Sangihe Stay (1): Meeting the Sangihe family

~This is part of the Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle, a journey by Toshi and Uncle R in their ancestors' homeland in North Sulawesi, which is located just on the Indonesian border facing southern Phillipines~

Day 4 (Monday, 10 March 2008)

Note beforehand: Due to the private nature of the discussions Uncle R and I had with our family members in Sangihe, most of the part of our stay when we visited them for a tea and chat would be left out from this journal.

In Sangihe language, the pronunciation of the word “H” and “R” are interchangeable; hence it is perfectly acceptable to pronounce the name of cities like Tahuna as “Ta-hoo-na” or “Ta-roo-na”. The adjective for Sangihe could be both “Sangihenese” and “Sangirese”. The noun “Sangihe” could be used to describe the Main Sangihe Island (Pulau Sangihe Besar) as well as the Sangihe Islands (Kepulauan Sangihe). In my journal, the noun would mostly refer to the main island itself, which was the only Island that Uncle R and I visited.

To standardise the terms, I’ve opted to use “Sangihe” for the noun and “Sangirese” for the adjective.

Waking up at 8 the next day, I was very agitated as I knew not what to expect. In my mind I pictured the Sangihe islands to be a mixture of Hawaii’s tropicalness and Papua’s remoteness, which eventually turned out to be correct anyway.

We checked out of the hotel at 9, and walked to the port which was located 20 minutes away. We checked in onto the ship with the VIP seat tickets which Uncle R bought for Rp250,000 the day before.

Express Bahari ship

We went aboard the fast ship Express Bahari at 9.30. They played VCD of Christian songs on a Plasma LG which –as I later found out— were traditionally unique to Sangihe due to the predominance of Christianity there. The captain himself led the whole passengers in a Protestant prayer for safe journey when we finally departed at 10.10

After an hour or so in the ship, I asked Uncle R (who used to be a work in Caribbean cruise ships) about how fast the ship was going. Seven knots, he told me.

SEVEN KNOTS?!!, I exclaimed.

Geez, that was the fastest ship I’ve ever been on. If you have no idea how fast Seven knot is, then I tell you: One to two knots is the average velocity of the kaleng kerupuk/cracker jar-like ships that goes from Banyuwangi in East Java to Gilimanuk in Bali.

After two hours of the journey, I could see the “virgin islands” outside where not a single houses or landmarks whatsoever were seen. If you had never seen a “virgin island” before, you should definitely embark on a journey to see them yourself. Those “virgin islands” were extremely stunning and mere beautiful words wouldn’t be enough to describe how amazed I was seeing them for myself. Anyway, I managed to take a few pictures then.

Nope, this isn't a virgin island. Notice the small house on bottom right?

Now this is a virgin.

Sorry for the vague picture, I took it from inside the ship window.

Semi-virgin island snapped from faraway...

Seven knots should be fast enough to make anyone seasick (especially with the high waves that day), but it appeared to me that I was the only one there who got bloated.

Uncle R noticed this, and he asked me if I was feeling seasick.

“No, that’s impossible!” I fabricated a smile, though I knew very well that my seasickness was easily noticeable in my face.

Obviously taken from behind the window.

This one too.

And also this one.

Fortunately this one doesn't look too vague. One of my most fave snapshot.

Around 11.30 or so, I forced myself to sleep because I couldn’t bear having the seasickness tormenting me.

Siau Volcano. Notice the fumes?

I woke up for a while when the ship docked to discharge the passengers in Siau Island and Tagulandang Island, the two main islands which were located middle way between Sangihe and the Minahasa regency.

Part of the Sangihe Islands

Another part of it

And another...

Nice view

At 4.35, the ship finally docked at the port of Tahuna city, Sangihe. It took us 30 minutes to finally descend from the ship, because there were a hundreds of passengers in front of us.

A military ship

Abandoned warship in the Main Sangihe Island

This is what I call cracker jars!

