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17 October 2009
Above: Photos found on internet showing Lionair crew playing with the crash axe. Today we flew Lionair (not Ryanair) from the somewhat Christian city of Manado to the more Muslim city of Makassar (or Ujung Pandang) arriving at the beautiful new Sultan Hasanuddin airport. Now for some amusing facts, factoids or urban myths about Lionair: […]
16 October 2009
After our two dives today, we transferred to Novotel Grand Kawanua on the mainland. Kim’s work gets a large discount on its corporate plan … a beautiful room in a new gorgeous hotel with a big pool was NZD45 (about EUR22). It didn’t take long before we were in the rain shower washing off two […]
16 October 2009
Above: Going back through the mangroves after our dive. Today, we had two dives at Sachiko II which was another beautiful wall dive, much like yesterday with plenty of variety. Second dive was the House Reef. Even after Sipadan, I was excited to see turtles and barracudas. Sadly it was too early in our diving […]
15 October 2009
We had two days of diving with Living Colours in Bunaken. Today we had two dives at Aluang Banua and Lekuan II. The dive sites were all beautiful walls with plenty of variety in the marine life. Most importantly the divemasters were very professional … they gave good pre-dive briefings and always emphasised that this […]
15 October 2009
Above: Church and village on Bunaken island. It was bright when I opened my eyes. I looked at my phone-clock and it said 0611. But twenty minutes after, my alarm hadn’t sounded. Upon checking, I had misread the clock and it was in fact only 0511. As Manado and Bunaken is in the eastern end […]
14 October 2009
Above: Boats arrive through a clearing in the mangrove. After our errands in the city of Manado, it was time for us to go to Bunaken for a two night stay and two days of diving. We had hoped for a slightly longer stay but it wasn’t meant to be due to yesterday’s morning flight […]
14 October 2009
Above: Chinese temple in Manado. We were due to be picked up at 2pm for our boat ride to Bunaken. That left time for a leisurely breakfast and a walk around town … there’s only really a Chinese temple to visit and that wasn’t quite worthwhile as it wasn’t as impressive as the ones in […]
13 October 2009
Killing time Today we fly to Manado in the north-eastern arm of Sulawesi. We had to checkout at 1000 as it was the required time for Tune Hotel. It wasn’t too much trouble to fill in the time till the 1550 departure: A leisurely breakfast at the patio of the hotel. Walked over to the […]
12 October 2009
When I booked my tickets 7 months ago, the flight from Kuala Lumpur to Manado was an early morning one. And that would require us to fly from Kuching to Kuala Lumpur today (a day in advance) and overnight there beforehand. But a schedule change a few weeks after we made the booking shifted tomorrow’s […]
8 October 2009
It is 3am. Kim is rather sick from both ends … it is like Revenge of the Pharoah meets Linda Blair from Exorcist, the movie. We went to the doctor just to satisfy ourselves that the dehydration isn’t too severe that it would affect his kidneys (which were recently impacted by another event). We don’t […]