Ambon

Hello Mister! - wow, 100th time today!

The last day in Bungus I surfed alone - and saw my first dolphin! Actually I almost surfed over it. The following day I jumped on the back of a tiny moped and was driven to the airport.

The Padang airport is a place with four security checks, zero restaurants and a lot of frustrated people. Apparently the flights of all the local companies are at least one hour late. Mine was two. After one hour wait there was an announcement about something (in Indonesian) and everybody queued up, so I followed their example. At the check in counter I was offered a small pack of Oreos and an ice-tea. It's incredible the staff was able to read my mind - it was just what I wanted! The remaining hour I sat really happy with my cookies and tea.

I switched planes in Jakarta. The airport was huge, but I somehow just wondered around following the transfer-signs and got to an area full of Lion Air gates. After sitting there a while a cleaning guy showed up and started pestering me. I tried to send him on his way, but he was really determined on looking at my tickets. After I showed them to him we were accompanied by a soda-machine repair guy and two security officers. None of them spoke English. Luckily my ten-word Indonesian vocabulary was enough for me to translate their cacophony in to a conversation, where soda- and cleaning guys argued with the security guys that I was at the wrong terminal. In the end security guys agreed with Mr. Swiffer and Mr. Coke and accompanied me to the correct terminal. I caught the plane just in time and headed here, to Ambon.

Ambon is the capital of Maluku province. Five hundred years back Ambon was first taken over by the Portugese, then by some muslims from South, then by the Dutch, then a bit by the British and then again by the Dutch. The reason for the amazing amount of curiosity shown by the Europeans was the once so expensive spices, cloves and nutmeg, which only grew here. After the Dutch managed to smuggle out some unprocessed seeds to closer locations things cooled off a bit, and now Maluku exports mostly Cassanova and Sago (don't know what they are, I just copied something from wikipedia). I've been here now two days and seen zero pale-faces.

I'm not so thrilled about Ambon. The city is crammed with traffic, noisy and dirty. This seems to be the case with most Indonesian cities, however here even the sights are limited, although Lonely Planet says that near by there are beautiful spots to enjoy the beauty of the nature. I'm here waiting for a boat to take me away, which hopefully is going to happen tomorrow. I bought a ticket for a Pelni to take me to the Banda-islands, which are about eight hours South from here. From there I hope to travel further South to Kei-islands, and continue further on my route by making a turn to West, hopping from island to island until I'm close enough to South-Sulawesi, where my flight takes me to Vietnam in 13th of April.

I heard that in my following destinations places with Internet or even mobile-signal are limited or even non-existent, so it might take a while before I get anything here again. So I'm most likely alive even though silent.

Now I'm off to find a guy with a bicycle to take me to my hotel (which is Hotel ASRI, 100 000/night by the way). Till next time!
-L