Tahuna port. Damn, I should have turned my flash on that time!

From the port, we took a 20 minute ride by oto (minivan, which is called angkot in Jakarta and elsewhere in Indonesia) to the inn owned by Uncle R’s aunt. For now, suffice it to call it Tante Paula’s inn (“Tante” is the Dutch term for Aunt).

Uncle R then did most of the talking with most of the family members there, because I had not known any of them yet. It had been 12 years since Uncle R left Sangihe, while that Sangihe visit was my first ever. I was introduced then as Uncle R’s nephew, a son of his elder brother.

Notice the small cross on the centre of this picture?
It's a grave of the King of Tahuna, one of my ancestors

Most of the discussion then circulated around the family tree, because Uncle R wanted to gather as much information as possible regarding the European bloodlines in the family.

Wait a sec, European bloodlines?

Yes, you’re reading it correctly. Most North Sulawesinese could find either Dutch or Portuguese names in their family trees, as proven in the prevalence of “van de” names in Manado. This was a direct result of the mixed marriages between the local Sulawesinese and the colonials, a feature more commonly found in Sulawesi due to the ease shown by the locals in accepting the proselytism by the Christian missionaries.

Some North Sulawesinese however, have to take the trouble of tracing the names themselves because the names could be left out far above in our family tree, and that was exactly what Uncle R and I were looking for in Sangihe: to fill in our family tree with the European names we traced.

I hadn’t realised it on my first day, but my Dad’s bloodline apparently belonged to several of the most prominent families in Sangihe (from both my Dad’s Mother and Father respectively), especially with a lot of royal bloods running thru his veins. Each city in Sangihe had two or three sovereignties, or kingdoms as we commonly call it, with each of them rule over an area not larger than the size of Orchard and Novena districts in Singapore combined.

Of course, those royal lines in Sangihe and elsewhere in Indonesia—with the exception of Sultanate of Yogyakarta and Kasuhunan Surakarta in Java— ceased to rule since the Independence of Indonesia.

Dusk had arrived when we visited the BW family house located nearby Tante Paula’s inn, hence there were not much I could see at that time to describe the what Sangihe looked like on my first day.

Uncle R and I had dinner in the one of the food stalls located just across the street from the inn, and we found out that a lot of Javanese work there as a result of transmigration programme that the former president Soeharto implemented. The meatball-noodle stall we visited had an owner who hailed from Salatiga, East Java.

Before going back to our room to sleep, we visited the beach market which was located 5 minutes walk away from the inn. Despite having quite a few lightings turned on in the area surrounding the beach market, the entire area was almost deserted at night, resulting in a picturesque planetarium-like view of stars blanketing the night. I gazed in awe at how beautiful the night scene was. It was just unfortunate of me that my camera is a normal Samsung digital camera (and not an SLR), which resulted in me being unable to provide any snapshots for you here.

We slept at around 23.00 in our non-air-conditioned inn room.

Day 5 (Tuesday, 11 March 2008)

I woke up to the song of RRI (Nyiur melambai…) which had become almost extinct in Jakarta. It was still played often in the Sangihe radio however.

After Uncle R bathed, I took my turn to bathe in that freezing cold water at 6.30, which took me some time getting used to.

That morning I found out that the inn we slept in was actually located at the civic centre (or downtown depending on your dialectal bias) of Tahuna city. So Tahuna (which is the capital city of Sangihe regency) wasn’t so big after all. Despite having known that Sangihe island was only a bit larger than the island state of Singapore, the regency only has a population of approximately 200,000 people, and this explained the smallness of the urban areas there. Most of the Pulau Sangihe Besar itself is still covered with forest till this day, and the area of Tahuna itself is no larger than half of Mataram city, Lombok.

We took a walk around the civic centre from our inn encircling the traditional market, the mosque in Kampung Jawa (Java Village), and back again. Despite knowing that the predominant religion there was Protestantism, I was surprised to find how rare it was to find mosques in Sangihe: there were only three of them in the entire Tahuna that I had caught sight of during my stay there.

