consistent at anything, it is consistent at changing its flight schedules. Our direct flight was changed and we ended up with a connecting flight in Makassar, our departure point that morning. So Flight 3 was a 2-hour flight back to South Sulawesi. One benefit was that we were able to recognize the karst formations we saw yesterday from the boat from a bird's eye view.

Karst formations from the air

      We ended the day in hotel with a gorgeous lobby, restaurant, and spa, but with a very basic room. There were only two single outlets in the room, insufficient lighting, and air conditioning that didn't reach the target temperature until the morning. It was lights out at 9 pm since we had a 7 am shuttle back to the airport. I'm looking forward to starting the next leg of the journey. After a day in Perth, we will be going to a distant part of Australia called Christmas Island.  We will be 'forced' to stay until next Tuesday because flights only come once a week and I am really looking forward to chilling out for a few days. 

FM7 Hotel Lobby

FM7 Hotel Lobby

Non-fried dinner!