A week in North Sulawesi, Indonesia

[KennethT]

2 hours ago, Shelby said:

SO INTERESTING!!!!  

 

I didn't know nutmeg is a fruit, either.  Is the flesh any good to eat?

 

You are a real trooper to have been that sick and still carry on!

I gather the flesh is not eaten.  Given that in the area, people eat just about anything they can find, I guess that means it does not taste good at all.

 

Thanks - I was feeling a bit better at this point, but all that activity caught up with me a bit later and I found my breaking point... stay tuned!!!  Theoretically, it should have taken a half hour to walk to the waterfall from teh village, but goign there and back (and spending maybe 10 minutes at the waterfall itself) took like 2.5 hours because it was so overgrown and slippery.  Some of the sections had the path being only about 8" wide, and you're between the steep cliff of the hillside on one side and a 40 foot (minimum) dropoff on the other.  It was a bit harrowing in spots, especially when I'd get a minor cramp once in a while.

Edited July 12, 2023 by KennethT (log)

[kayb]

As always, an absolutely fascinating trip, and what gorgeous food! I'm so sorry y'all were sick.

[johnnyd]

Outstanding report KennethT. I've learned a lot this AM, like there are so many more sambals than the jar of sambal oelek I always have. And as usual with eGullet travel threads, I really feel like I'm there. Thank you.

 

A shame you guys aren't partial to ripe papaya. In Brazil, my Mom would serve up some ripe papaya whenever my stomach acted up and I just about instantly felt better. Squeeze a some lime juice on it. Ginger is miraculous here too. Whenever my throat starts getting scratchy and a cold is nigh, I peel a coin of fresh ginger and chew it up. Works every time.

 

Blog on!

[KennethT]

Next stop was the main market in the village of Tomohon.  Tomohon is a much larger village than the previous ones and is quite charming - it's considered the capital of the Minahasa highland region.  Driving through it, I was a little jealous that we didn't stay there instead of Manado!  Unfortunately, since the Kali waterfall took much longer than expected, our guide started racing a bit.  Even though we had told him that if we run out of time, we can just see fewer waterfalls, he was very proud of his region and insisted that he wanted to show us everything.

 

So we raced through the market.  On the outer perimeter of the market were many fruit vendors selling mangoes and mangosteen!  I was dying to stop and kept trying to tell him, but nope... no time - the purpose of the market trip is to see the "exotic meat" section which is quite famous.  As I wrote previously, the Minahasa highland people have traditionally eaten practically anything they could get - dog, monkey, bats, python snakes, etc.  Personally, while I understand that different cultures have different tastes, etc., it wasn't a huge priority of mine to gawk at the exotic meats.  I would have much rather spent a little less time in that section and more actually picking up some fruit and looking through the rest of the market. Oh well....  We were able to get some shots on the fly...

 

Some leafy greens and around there I swear I saw kencur, which I had been looking to bring home.

 

More greens and cinnamon on the left.

 

A vendor selling cakes - on the left are baked and the right are fried.  I don't know about the baked ones (we were walking and talking fast) but she was frying the ones on the right at the market.  We bought one of each.  Very tasty, although I have little idea of what it was.  I definitely tasted palm sugar and cinnamon.  I would love to have them again or have talked more with the vendor.

 

 

Green tomatoes, chillies, shallots, onions, potatoes

 

Some exotic meats.... in the middle are two types of bats.  When we got to this section, our guide was disappointed that many of the vendors weren't there - he said there are tons of vendors selling various stuff on Saturdays.

 

And here is probably why every place we have been cooks the crap out of all the fish:

 

 

 

 

Fish, fish, everywhere and not a cube of ice.

 

After racing through the market, I started getting a bit more intestinal distress.  But no time for that, back to the car!  As we were headed out of Tomohon, our guide stopped and picked up a couple Chinese style buns filled with pork.  My wife said the chilli sauce made a big difference, but my stomach definitely was not up for it at the moment.

 

 

 

The next couple of waterfalls were really disappointing.  We'd get halfway down the trail only to find the result of some kind of mudslide, the rest being completely impassable. It was frustrating to be able to hear it but not go the extra few hundred yards to turn the corner to see it.

 

More moss and wet leaf covered stairs

 

Look at this giant bamboo!  Oh and it had also started raining.....

 

 

This is the end of the line.  You could hear teh waterfall off to our right.  By the way, without those handrails, we never would have gotten that far!!!!

 

Back up the trail to the car to go to the next waterfall....  or not....