The biggest denomination of Protestantism in Sangihe wasn’t one you could find elsewhere either, because it was named GMIST (Gereja Masehi Injili Sangihe Talaud, or Evangelical Messiah Church of Sangihe Talaud), presumably unique to the Sangihe-Talaud region just as Shintoism is unique to Japan or Southern Baptism is unique to America. Its main branch is in Manado, which is named GMIM (Gereja Masehi Injili Minahasa).

A GMIST church in Manganitu

Sangihe has always been the main producer of Nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) in the country. Nutmeg seed, or “Pala” as called by Indonesians, has a very strong unpleasant odour, though it is tasty to be imbibed as a juice. I heartily recommend you to try a drink of that Nutmeg juice when you visit Sangihe, because it has a unique taste that is as sour as Orange juice but as sweet as the Aren sugar.

A view of Sangihe greeneries

If you want to take land transportation in and around Sangihe, never expect to find taxis or buses, because there aren’t any. There are only three types of public transportation, namely Oto, Ojek, and Bemtor.

Oto is the minivan, and it is the same thing what you normally call “Angkot” in Java or “Bemo” in Bali. The only difference between the minivan you find in Jakarta and Sangihe is that Sangihe Oto drivers always turn their song volumes into a full blast during their ride, and I laughed when I found out that such otoes are the one that attract most drivers. Such a peculiar thing indeed. The drivers there had their own sound systems and CD players, which amazed me at the first time I saw them.

Ojek is a shuttle motorcycle (found throughout Indonesia) that transports a maximum of two persons at one time for a fee. The fee differs for various regions in Indonesia, but in the case of Sangihe ojeks, they charge us Rp10,000 (€0.60) for a 30 km ride from Tahuna to Manganitu, a very generous fee indeed in comparison to the Rp5,000 Jakarta ojeks charge for a 5 km ride.

Bemtor is a uniquely Eastern Indonesian transportation, though I hadn’t known yet of its existence outside of the Sangihe region. It is a mix between a motorcycle and becak, which makes it only suitable for the inner city transportation, since most of the regions in Sangihe is mountainous.

Bemtor from the front

Bemtor from the side

Bemtor in a Manganitu street

There are only four banks in Tahuna, namely BRI (Bank Rakyat Indonesia), BNI (Bank Negara Indonesia), Bank Mandiri, and Bank Sulut. They are all located in the civic centre of Tahuna, and the Bank Sulut outlet there is located adjacent to Tante Paula’s inn where I stayed.

At 9.00, Uncle R and I took ojek to the Mocodompis King’s Palace in the city of Manganitu. During my ojek ride, I was fascinated at how beautiful the scenery was, because between Tahuna and Manganitu there was a mountain thru which we have to encircle first in order to reach one city from the other. While Tahuna is a seaside city facing the southwest of the island, Manganitu is a seaside city facing the northwest, so there is a considerable difference of atmosphere between both cities, despite having similarly located on the seaside.

Mocodompis king's castle

Mocodompis family house

When I first saw my Grandma’s cousin in Manganitu, I was surprised to find out that she is a close relative of mine. Being 85 years old today, she is 100% Caucasian, with a French father and Portuguese mother!

Whoa, I knew that I had been expecting all along to see some Portuguese names in my family tree later on, but I wasn’t actually expecting to see the evidence in person. Apart from her alone, we met her son and most of her family members (who were all White), and they were delightedly surprised to see us family members coming far away from Jakarta unannounced.

Manganitu street view in the afternoon

Manganitu field

Amongst heaps of other details we discussed with the Mocodompis family in Manganitu, I gathered that I have family members who have been residing for years in Canada, Philippines, Netherlands, Portugal, and Japan.

