“The little town of Menado is one of the prettiest in the East...To the
west and south the country is mountainous, with groups of fine
volcanic peaks 6,000 or 7,000 feet high, forming grand and
picturesque backgrounds to the landscape.”
Alfred Russell Wallace, 1859
What Darwin had been to Chiloé, Wallace was to Sulawesi. It was the line on either side of this orchid of the Southern Sea, that separated the species of Asia from those of Australia, and made Sulawesi, as a distinct biogeographical entity containing marsupials and mammals, part of what is known as Wallacea. It was the finish line of the theory of evolution, which Wallace had actually crossed first.
Robyn and I could see Manado Bay in the distance, as our Merpati flying house made its final approach. Volcanic cones rose out of the Celebes Sea from great submerged monsters, and puffs of cloud hovered over the surface of the water like steam from their nostrils.
We thanked the pilot for his hospitality, and marveled at his longevity, once we were safely on the tarmac of Sam Ratulangi. We passed Sam’s statue on the way into town, six giant clay garden gnomes in gray cubscout uniforms. The musical creole of Manado Malay greeted our exit from the bemo, with numerous borrowed words, like those for horses and chairs and enticing women and bad men, from their Portuguese and Spanish and Dutch Stranger Kings history. But there were also Chinese shops and Kung Fu movie houses, and ice cream banana splits at the News Café on Jalan Sam Ratulangi. It was a lively place.
Robyn and I had been spoiled by our night at the Palu Golden, and our search for truth took a degenerate detour towards beauty. We checked into the old colonial feel of the Hotel Minihasa, and checked out its tiny infinity pool, with the plump juicy cloud-covered volcano hanging on the water’s edge. In Minihasa, there was one church for every hundred meters of road. We dropped into a few hundred meters worth, and then stopped by the red and kaleidoscopic colors of the three hundred year old Ban Hin Kiong Chinese temple, whose pamphlet description excused the fact that ‘there is not much to buy in this complex because it is basically a house of worship.’ We ate more koktel udan, and smoked fish tinutuan, a rice porridge containing corn, greens and chilies, at the Dolpin Donut restaurant.
The next day we pushed it further, and traveled twenty miles down the southwest coast, to Tangawangko Bay, and the Tasik Ria. Where comfort is paramount. It was two days before New Years, and the entire resort was empty. We got our choice of cobalt blue-tiled roofed Chinese bungalows, with white pillars, and a view of palm-filled gardens and expansive pool, and dined on delicious Tasik Ria fried chicken with chilies and kecap manis, in the Bunaken coffee shop. For the New Year’s Eve that would welcome in a new millennium, we flagged down a bemo back into the city, and checked into the Novotel Manado. A Minihasan orchestra of wooden marimbas was playing in the lobby. There were ‘Happy Third Millenium’ cards, with a picture of the solar system, on our pillows and, later, under the door, as if in answer to the Y2K paranoia of the age, a friendly note from the manager. ‘To prevent any problems at midnight we will stop the operation of all elevators at the main lobby between 23:50 to 00:10.’ The fireworks display outside was more of a threat. It should have incinerated the entire city.
On the last night of the Twentieth century, Robyn and I ate at the Rumah Mkan ‘Bahari.’ We had heard that Minihasa food could be all ‘bat, cat, and rat,’ not to mention rintek wuuk dog, so we stuck to the rica-rica spicy fish and dabu-dabu sambal beef, with sayur bunga sautéed papaya flower buds.
No comments:
Post a Comment