 

There's a trail under there somewhere!!!!  We should have brought a machete.

 

Neither my wife nor I even bothered taking any photos of the next one.  For this, the waterfall and trail to it was basically in some guy's backyard and in order to get to see it, you need to rent him as a guide.  I should have been wary since our guide was lauding him as the town superhero - he white water rafts, goes hang-gliding and parachute jumps, etc.  We are not THAT athletic, contrary to what it may look like above. So when he tells us that there is a small stream crossing to get to the trail to the waterfall, I should have stopped us right there.  Surely, his idea of a  small stream crossing would not be the same as mine.  It wasn't.  I thought it was going to be a few inches of water, and mostly lots of rocks you can walk on.  It was a fast moving stream that was about knee deep with a few slippery rocks spread around.  We originally attempted it - we were able to cross the first section (I also didn't realize that this was only the FIRST "crossing") relatively unscathed.  I made it across with my heart beating out of my chest as I almost slipped on those damn rocks 5 times and broke my neck.  My wife's foot slipped off of one rock and she wound up knee deep with her hiking shoes on midway through the crossing.  At that point, I should have insisted that we just turn around and head back, but our guide and our superman guide both insisted that it wasn't much further.  So when we turned the corner and I saw that we'd basically have to wade in the quickly moving river up to our crotches I said I wasn't going any further.  Many years ago I took a nasty fall walking in a similar situation in upstate NY (Ithaca is Gorges!!).  I almost broke my neck when I was 18... there's no way I'd risk it 30 years later!  So I categorically refused to go any further, but atypically, my wife was more adventurous than me, considering she was already wet, she said she'd continue on.  So I sat down on a slippery rock to wait for them, confident that she'd be safe having both guides there.  After they had been gone about 10 minutes, I started having visions of them carrying her back after she twisted an ankle (at the very least).  Luckily, nothing like that happened, but when they did come back I was told they never even made it to the waterfalls because it just became too much and my wife refused to go any further.

 

Once we got back to the car I was really feeling like crap so I told our guide I just wanted to go back to the hotel.  My wife's shoes were dripping wet and my intestinal distress was intensifying.  He understood but was a bit sad.  As we were driving back, I spotted a small waterfall off the side of the road, so we stopped for a minute.

 

 

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was around 7:30 PM and pitch dark.  There was a ton of traffic getting back into Manado.  Like completely standstill.  By the time we got back, we were exhausted and annoyed.  I started my wife's shoes in the process of drying out (yay! the room had a hair dryer!) and we stayed in the hotel for dinner.  My stomach wasn't doing so great but I thought I could handle some chicken soup.

 

 

My wife got the sour fish soup:

Edited July 12, 2023 by KennethT (log)

[liuzhou]

14 minutes ago, KennethT said:

As we were headed out of Tomohon, our guide stopped and picked up a couple Chinese style buns filled with pork.  My wife said the chilli sauce made a big difference

 

She's right. I always eat my baozi with chilli sauce.

 

BTW, do many Indnesian restaurants have Engish menus? I know you were often staying in touristy centres this trip, so wondered if it was just those or more general. Excluding the islandl I know it's tourist only.

[KennethT]

4 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

She's right. I always eat my baozi with chilli sauce.

 

BTW, do many Indnesian restaurants have Engish menus? I know you were often staying in touristy centres this trip, so wondered if it was just those or more general. Excluding the islandl I know it's tourist only.

I can't really say as we didn't go into any restaurants on this trip.  Most of the places we saw were roadside places where the "menu" was basically written on a piece of cardboard and hung on the outside wall of the place facing the road.  Those were all in Bahasa.  The only English I saw anywhere was at the hotel.

 

When we were in Yogyakarta, there was no English anywhere in any of the restaurants we went to (and there were a lot on that trip) - again, English only in the hotel.

 

Every place we went to in Bali, whether it be in the south near the beaches and airport or Ubud in the center, had English menus - but Bali gets a ton of western tourists.  This trip and Yogyakarta see very little western tourists but lots of domestic tourists.

[KennethT]

11 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

She's right. I always eat my baozi with chilli sauce.

 

BTW, do many Indnesian restaurants have Engish menus? I know you were often staying in touristy centres this trip, so wondered if it was just those or more general. Excluding the islandl I know it's tourist only.

I just realized, we went into a restaurant in Tomohon before the market visit.  I didn't bother taking any photos since all we got were a couple of lime juice drinks and our guide wanted a coffee.  Oddly enough, it was some kind of Chinese restaurant (run by Indonesians).  The menu was all Bahasa.