Manganitu field view from the side

The family member who now lives in Japan was actually my late Grandfather’s sister who was kidnapped during the Japanese Occupation of Indonesia, and there she had intermarried with a Japanese man, though our family had lost contact with her Japanese family for almost two decades today.

Hmm… I revelled in the thought that I actually have a Japanese cousin, and would like to see if I could actually trace my Grandpa’s sister’s grandchildren today. But such a possibility is indeed small, if there is any.

Another view of a street in Manganitu

Manganitu forest leading to my ancestor's graveyard

I was appalled when they told us that there is no telephone connection at all in Manganitu even till this day. The only cellular service provider that accepts signal roaming in Sangihe is Telkomsel (GSM), hence you could only expect to bring either your Kartu AS, Simpati, or Kartu Halo. It is an irony indeed that the people in Manganitu had actually gained firsthand access to mobile phone instead of home phone like most of us does. CDMA cellular services is almost unheard of, despite the fact that Sangirese could see them on TV ads everyday.

Though the Telkomsel signal reception was strong in Tahuna city, most of Manganitu had a poor one, which made Uncle R hard to receive SMSes from our family in Jakarta.

A typical house in Manganitu.

Roofing tile-making centre in Manganitu

A dilapidated Dutch house in Manganitu

Regarding the TV shows Sangirese people watched; I was more overwhelmed to find out that almost every Sangirese households have their own parabola, unlike their Javanese counterparts. Hence, apart from the local channels like RCTI, SCTV, and Metro TV, they also had reception for CNN, BBC, HBO, Star Movies, Celestial Movies, and several Filipino TV channels whose names I couldn’t recall.

A Catholic kindergarten+primary school in Manganitu

View of the school from the front, still being renovated

We went back to our inn at Tahuna at 5.30 that day, because after dark ojeks could seldom be found. A ride thru the mountains after sunset is not advisable either, due to the lack of lighting in the road connecting Tahuna and Manganitu. To give you an idea of what it looked like to ride thru the mountain roads in the dark, you should imagine a ride thru the mountainous roads from Lembang to Puncak in West Java without streetlights at all.

Ship docked amidst the mangroves in Manganitu coast

All in all, the ride by ojek back from Manganitu to Tahuna was the more enjoyable one, because from the motorcycle I rode I could see varying views of the sun setting on the sea with various tinges of red. It was an awe-inspiring view indeed.

Too bad the motorcycle was accelerating fast enough that I managed to get only a few proper pictures of the sunset. Sorry everyone, no sunset pictures for today’s stock, because there are still 12 days to go!

I made a small wish to myself that day though, so that I could take a girlfriend in the future to see the sun setting in Sangihe together…… Oh, how romantic!

~to be continued~

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"The Lord's Prayer" in Sangirese Language

The entire Google search turns up with zero result on the Sangirese language version of this most widely-known Christian prayer, so I've decided to post it here to give it a permanent link for everyone to use it freely. I obtained the entire text from the Manganitu Catholic church in Sangihe Besar Island, North Sulawesi, hence the copyright fully belongs to Vatican.

BAPA KAMI

Amang i kami su sorga, bebatugang areng
Detako kararatuangu, penata elangu

Kebi ku seng naghuanting, kere ikekapulunu
Su sorga lai su dunia, mawu ma kawasa

Alamate elo ini, ampunge dosang kami
Ikami manga lai mengampung dosang sendinganeng

Dorong sirungeng i kami, bou patiku silaka
Kariang kamang su tengonu, mawu dengele i kami

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Day 3: The travel to Tomohon

~This is part of the Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle, a journey by Toshi and Uncle R in their ancestors' homeland in North Sulawesi, which is located just on the Indonesian border facing southern Phillipines. Date of journal: Sunday, 9 March 2008 ~

Seriously, even till this day I still couldn’t believe meeting an old schoolfriend from SD Don Bosco (Pondok Indah, Jakarta)…. in Manado. The world is indeed a small place.

