Our last day in Sulawesi found me starting it off with another pisang goreng and then heading off toward Bitung.
Here is the map of our route.
In the early part of the day, we headed to the Jengji Market and finally found the Manado coffee beans that I’ve been searching for.
We tried to look for more orchids, but were not successful. We only found conventional cut flower orchids.
At Airmadidi, we visited the old stone grave cemetary.
The primitive men built each waruga vessel of stone and a removable roof for each. They’d carry this to the back of their houses. Due to the cholera outbreak, the waruga were gathered together here.
The dead are buried in a seated position. Women have their hands balled in a fist and placed knuckle to knuckle, with two China plates. Men have their hands interlocked and were buried with only one plate. They were also buried with other personal artifacts of value – like necklaces and bangles.
We visited a zoo at Bitung, instead of going to the national park, to see the world’s smallest monkey, the Tarsius Spectrum. From there we glanced across the Molucca Sea where there are little islands, great diving spots.
Bitung is the largest port in the whole of Sulawesi. The streets are wide. There seem to be fewer cars and it seems altogether cleaner than Manado.
We ended our day back in Manado with a spot of shopping and a final pick up of local food items – Satay and Roast Pork where the skin is finally sliced off and re-fried into crispy pork rinds.
The Pork is eaten with a fresh chilli paste and the satay – very meaty and rather dry and tough – comes with a sweet dark sauce and fried chilli.
While waiting, I sampled the popular local Minahasa dishes – dog meat and bat meat. Now, bear in mind that this is Minahasa food. This is sold at stalls next to chicken and beef. It’s not a prized special to eat this sort of thing over here.
Dog meat is tough, like beef, but cooked till tender. It’s cooked with ginger, lemon grass and is spicy, like rendang. The spiciness only hits you a few seconds later. The meat itself is not particularly tasty.
The method of preparation made the dish quite interesting and tasty. But there was that queasiness churning in the stomach of having eaten dog.
Now the bat, on the other hand, since it isn’t associated in my head as a household pet, was very very tasty and very very enjoyable. Known as a tough meat, this was cooked till tender. The skin was soft, silky and gave some resistance and pull. The meat fell off the bone. The gravy was more mild, with coconut. I later found out that as a meat, bat is the most expensive to eat.
This was our last night in Manado.