Labuan Bajo is a fishing town in Manggarai Barat, a district of Nusa Tenggara Timur on the far western edge of Flores Island. It is famous as a point of departure for the Komodo National Park which is made up of eighty islands, including Komodo and Rinca. Approaching from the sea you cannot see the town at all because it is hidden by the boats pulled up on the beach. The main road, Jl. SoekarnoHatta, is parallel to the coastline and only two kilometres long, muddy and full of pot holes in maps on foreign websites it is bizarrely named the "Trans Flores Highway".
This is where you find grocery stores, restaurants, hotels, hostels, travel agents, money changers, dive operators, and of course, salons. One of them was called the Jalil Beauty Salon. Just the name of it made me laugh. Right in front of the window was a large plastic water barrel with a scoop, so when you had your hair washed here you knew it was not with water straight from the tap. It turned out that, as suspected from the sign on the door, the beautician was a tall dark gentleman too!
One thing I did like about this town was there was only one traffic light and it didn't work. The local means of transportation was by angkot (a small van also called a "taksi" here) or ojek28. Their route, of course, was up and down that two kilometre stretch of road, and maybe occasionally up into the hills. Only two providers offered any kind of signal for our telephones.
The airport, with the terrifying name of Bandara Komodo (Komodo Airport), was located 2.5 kilometres to the east of town. Here you could enjoy the dubious pleasure of a cigarette as you were being checked in by airline staff similarly partial to the odd puff on a kretek while assigning your seats. On this occasion the three of us (all girls) were the only local tourists the rest were all westerners. Where are all the locals? "We don't see many, Kak. There are some Indonesian tourists, but they usually are with their bule boyfriends."
Haha! Well, the result of that is, once again, we were the local celebrities. Anyone passing by seemed to want to say hello, although they always spoke to us in English to start with. Jana was even receiving constant calls from "taksi" drivers. In the end we stayed at a hotel up in the hills which we arrived at in the pitch black via a broken dirt track. Because we were not keen to be trekking around and public transport was nonexistent after six o'clock, we had collected an impressive assortment of phone numbers from drivers more than willing to act as our personal afterhour tour guides.
Labuan Bajo was a bule village. It was not just the tourists, but also the hotels, restaurants and dive operators were almost all foreign owned. The hotel we were staying at was run by two Dutch women who had married locals. The Lounge restaurant was owned by an English woman. The dive operators were German, Dutch and English. Even Komodo National Park was run by a foreign company. Some of the islands had seen disputes because they were entirely owned by foreign nationals, including Pulau Bidadari (English), and Pulau Sture (Malaysian).
You could not land on Bidadari, and even if you wanted to visit another part of the island, it was all closed off with fences and "No Entry" signs. One of our favourite activities while travelling is to try the local food wherever we go. But the restaurants here seemed to cater only to western tourists, so the menu was limited mostly to sandwiches, burgers and pasta. The best known restaurant is Gardena, but, when restaurants are in remote locations, half the food on the menu is often unavailable.
"We don't have that, Kakak," said the waiter with a thick East Indonesian accent.
"Why not?"
"We're out, Kakak," was the reply.
And that was it. At The Lounge, a very smart looking new restaurant, the answer was much the same.
My favourite place to eat was Warung Arto Moro which sold Javanese food and whose fridge was amusingly adorned with Delon's signature. I ordered Nasi Ikan for IDR20,000 and was brought a large grouper fish, rice and raw vegetables with sambal. It was so good! It was funny to find something called Soda Gelisah (Restless Soda), which I guessed was similar to Jakarta's Soda Gembira (Happy Soda), it made us laugh guessing what added ingredients would make you restless!
In fact, there were actually quite a number of local warung, like satay stalls and Padang restaurants, but every one we passed was always closed.
"New Year's holiday." They told us. They must have been taking a really extended break this year.
The most happening nightlife to be found was at Paradise Cafe, offering a spectacular sunset and a live reggae band. The best souvenirs to bring home were the Kopi30 Flores and the Cabe Rawit. Their chilli was was so incredibly spicy that all three of us were completely blown awaya single tiny chilli in a bowl of noodles left us with tears in our eyes, puffy lips, runny noses and headaches! Please, feel free to try it yourself.
So how did we survive five days in Labuan Bajo? The first day we lounged around recovering from three rough days at sea travelling from Lombok Timur. This was the first time I had ever been seasick and even in the hotel room it felt like the floor was still moving. In the evening we went to Pede Beach, where the only fourstar hotel in the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur had recently openedwhen you swam in the pool there were still a thousand eyes watching you from behind the fences.
For the next three days we went diving and island hopping with the only Indonesian operator, CN Dive, owned by Pak Condo who had been the first to develop diving tourism in the Komodo Islands. They have a large 20 metre boat, and we were the only passengers. Our dive master was called Gusti31we guessed he was Balinese, only to find out his name is short for Agustinus!
We must have seen more than a thousand species of fish, corals and sponges, not to mention the sharks and man ta rays there thanks to the planktonrich seas. Reef species like the Trigger Fish, Lion Fish and Grouper, that are usually quite small, were huge here.
This was also the first time I had ever been swimming in a shoal of millions of anchovies there were so many we lost all sense of direction. The islands themselves are incredibly beautiful: white sands, blue seas, reefs that are healthy and full of amazing colours, all set against a backdrop of green hills and blue skies. Perfect! Although the currents were quite strong, the natural world hidden under the seas of Komodo National Park made it the best diving spot I had ever visited. Good thing we didn't meet any Komodos out at sea!.
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