Hence on the Sunday morning, Uncle R and I went for the morning mass at the newly-built Manado Cathedral (which ended at 9 AM) and from 9 onwards I parted with Uncle R as he chose to stay in the hotel room.

Then I went with Cecep –who had been waiting in front of the chapel across the street— for the walk around the town.

We walked from Cathedral to the Manado Boulevard (which wasn’t located far away) and walked for as many kilometres as I could recall. But since the Boulevard itself was a seaside road, I kinda enjoy it because it reminded me of my walk in Sanur, Bali (and the memories there, gee-hee).

Cecep and I chatted about a lot of things, which were unfortunately, private enough that I couldn’t write them down here. But there were several things I could disclose though, such as when we reminisced our good old days together; playing pranks to our teachers, talking about girls and TV dramas and WTC attack (2002 was the year when I left that school), how I helped saving him from his bad grades, and how much pains he went thru knowing that I moved to Bali for my second year of SMP (Secondary School).

Enough of that, it’s getting kinda gay here already.

Haha… And so Cecep told me that he was now majoring Anthropology in Sam Ratulangi University (said to be the public university with the most affordable tuition fee in Indonesia), and how he had outlined a plan for the next several years for him to take a Master’s degree in Connecticut, and then work as a documenter for TV stations like Discovery Channel or National Geographic Channel.

I could recall very well that Cecep failed his History exams during our SMP years, and I asked him how he could overturn that malaise into strength, as he now majored in Anthropology (which is a branch of the History discipline).

He told me in length about how he enjoyed majoring in Anthropology as it helped him to gain a new insight to the world around him. I really couldn’t believe that this was the Cecep I knew several years back. He had changed.

Before we took the mikrolet to the bus terminal, we stopped by at the Manado Town Square (locally called Mentos) as Cecep had to withdraw some money from the ATM.

There was a security guard standing by the mall entrance with a bag scanner on his hand, but strangely enough, he did not use the item to scan the visitors’ bags. He just let Cecep and I passed thru him without checking our satchels. Oh dear, Manado would be too easy to be targeted by the terrorists, then.

Taking a look inside, I felt that somehow the inner architecture is bloody familiar.

“The developer of Mentos is the same with Citos (Cilandak Town Square, in South Jakarta),” Cecep told me.

Oh, of course! No wonder they look the same!

Don’t those people have any spark of creativity or something, building their malls’ inner architecture to be exactly the copies of each other, I asked myself.

One thing I soon learned to love about Minahasan people was that they frequently used the word “Terima kasih” to customers, a thing rarely found in Jakarta.

After two days there, I made an assumption to myself that in comparison to Javanese cities, Manado was as hot as Surabaya, as ancient as Yogyakarta, and as “beachy” as Anyer.

From Boulevard we took Mikro (which is the shortened form of Mikrolet, and the equivalent of Angkot in Jakarta), as I agreed to went along with him to his uncle’s hotel in Tomohon, a high-altitude city located 40 km southwest of Manado.

The Mikro cost each of us Rp1,750 when we alighted at the Manado suburb terminal. From that terminal we took the sardine -like bus that heads for Tomohon.

I was astounded to know that the trip from Manado to Tomohon only cost us Rp 5,000!

“Surprised?” Cecep grinned, “Manado has a hell lot more surprises than you could manage to handle”

It was a very enjoyable ride thru the mountain; with all the greeneries seen as far as I could remember which was a recompense for the scorching hot atmosphere inside the bus. Then Cecep told me about two of the most “indigenous” things to Manado, which are RW and Cap Tikus.

RW (read: Air-Way), which is the local term for Roasted Dogs (I choose to call it the acronym for “Roasted Woof”), is the most favoured local dish. He told me that he loved eating RW, despite the warm, tingling sensation it brings to the throat of the eater.

“Didn’t you pity those dogs, Cep?” I asked.

