An Opportunity of a Lifetime Comes

We’ve heard of the famed North Sulawesi area and the renowned Lembeh Straits, and when we were offered an opportunity to visit and review a new resort in the area, and one owned and managed by one of our very own ScubaMagazine.net Forum members, we jumped at the chance!

Within the North Sulawesi area of the Indonesia Archipelago sits the series of small islands off Manado that form the Bunaken Marine Park to the west, and to the north, Gangga and Bangka Island, and just to the south of Bangka, the Lembeh Straits.

The Straits are an area that some geoscientists hypothesize were two different, far apart land masses and commensurate biospheres that came together as a result of plate shifting. This mixing of two different marine biospheres is thought to have created a mix of some of the most bizarre macro marine life to be found, and between Bangka and Lembeh Island, Mimpi Indah Resort and Refly, our Indonesian dive guide, we were going to find it, then video it in HD!

Our Long Journey Begins

We left LAX, the airport that advertises itself as “World Class”. This is the airport and city that spent millions of dollars on glass and steel internally illuminated “art” towers right by the freeway that are not observation towers, they just sit there, but they can’t seem to keep the airport bathrooms clean.

For our air transportation we chose Singapore Airlines for this trip. Singapore Air is a well regarded airline that has an excellent safety reputation and a competitive airfare price to the capital city of Manado on the island of Sulawesi.

Singapore Air has good food in economy class, and their hot, wet wash towels they hand out just after takeoff, and just before each meal is something every airline should copy.

Although Singapore Air has flights with less stops and shorter stopovers, the economy fare has two interim destinations we wanted to visit, one was Tokyo’s Narita area in Japan, and one in Singapore. Between the food in Tokyo and the opportunity to visit Singapore and financially support a government that canes graffiti vandals including one particular American, it was a dual opportunity we couldn’t pass up!

Soup for the Soul, & a Car Wash for the Posterior

Our first stopover was in Tokyo at Narita Airport in Japan. This is a huge, sprawling modern airport that has a mall within it of sorts. Every tasty Japanese food item imaginable was there which we sure appreciated.

The first item of business upon arrival at Narita was a stop in the restroom, as we’ve heard interesting stories. Although they had some larger communal bathrooms, we stumbled upon and became intrigued by a private large bathroom with a red and green open and close button that opened a sliding door. There were fixtures, appurtenances and things in that room that I didn’t know existed, and to this date I still don’t know what many were for, but one can never be too clean and hygienic, I had to at least check out half of them!

With the highest quality, most comfortable buns gasket paper material ever, there is a Toto brand toilet and toilet seat that can best be described as an automated car wash for your rear end. On a flat panel pushbutton wall mounted control, there was a button for directing warm water, a position button for that spray, and water pressure intensity adjustment, and a temperature adjustment. After that, just like using a very warm air drier for your hands, another button does that for your backside. I am not sure what the peculiar pathos is about Americans, bidets and dry paper, but this car wash for the posterior thing is THE way to go.

Take a look at the spotless clean facilities photos below, and see if you can figure out what half of the fixtures are for in the first photo.

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The next important order of business after a 14 hour flight was a hot shower, and Japan’s Narita didn’t disappoint. For about the equivalent of $5, there is a facility right within the airport that will take your carry-on, give you a towel, a washcloth, a locker key, and a hair blow dryer if needed. Then off you go to a private large cubicle where you can undress, put your clothes in a locker, get out your clean clothes, and press a button on the large stall shower and it the entire shower enclosure will wash and sanitize itself. With the green light coming on within a minute, I was basking in a well-deserved, hot, invigorating shower.

With the spring back in my step courtesy of the bathroom, the shower and clean clothes, it was time to sample some Japanese food.

There are probably over 30 restaurants and food establishments in Narita airport. Many of the restaurants had window displays with those really curious plastic food items that look extremely realistic. It made it hard to select just one item, they all looked so good, all I had to do was say the dish number in English, and the next thing I knew, I had some delicious sashimi and an udon soup with the 2nd largest shrimp in it I’ve ever had short of the Philippines.

