Pink Beaches and Dragons

Jakarta – Labuan Bajo. A Travel Log.

Selamat Datang, dear readers!

We have just returned from Bali, and I thought I’d share some impressions of our trip with you. Not from Bali, but from the first part: Labuan Bajo.

This post is too long for email and will be clipped. Best read it in the app or on the webpage.

We arrived in Jakarta (CDG–DOH–CGK) on the 28th of June in the evening and after a short taxi ride (60 minutes), we crashed pretty hard. We slept in the next day, hello jet lag, skipped lunch, and went straight to dinner.

The place, Genki Sushi, was not our first choice and there are better restaurants around, but that would have meant driving further, so we opted for the quickest fix. It was OK. Sustenance was had.

Unlike sleep, which I (we) had little during the night. Around 4:40 am when I was about to doze off, I heard the sound of prayers, and I thought, I might as well read some War and Peace, which I did, and then fell asleep.

When I woke up, it was time to go to a birthday lunch with the family. All you can eat at Hachi Grill. It was enak (tasty) and I ate my fair share during those 1.5 hours. We skipped dinner that day…

On the third day, the jet lag was almost gone, but we still had some trouble adjusting to meal times. We visited the Arcade at Gandaria City and my son amassed some 1000 tickets from one machine where you need to drop a tower of coins down a chute by timing the drop of a single coin. (Can’t get much with a thousand tickets.) The huge tower of coins was sooooo close to the edge, but in the end, it refused to topple and we left it for the next player to reap the reward. The RamenYA! was bad. Avoid.

The next day we were ready for dinner, without falling asleep, and so we went to… “Paulaner Brauhaus.” A German restaurant, you ask? Yes. Indeed. Bavarian even, and I can say the taste is more authentic than any German restaurant I visited in France, which is, quite frankly, bizarre. Unfathomable, but true. I had, in best Carter fashion, a brezn, with butter, and of course, Gulaschsuppe, Wiener and Nürnberger Bratwürstl, Debreziner, Schweinshaxn mit Sauerkraut, and to wash it all down, a litre of Paulaner Dunkel. Prost. Overall, it was good, but not as good as “Die Stube.”

What the heck? All we do is eat, sleep, eat, repeat? Pretty much!

On the fifth day, two things were imminent. Our flight to Labuan Bajo, and my weekly post, which I had started in France and merely needed to finish: A recap post about my ongoing recording of War and Peace, using my iPad and the Opera browser (since it has built-in VPN).

Page Turners: War and Peace [B1P3C19]

With the post scheduled, we went to the mall (again), and the below commercial caught my eye while waiting to pay for our groceries. We didn’t buy any Star Wars ice cream, though.

The next day, while waiting to be boarded for our flight to Labuan Bajo at Soekarno-Hatta airport, I was skimming through my Notes feed when I saw

Miguel S.

’s note about a 100mg prompt with the word airport. Well, here we go.

Sitting, waiting, yawning, loudspeakers calling passengers, unintelligible, noise, smell, heat, no sleep, someone shouting, children wailing, boarding imminent. Then it starts, more queueing, zone by zone, people queue like people do, everywhere, zoned out, homed in on the gate, the one gate towards their final destination.

The mass is moving, inch by inch, one passenger at a time, into the bus they go, crammed like sardines, the bus departs, another one fills up and leaves to spill its contents onto the runway minutes later before the stairway to the machine that will take us to heaven. For a short while.

100 words, half of it written before boarding, and the other half before take-off.

We arrived at our hotel, Bintang Flores, which is more like a 2–star than the 4–star it claims to be, just in time to make it to the beach for sunset. This was the first time I used my DSLR on this trip. All the shots here are taken with my phone. A selection of the camera ones will follow in a later post. Also, I was the only guy with a DSLR, something that would become glaringly obvious the following day.

But first, some sunset pictures from the very dirty beach next to the hotel. You can’t see the trash in these images. It’s not a beach for swimming, and the hotel has a pool, which we did not want to use either.

A sad sight, the beaches at Labuan Bajo.¹ Plastic and trash everywhere.² Why are we doing this? And then we go and build more hotels, for more trash. I saw locals burn plastic trash outside their homes, the ground littered with trash, and chicken eat out of thrash bins, it’s disheartening, depressive even, and a problem that will only get worse.³

The next day we got up at 6 am for an all-day boat trip, with six stops, including Loh Liang National Park on Komodo Island. I brought my camera. The whole day, I saw four or five other people with DSLRs, and I am counting the ones with tiny lenses, too. There was one other guy on our boat who had a Nikon and a 600mm lens, which is great for wildlife photography. It dwarfed my 24-105mm, and I felt less alone amidst the herd of phonegraphers.

I praised him for bringing such serious focal length and we got to talk. Turns out he was indeed into wildlife photography, had never shot on film, and was going to come back the next day on a private tour, for a bird safari. Very nice guy. We both hoped to see some Komodo dragons that day, swim with some turtles, maybe see some manta rays. As luck would have it, or not, it was mating season for the dragons, which means they were nowhere to be seen, because, as the guide explained, “after bum bum (insert meaningful hand gesture), they go to nest and lie down to sleep.”