“Of course I pitied them at first,” he said, “but the thing is when you see people around you have no problem in eating them, you’ll soon catch up with their mindset too.”

Apart from RW alone, the other odd culinary of Manado is roasted cat.

He then told me about how some of his Muslim friends in Manado have also deliberately eaten pork, cat, and RW (!).

Wow.

I’ve heard about how my Muslim friends in Bali deliberately eating pork, but that was the first time ever I heard about Muslims eating cat. It’s a very curious thing though, because cats are well-known to be the favourite animal of Prophet Muhammad SAW.

If I had stayed in Manado longer, I knew I myself would’ve eaten RW. It all had to do with one’s mindset.

Along the way, I saw a Citraland complex where it adorns a Jesus statue with his arms wide open (comparably the miniature version of the famous one seen in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil).

I was supposed to be impressed seeing that Jesus statue, but I wasn’t. Citraland is well-known everywhere to be making their own sensational statues in their complex. And if you couldn’t imagine what the Manado Citraland looks like, just visualise those Citralands you’ve seen in Outer Jakarta. It doesn’t look very much different apart from them anyway.

Entering Tomohon, we went straight to the Lokon Boutique Resort which was owned by Cecep’s uncle who was a famed economist during the New Order era. The resort was located in Kakaskasen Satu, near the Masehi Injili Kakaskasen Church.

We took one or two pictures there before finally decided that we were hungry enough to head for a lunch at Tomohon KFC. I’ve promised myself that day that I wasn’t going to taste Manado’s food again.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel by using a mikrolet. That was the first time I saw with my own eyes how the passengers were literally being delivered to their own preferred destinations! Really, in North Sulawesi, mikrolets are known to be the equivalent of semi-taxis, because people could order the driver to go to any part of the city at will.

~to be continued~

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Day 2: A bump into an old friend

~This is part of the Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle, a journey by Toshi and Uncle R in their ancestors' homeland in North Sulawesi, which is located just on the Indonesian border facing southern Phillipines. Date of journal: Saturday, 8 March 2008 ~

When I woke up at 8 the next morning, I hurriedly opened our room curtain and I was fascinated to find a bustling city under my feet, but two mountains at the direction of 000º and 090º each.

Wow. My first impression of Manado was how green and tidy it was. And it has an amazing vista on its suburbs, which aroused my curiosity even further.

After having Nasi kuning (yellow-rice fried in kunyit) for breakfast; Uncle R and I headed out to look for Oma Tr’s house.

Oma Tr was apparently a quite well-known figure in Manado since she was the wife of a late acquaintance of a famed General.

Due to her fame, Uncle R was able to locate the house (which was very close to the Jengki fish market) simply by asking at a nearby police station. When we arrived at her home, she was very surprised to see us and gave us a very warm welcome. She wasn’t expecting us at all in the least bit (since we came to North Sulawesi unannounced). Indeed, that was the first time ever that I met any of my paternal grandma’s cousin and I was startled at the striking similarity she bore with my grandma.

She then had a lengthy chit-chat with Uncle R for around two hours. Having never been a skilled conversant, I was mostly left out as I kept on writing stuff they discussed on my worn journal.

Well, although my MP3 player was able to record stuff, it was only able to hold up 512 MB (or about 1 hour of .wav file) and moreover, 90% of it was filled with my fave Jack Johnson and John Mayer songs. Hence my opting for the traditional method of journal-writing (and I had no PDA!)

From that conversation we discovered that some of our known relatives (especially the one in Bitung, a Muslim-dominant city 40 km southeastern of Manado) have been deceased over the last few years, considerably making our family-tree completion more difficult.

I also learned that Manado has recently been urbanized by Gorontalonese migrants, an apparent fact that has been miffing the city mayor over the last few years.

At 11, we bade farewell to Oma Tr then we had an estimated 3 km walk to the Manado to look for lunch. It had been a while till Uncle R realised that he had forgotten to give the Batik souvenir he had bought for Oma Tr. Oh dear.

