Home | Prologue | Travel Logs | FAQ | ContactIndonesia SINGLE IN SULAWESI
 could close my eyes and cover my ears, but there was no escaping the distinct smell of leaded gas and clove cigarettes. I had just landed in Manado in the northern tip of Sulawesi to spend of the last five weeks of my around-the-world trip. Manado doesn’t really get many tourists, aside from the few who venture up for the scuba diving, so hardly anyone, even the taxi drivers spoke any English apart from two well-known and often-practiced phrases. The first, “Hello Mister”, was usually screamed by any kid who spotted foreigner, invariably a phrase left over from the Dutch who taught Indonesians the proper way to great a white-skinned man, or woman, for that matter. The second phrase was “Economic Crisis.” It was 1998, and although I was there after the major riots in Jakarta (which I’d like to remind my parents was a whole 2 months earlier and 2 islands away), Indonesia was still struggling. I changed $200, tried to find room in my pack to stuff the 4-inch wad of bills, the highest denomination being roughly equivalent to $5, got into a taxi, and hoped I was heading in the right direction.
I had just finished a week in Thailand with friends and a few days in aseptic Singapore, so I was feeling a bit homesick and was actually nervous about being on my own for such a long time in such a strange and wild place. It didn’t help that I was still suffering terribly from a bug I had picked up in India. So when I arrived at the hotel, I trudged up the stairs to my room, plopped on the bed, resumed the fetal position, and felt sorry for myself. Don’t worry, the trip improved from there.
Since the only things I really had on my agenda for Indonesia was to do some jungle trekking, I made my way down the island from the Christian/Animist north to the Muslim/Animist north-central, and finally toward the animist central region of the island. Religion seemed to be very important to people, and when I finally learned enough Indonesian to start a conversation, it more often that not came up. Most people hadn’t heard of Judaism, and one man went so far to assert that I really was a Christian. When I tried to set him straight he answered “You’re a Moses Christian, I’m a Jesus Christian.” Fine, I could live with that. In fact, it was just one of the oddities that people found about me. No one does anything alone in Indonesia, and certainly not woman, so as a single gal traveling around, insisting that I wanted to go trekking alone in the jungle, I was met with some strange looks. “Dari mana? Where are you from?” they inquired. I tried to tell them I was American but they wouldn’t believe me. “No, you’re Latin American, from Mexico, right? Americans are tall and blond, you’re short and dark, so you’re Latin American.” Fine, I could live with that.
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