Okay. So we went around the National Park for about an hour, images of Komodo bum bum in our minds, cameras (mostly phones, we were the only two with big DSLRs) at the ready, and just when we were about to give up, another group found one (of the thousands of mating Komodo dragons) and so all groups homed in on that one location. Crazy.

A woman with a selfie stick crawled so close, her foot was right next to the dragon’s head. Everyone, phones in hand, surrounded the beast, snapping selfies with it. It was a sad sight. The male, sizable Komodo monitor just lay there, eyes closed, like dead, blinked from time to time, and, lucky for everyone, ignored the throng of foolish humans, including me.

Not too bad for a phone shot. Too close for comfort. Albeit, the guide with his stick was next to me.

Before that sleepy Bum Bum Beast, we had three previous stops, pictured below, along with some snorkelling at the third stop. The first one, Padar Island, involved climbing up some 800 steep steps in scorching heat. The view from the top was magnificent.

If you can, come outside high season, to avoid the masses of tourists. The climb is not too taxing, depending on your fitness level. It is not advised for people with asthma or heart conditions, though, and sure enough, while we were at the top, a guy, about my age, collapsed. It was very hot, and if you are not used to any physical activity, then these 800 steps could be your last. Luckily, the man regained consciousness, and people attended to him, while he was lying under a tree on the ground, recovering. Dramatic start to the day.

After a rapid descent and back on the speed boat, we were off to stop number two: Pink Beach. Nothing much to see here but a beautiful pink beach on a tiny island. We walked up and down the tourist infested sand, took a few pictures, saw a young, tanned woman come my way, patiently waiting for me to finish my shot, before unpacking her drone to take scarcely clad pictures of herself at said pink beach, right there at the end near the rocks (middle picture).

The third stop was at Taka Makassar, a small boomerang shaped tiny island. You can see all of it in the pano shot. We did some snorkeling and wading around in waist deep water. Very nice, but again, too crowded. Also, the current there is extremely strong and if you get caught in it without fins, you’ll be swimming on the spot, or get carried out into the ocean. Best stay in the shallow, or use fins.

I didn’t include any manta ray shots (stop 4), there were none, it was not the season… and at the next spot (stop 5) we didn’t go into the water, not even to swim with the turtles, the sea there was rather rough, with the speed boat pouncing hard on the waves. Someone (not me) almost threw up. Something to consider, if you’re prone to get seasick, speedboats may not be your jam for this trip. Stop 6 we had to skip, due to low tide.

If I were to do such a trip again, it would be best to charter a private yacht without all the other selfie stick wielding tourists. In fact, the very best option would be to stay on said yacht and sail from island to island because there is nothing on Labuan Bajo, absolutely nothing.

We arrived back at the port, soaked, shaken, not stirred, around 16:30h, went back to the hotel, freshened up, and had dinner at the 5-star Sudamala resort, where we were referred to as “outsiders” when the guy checked over his walkie-talkie if there was a table for us.

The food at Wae Rebo was good, but pricey, too pricey for the quality, but better than at Bintang Flores. All in all, the service was very good and the atmosphere was nice.

The next day was to be our last on Labuan Bajo, so we decided to take it easy, had late brunch and Pedro, a cafe you best avoid, total tourist trap, worst food we’ve had on the whole trip, and totally overpriced, service was the slowest ever, waitress forgot what we ordered three seconds after we ordered it, took our order for still water, which never came, and when we asked about it, we were told they have no water.

Long pause. So… you took our order, have us wait 20 minutes without bringing anything (not even the coffee) and then tell us, you have no water? What? Turns out they only have water from a water dispenser, which is, in case it’s not clear, water, aqua, air in Indonesian, and thus we kindly asked if we could have some of that water instead, which took another 10 minutes to arrive (and we were the only guests, besides another couple). I could go on about the mixup with the food order, but I spare you the details. Suffice to say, it was bad. Really bad, and the coffee was not good. So, Pedro, no-no.

After that disaster, we decided to treat ourselves to some sunset happy hour at Naga bar, inside the 5–star Ayana Komodo resort, which in itself is way over our budget, but outside guests are welcome, and so we went and had some cocktails there, soaking in the view.

Cheers!

After that magnificent sunset, we had dinner at “Taman Laut,” a fish restaurant nearby, which was “OK” but definitely not worthy of the 4.7-star rating on Google. The red snapper was dry and overcooked and the taste of the freshwater fish was tangy. Verdict: Would not recommend.

Thus, our time on Labuan Bajo came to an end, and the next day, we boarded our flight to Bali, which shall be another post.

In closing, I have to admit that I felt bad for the most part of this trip, because of all the traffic, pollution and trash, which means, I will not be returning.

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this little photographic excursion. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

Until next week, when we visit Bali and its cleanest beach in Nusa Dua, and how clean it really is.

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1. https://images.app.goo.gl/cEzeR4TbVNVezgSi6

2. https://www.indonesia.travel/id/en/news/lombok-and-labuan-bajo-komodo-to-clear-garbage-on-land-and-sea.html

3. https://www.undp.org/indonesia/press-releases/beach-clean-labuan-bajo-deputy-minister-environment-and-forestry-and-director-undp-asia-pacific