[KennethT]

1 hour ago, johnnyd said:

Outstanding report KennethT. I've learned a lot this AM, like there are so many more sambals than the jar of sambal oelek I always have. And as usual with eGullet travel threads, I really feel like I'm there. Thank you.

 

A shame you guys aren't partial to ripe papaya. In Brazil, my Mom would serve up some ripe papaya whenever my stomach acted up and I just about instantly felt better. Squeeze a some lime juice on it. Ginger is miraculous here too. Whenever my throat starts getting scratchy and a cold is nigh, I peel a coin of fresh ginger and chew it up. Works every time.

 

Blog on!

Thanks.  I'm glad you're enjoying.  Oh yes, there are tons of different sambal - many of which are only used regionally. Although one thing in common with practically all of them is that they're fried.  I have the same jar of sambal oelek, but I dont' consider it Indonesian - first, it's not fried - it's really just crushed chillies and maybe some salt/acid (I don't know if the acid is just something to keep the color bright and doesn't have a flavor purpose).

 

It's funny about the ripe papaya - we both think that it reminds us of sweat. Go figure.  But I agree that adding some lime makes a big difference.  Even better is the typical South Vietnamese treatment - making a paste out of lime juice, salt and chilli and dipping into that! That'll make anything taste good!

 

The ginger tea did work wonders on my stomach, although I did wonder how much was the ginger and how much was the sugar I added to it....

[liuzhou]

Thanks. That's pretty much what I expected. Same here. The only English menus locally are either my translations or in an English dialect incomprehensible to anyone.

 

The tourist places are a bit better - sometimes.

 

[KennethT]

1 minute ago, liuzhou said:

Thanks. That's pretty much what I expected. Same here. The only English menus locally are either my translations or in an English dialect incomprehensible to anyone.

 

The tourist places are a bit better - sometimes.

 

I should have taken a photo of the Chinese restaurant menu.  It was entertaining to see the names of Chinese dishes transcribed into Bahasa!

[liuzhou]

5 minutes ago, KennethT said:

The ginger tea did work wonders on my stomach

 

Ginger is prescribed by the TCM wallahs for gut problems.

 

I've found it effective in the past.

 

Edited July 12, 2023 by liuzhou (log)

[KennethT]

7 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Ginger is prescribed by the TCM wallahs for gut problems.

 

 

This doesn't engender much confidence!!!

[heidih]

Ginger has been a standard suggestion for pregnancy morning sickness here as long as I can remember

[KennethT]

The next day was another transit day.  We're off to the eastern side of the peninsula that has the Tangkoko Nature Reserve, home to a few endemic animals like tarsiers and black macaques.  But first, breakfast at the hotel:

 

Black pepper chicken and some kind of fried vegetable fritter

 

Mee goreng

 

more kue

 

When we arrived at the new hotel (another very small hotel with only maybe 5 or 6 rooms) we were met by the woman I had been corresponding with months before.  Again, there is literally nowhere around to get something to eat other than at the hotel, so all meals are included in the room rate.  The hotel is located right at the edge of the Nature Reserve.  The only other things in the area are a couple of homestays for other people who wanted to see the reserve.  So, she wanted to know what types of food we liked so that they could have everything ready for us.  As always, I said that we had wanted local food as much as possible.  I also asked her if there were any markets in the area that had kencur, if it was used in the local cooking.  She verified that it was used, and when we arrived she presented me with over a pound of it that she picked up on her own time!!!!  How sweet is that?!?  Once we got back to Manado, I made sure to wash it thoroughly so that I wouldn't have any problems importing it once we got home.

 

One piece of kencur

 

Anyway, we got there at lunch time, so we stuck our bags in our room and then went to lunch.

 

 

Looking out over the Nature Reserve from the restaurant

 

Corn fritter, with chilli sauce and ketchup

 

Chicken curry

 

At some point in our email exchange I had mentioned that kang kong (water spinach) was my favorite vegetable, so here it is!

 

It is around this time that while I'm at maybe 85% now, my wife is starting to feel her own intestinal problems.  But she was a real trooper and persevered!

 

Our first tour in the nature preserve was that evening, to see the nocturnal tarsiers.  After walking for maybe a half hour, our guide took us to this tree, which is one of the homes for the tarsiers:

 

 

And then we saw them!!!

 

 

They are so interesting looking - and they're a marsupial. They're the world's smallest primate.