It wasn’t really sunny that time, the sky had a cloudy overcast that day, which was presumably the reason we could enjoy our 3 km walk to the seaside Boulevard that took us around 45 minutes or so.

I remembered very well about the warnings I heard from Dad (and a couple of Manadonese friends) that dogs (yes, those bone-lover canines) were displayed on the streets as roasted dogs.

I was indeed puzzled as I was unable to spot any of the “roasted dogs”, and Uncle R confirmed my doubts when he told me that such facts were merely exaggerated. Roasted dogs could only be found “deep” in the markets only when you look for them. Haha, no wonder…

In any case, Uncle R just advised me to ask the ingredients of whatever food that they served, just to confirm the facts right.

Trying the local food was something I was very eager to do but apparently, it turned out later that my expectations were too high. Uncle R and I ordered the same menu: a tuna (they call it cakalang) portion and a plate of bitter papaya leaves, and two other Manado-specialty lauk (side dish)…. and I was left with a not-very-good impression of Manado food.

They’re all spicy!! Truly I tell you, the waiters claimed that they weren’t, but it was a matter of fact that was readily available to the highly sensitive tongues of Uncle R and me; which was why Uncle R ordered an extremely sweet es kacang to counter the spiciness. I myself ordered 3 bottles of Tehbotol (a bottled tea brand).

I then decided that it would be my last encounter with Manado food: I was thinking of going to KFC for dinner.

After lunch, we brought some pastries and headed back to Hotel Wisata for a quick nap.

At around 4 PM, we went to Sam Ratulangi’s Gramedia bookstore to have a quick look at what stock of books did they have there. Not that much, really. Comparably, half of the Bintaro Plaza’s stock. And the books there are more pricey! An average comic in Jakarta would cost Rp 12,000 while the same one in Manado cost me a pocket-sucking Rp 13,500.

That’s still a small difference to another book Uncle R found, which had a much wider price gap ratio of 59:74!

We then headed to the cathedral to look for tomorrow’s Sunday Mass schedule and *gasp* I found my old schoolfriend Cecep there!

It actually happened quite funny. He bumped to me as I was entering the chapel door.

Then I heard someone calling, “Toshi!”

I continued walking.

Then he called my name again, a lot of ppl in Manado are named Toshi anyway (my real name is a Christian-sounding one), hence I ignored that call.

When I glanced onto my back, I was surprised to find my old matey Cecep waving his hand to me!

I gaped in amazement, having bumped to an old schoolfriend thousands of kilometers away from Jakarta.

We used to go to the same Catholic primary school of SD Don Bosco in the elite Pondok Indah district of South Jakarta together, and hence I was very surprised to find him in Manado by chance. We chatted for a while and I found out that he had moved to the reputed Sam Ratulangi University of Manado –said to be the most affordable in Indonesia in terms of tuition fee— because he loved his hometown of Manado.

I wasn’t really enjoying Manado that time, despite having been a quite clean and safe city (it was presumably because of my bad encounter with the food) so I was surprised to find out that Cecep loved his hometown!

Well, everyone has their own sense of belongings, don’t they?

Cecep and I agreed to traverse the city on the next day (Sunday), and hence I was delighted to find that Uncle R had no obliging schedule on that day.

Cecep and I parted as he went for his scheduled Saturday evening chapel and I went for a dinner with Uncle R.

“It really is a small world, isn’t it?” Uncle R commented, having seen me encountering Cecep.

“It is,” I grinned.

We went to the beach to see the sunset (which was… *unfortunately* partially blocked by the bloody clouds). I actually expected Manado to resemble Anyer, you know, the typical Jamaican-typical coastal city with the sandy beaches and coconut trees aplenty? But it wasn’t.

Manado was getting more and more urbanised these days; and the proof itself was prevalent in the Boulevard area.

