December 10th
Today is the last day in Indonesia. It took quite a time to pack all stuff.
After we got our things together at 2 o'clock in the morning we went out
but we didn't see and listen to any flying fox. After all it turned out
that the first night we saw the bats was the best.
The sea around here was famous among divers for one of the world's greatest
drop-off. Most of the hotel tourists are either divers or snorkelers. One
of the hotel guiests from Singapore said he saw a bat in the sea and showed
us a picture of batfish. There are several species of fish which is called
batfish but it was probaly a kind of genus Platax.
At 9:30 in the morning we got on a boat. Although it was low tide the sea
around the boat was deep and my rolled up pants got soaked again. It took
about an hour to Manado. The hotel arranged a tax to the airport but we
asked the tax to wait there for 30 minutes and took a wander in and around
Manado market.
Through the internet we found sometimes bats are sold in Manado market.
But on the day the meat section of the market was mostly closed probably
because it was monday and they didn't hunt and slaughter animals. We only
wanted to check the bat species and measure forearms or so on.
Fruits, vegetables, eggs, live chickens and fish were sold at the market.
They sell many dried fishes and small fishes looks like chirimenjako(dried
young sardins) which is familier to us. Only part of the meat section was
open and sold pig head.
When we went back to our taxi the driver went to toilet for another minutes
.While we were waiting a lady came to the back of the taxi and started
to eat doughnuts and recommend us to pick one doughnut or two and we followed
the recommendation.
The check in process at Manado airport was very old-fashioned handing boarding
passes by hand and took quite a long time. The airplane to Singapore was
full. Some other guests of the hotel were on the same plane. As it was
a international flight, no liquid more than 100ml was allowed and I saw
a cup of pudding was confiscated.
On the way back we had to wait for layover at Changi Airport in Singapore
for six hours and we took a nap on couches to killed time.
The End