 

We also saw a blue tarantula:

 

And a black tarantula:

 

After thoroughly checking each other for bugs when we got back to the room, we went for dinner.....

Edited July 14, 2023 by KennethT (log)

[ElsieD]

I just found your blog and read the whole thing.  Fascinating.  I don't know anything about tarsiers, (I'm about to educate myself) but they are awful cute.  Thank you so much for this.

Edited July 12, 2023 by ElsieD
Fixed a typo (log)

[KennethT]

Dinner that night...

 

Some type of corn soup

 

I think this was beef rendang - a bit on the sweet side for me, but otherwise, really well done. Nicely caramelized which is a hallmark of a good rendang.

 

I thin this was eggplant in some kind of curry.  It was tasty regardless of what it was!

 

The next morning we were out the door early to meet our guide for the 6:30AM tour of the reserve.  Our guide specialized in finding the black macaques while another guide we met up with specialized in finding birds, however both knew how to find just about everything that lived there.  It turned out that the guides are also paid by a researcher from a university in NY (he never told me which university) to track the animals every day, keep tabs on them and take notes.  The researcher would come every few months to study the animals further.

 

We saw a lot of these macaques.  Unlike the ones in Bali, these ones are not aggressive at all and barely acknowledged us which I was happy about.  We spent quite a bit of time following a few different families around as they went about their morning.

 

We also stumbled upon where a pair of owls roost.  In addition to specializing in finding and observing the macaques, our guide also specialized in taking cell phone photos through a pair of binoculars!

 

 

Kingfisher

 

This is a bear cuscus - a marsupial who was at the top of this ridiculously tall tree.  You could barely see him without the binoculars.

 

We got back to the hotel probably around 10:30 and then they made us breakfast after we cleaned ourselves up.

 

Watermelon and awesome pineapple

 

I think the muffins on the right were banana muffins with chocolate chips.

 

We left to return to Manado after breakfast.  It's around this time that my wife's intestinal distress was intensifying (it actually started in the middle of our tour that morning but she was so excited, she didn't want to leave) and she started feeling exhausted.  So when we got back to Manado, she just crashed in bed and I cleaned all of my kencur.

 

All washed and ready to bring home!

 

Since neither of us were feeling that great, we skipped lunch.  My wife basically stayed in bed the rest of the day/night - she wound up developing the same fever that I had back on the island and was feeling really lousy.

 

The next morning was time to get and up pack to go home.  She was still feeling lousy but at least her fever seemed to have gone away and she was able to keep her intestinal distress under control.

 

Breakfast:

They called this ayam panggang kecap which is translated as soy sauce chicken.  According to some recipes that I could find (all in Bahasa), the chicken is first stewed in a spice paste liquid, then once cooked, brushed with soy sauce and grilled.  I don't think this chicken had ever seen a grill, but it was tasty nonetheless. The greens were called stir fried watercress and was really good.  Still slightly crunchy even while sitting in the buffet chafing dish for a while.

 

After breakfast, we finished packing and headed to the airport.  After an uneventful flight back to Singapore, we had about a 7 hour layover where we had originally planned to go to the Jewel at the airport (but is not in the transit area so you have to go through immigration) and see their indoor forest which we had missed last time and then go to Violet Oon's restaurant there.  Violet Oon is like the Lydia Bastianich of Peranakan food in Singapore and I was really curious to try her version of ayam buah keluak.  But my wife was really feeling like crap so we just wound up going to a pay-per-use lounge where we could find some seats away from everyone else and she could just rest/sleep.  They had quite a few food options but I only took a photo of 1 of the things I had:

 

Noodle soup with fish ball - quite tasty.

 

So, that't it!   All in all, a decent trip somewhat hampered by illness but overall, still totally worthwhile.

 

[rotuts]

@KennethT 

 

thank you for taking us along , and in such detail.

 

you certainly deserve an award  for extraordinary trip planning in advance.

 

not to be too nosey , where and when next ?

Edited July 13, 2023 by rotuts (log)

[liuzhou]

39 minutes ago, KennethT said:

The greens were called stir fried watercress

 

Are you expressing some doubt there?

 

Stir fried watercress is not unknown here, although it is more often added to soups or hotpots. Or is it some similar plant.

 

[KennethT]

15 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Are you expressing some doubt there?

 

Stir fried watercress is not unknown here, although it is more often added to soups or hotpots. Or is it some similar plant.