Uncle R noticed a seaside restaurant he had gone to 12 years ago, and now, that so-called seaside restaurant is 500 metres away from the sea!

(In case you don’t get it, my last sentence above meant that 99% of the Boulevard area was reclaimed.)

Such a pity, really. The city developers must have had something like a Kuta-Bali typical street on their minds when developing this Boulevard district of Manado. Yep, I noticed the resemblance… Not a really bad idea honestly, except for the fact that they were too money-oriented (and not people-oriented) when planning this particular part of the city

Both me and Uncle R stuck to our unspoken agreement of not having another dish of Manado speciality as we went to Es Teler to have some baso-dumpling noodles for dinner before heading straight back to the hotel at 8:30.

~to be continued tomorrow~

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Day 1: The flight to Manado

~This is part of the Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle, a journey by Toshi and Uncle R in their ancestors' homeland in North Sulawesi, which is located just on the Indonesian border facing southern Phillipines. Date of journal: Friday, 7 March 2008 ~

So I was wrong back then when I wrote here that Manadonese have reverted their city name’s spelling from “Manado” to “Menado”. I found out that the correct spelling was still "Manado" because the plane ticket still spelled it that way. Hence my use of the correct spelling now.

Uncle R and I arrived at the Soekarno-Hatta airport at 14:00 while we were supposed to be having a 19:00 flight. That meant that we had plenty of time to burn. Great. I started to regret not bringing my “Eldest” novel. It was a five-hour wait spent by reading the newspaper(s!), some printed Wikipedia stuff I brought along, and Jack Johnson on my mp3 player.

If you wanna have some grub for your hours-long flight to any part of Indonesia, I strongly advise you against taking a Lion Air flight. Before Uncle R and I board the airplane, we had some meal because Uncle R had forewarned me that the Lion Air flight we were going to take was a meal-less one, i.e. The Lion Air flight does not provide any free food to Economy-class passengers!

At around 19:15 (I checked my wristwatch that time), the Lion Air plane took off from Soekarno-Hatta, bound for Sam Ratulangi International Airport in Manado.

Lion Air Prayer Booklet

Uncle R was right: they only provided a flimsy glass of Aqua. How cheapskate of them, eh?

At 22:15 WIB (23:15 WITA), we arrived at Sam Ratulangi International Airport which was located on the outskirts of the North Sulawesi capital.

First picture I took in Manado

In the airport, I saw this, which should be set as an example for other international airports across Indonesia (esp. Jakarta) to follow

Elevator for the handicapped

From there, we took a Dian taxi to the most inexpensive hotel we could find. Uncle R was originally inclined for Gran Puri Hotel, but the taxi driver recommended us to a newly-built Wisata Hotel which was strategically located in the centre of the city. I was honestly surprised to find out that Uncle R was quite adept in the Manado dialect. Haha... He had been here before, 12 years ago.

Note: From here onwards I use the WITA (GMT+8) timing system.

One thing I first noticed in the Manado taxi was that they use a Kijang taxi that looks like this:

Dian Taxi in Manado

Instead of the sedan-type taxi that Jakarta has. They also don’t use the fare-metre in their taxis, but negotiate the price instead with the passenger.

At around midnight we arrived in Wisata Hotel, where we bathed straightaway.

I was starving that time, and Uncle R and I tried to look for some meal to no avail. All the stores were closed after 10 PM: a thing definitely nonexistent in Jakarta! I was then forced to sleep with an empty stomach. Poor me…

~to be continued tomorrow~

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A gentle reminder: In my strict self-adherence to the anonymous-blogging-policy, I wouldn’t upload any images that show me or any of my family members; hence this whole Minahasa-Sangihe Chronicle will lack any facial pictures of me or Uncle R. The individual names that I am going to post on this blog, with exception to those who aren’t related to me by blood, are going to be altered for pseudonyms or initials. However, all events, happenings, and place names are still going to be recounted exactly as they were.

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