 

No, no doubt.  I wasn't sure what it was when I had it but I was also a bit distracted as I was concerned for my wife so not really paying attention.  I didn't bother translating the sign in front of the chafing dish until recently, so at the time I didn't know if it was a type of water spinach or something else.  It had the word "air" in the name, which means water, so I figured it either grew in water or had water in the name.

[Anna N]

On 7/12/2023 at 12:46 PM, KennethT said:

This doesn't engender much confidence!!!

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater if I were you.

[Anna N]

Thanks a million for this. I found it so interesting and I think you and your wife are troopers for carrying on when you felt so ill.  

[KennethT]

10 hours ago, Anna N said:

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater if I were you.

Oh, I recognize what ginger can do.... but @liuzhou and I have similar feelings on TCM, so that comment was more of a joke than anything else.

[kayb]

Inquiring minds want to know…did you get back through customs with your produce? And what will you do with it?

[KennethT]

12 minutes ago, kayb said:

Inquiring minds want to know…did you get back through customs with your produce? And what will you do with it?

whoops... sorry - I completely neglected to follow through about this... mostly because it was a non-event.  I had done a LOT of research prior to the trip as to what I could and what I could not bring back.  In addition to the kencur (a type of ginger, which is allowed in hand luggage without permit), I had wanted to bring back some fresh chillis since the ones in Indonesia are different from most everywhere else I've seen.  However, all parts of the chilli (fruit, seeds, plants) are currently prohibited to bring back under any circumstances.  I may have been able to get a permit to ship a plant back (not carry in luggage) but it would require a phytosanitary certificate which is hard to come by and can be expensive.  Same for seeds.  Or, I could ship non-certified plants or plant parts to my local USDA where they would be inspected for pests/diseases and then finally shipped to me at home but that required a LOT of paperwork, I'd have to find a place to ship them to the US while in Indonesia, and there's a strong possibility it could be rejected after all that.

 

Theoretically, I'd have to declare my kencur that I brought back in my hand luggage when going through immigration and then I'd have to visit the USDA window for them to inspect it for dirt/pests.  My wife and I both have Global Entry (which saves a LOT of time at US immigration) and, theoretically, the kiosk you use when entering should ask you a bunch of questions about declaring stuff.  I don't know if the kiosks weren't working right or whatever - it recognized me as soon as I stepped up to the machine (it uses facial recognition) but didn't ask any questions whatsoever, and there are no longer any paper declaration forms that there used to be years ago (I asked).  There also was no USDA window, office or anything else I could find.  After the kiosk, there was a CBP (customs and border protection) agent who just asked my name and when he saw it on the list, just waved me through no questions asked.  To be honest, there was a relatively long line and it seemed like he just wanted to get everyone through ASAP.  After that, there were no other customs agents around to even ask questions of and the hallway just dumped me into baggage claim and I didn't see any customs agents after leaving that area either.  About a year ago, I was a little addicted to watching a show that showed the CBP at work detecting and catching people bringing in illegal drugs, money, plants, you name it.  They are really good at it, but it seemed like they targeted flights coming from specific countries or if they had received a tip that there was a person of interest on a certain flight.  In my case, arriving from Singapore where basically everything is illegal and punishable by death, they didn't consider that a high priority for inspection.

 

Wow!  That was a really long answer to part of your question.... sorry for my rambling.  I definitely have a habit of going into WAY too much detail.

 

In any case, I got my kencur home with no problems.  Even if I had visited a USDA office, I was confident  that it would pass inspection since I thoroughly washed each piece individually to make sure all traces of soil and pests were gone (there were no pests and almost no soil to begin with).  I then put all of the pieces on a white towel which I shook around which should have made any remaining bugs visible.  I had come prepared with ziplock freezer bags and paper towels to line them, and put my washed and dried pieces in the bag.

 

When I got home, I put most of the pieces in the freezer - like galangal, kencur freezes fine - the only thing that changes is the texture but it gets ground up into a spice paste anyway so that doesn't matter.  A couple of the pieces were rooting already, so I stuck them in some coco coir with a very weak hydroponic solution and have it under lights in my apartment.  I'm hoping I'll get some new roots/shoots, then I'll have a never ending (although supposedly very slow growing) supply!

[heidih]

I think the farmers of America appreciate your honesty and care  -pestations are a huge problem. So no adorable USDA sniffer beagles in their green vests vetting your luggage at arrivals?  I live in an agricutural state and crossing California border is an inspection situation.  Looking forward to seeing you use your bounty.