Browsing around the airport I found Internet terminals for about 25 cents a minute, as well as plenty of large flat panel TV to watch.

Off to Singapore

Our next journey leg was to Singapore’s Changi Airport. Upon arrival, it was off to the transit hotel for another shower, and change of clothes. The transit hotel is about $18 for 6 hours and well worth it.

After getting cleaned up, I decided to breeze through customs and go take a taxi ride about the seaside port. Wow, what a clean city! I didn’t see graffiti vandalism anywhere!

Some of you readers might remember when a particular 18 year old American named Michael Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing cars in Singapore. He was sentenced to 4 months in jail, a $2200 fine, and to be caned 6 times.

In the U.S., where graffiti vandals are all but beatified if they vandalize other’s properties, and in some cases given scholarships to college, Singapore has it right. They whip the daylights out of graffiti vandals. Funny how then President and criminal mollycoddler Clinton was arguing that Fay’s punishment was too severe (compared to a congratulatory art scholarship), yet the main body of Americana not only was in opposition to Clinton’s position, we instead supported Singapore’s action, we wanted him given more than 6 lashes, and we prayed that we could send our convicted graffiti vandals to Singapore for their punishment.

After a nice hour long car tour of the Changi port area, it was back the airport. Changi has a large stream garden area seen below for relaxing or doing free WiFi laptop browsing, and has over 20 individual laptop and free Internet terminals distributed about. All access was high speed, so for you e-mail and Internet addicts, your fix is always just a few steps away.

There was a large lounge area with a huge flat panel display, and next to it were the above photo's two X-Box video games hooked up to two large flat panel TV’s. I couldn’t resist handing it off to the below little boy to see his eyes light up. Fear, not, philanthropists, there are 10 more X-Boxes upstairs with a whole host of games.

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After having some tasty and healthy Singapore seafood soup, it was back to the Transit Hotel for a hot communal shower, some sleep, then next a.m., off to the next leg of our journey.

Almost There!

About 4 hours after departure from Singapore, we arrived in Sulawesi at Manado Airport. We were greeted by an airport staffer that informed us that one of my checked in bags had not arrived on the plane we were on, but Singapore Air had it, so at least it was not lost.

Now if it were LAX, I would have sat staring at a luggage carousel over an hour, then once I realized they once again lost the bag, after tracking down a cheerful staffer on break from reality, they would have gladly brushed me off with a disingenuous, unsubstantiated script, or offered to allow me to fill out a claim form. Forget about finding your bar code labeled baggage, as long as you get to fill out a form!

Singapore Air’s rep said they’d have the bag the next day, and coordinated to get it to me, and they followed through as promised. Major bungle though by not transferring a bag in 8 hours from the plane we were on to the new plane sitting right next to it.

After that slight hiccup, at the Manado Airport I was greeted by a smiling woman holding a yellow and green Mimpi Indah beautifully hand painted sign, and who introduced herself as Ulva, the co-owner of Mimpi Indah Resort, and Refly, who would be our dive guide for the next week, and the rest of the staffers. Considering we were the only guests at that arrival time, it was rather special that they rolled out the red carpet. What a nice personal touch!

Luck would have it the bags that did arrive contained my entire HD video rig, so we’d be able to shoot the first day.

It was allegedly a 1 hour drive by car provided by Mimpi Indah Resort to get to the port where our bangka waited, but it seemed like 30 minutes. It is a very entertaining ride. From passing villages with small pigs wandering the front yards, to seeing kids playing about, it seemed a short ride.

We arrived at a tiny village on a black volcanic sand beach. There was Totohe, Mimpi Indah's really clean, large fast dive boat. Staffers loaded all our gear and some fresh food provisions, we didn’t have to load anything ourselves. In the shallows were a naked young girl and boy frolicking about in the water, carefree and sporting the biggest smiles and loudest giggles. Oh, those were the worry free days!

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Off to Bangka Island

Bangka Island is about a 20-30 minute scenic boat ride north of our bay departure point. We passed many traditional homemade fishing platforms where fishermen spend the night with lights and fishing line singly catching fish. Flying fish skimmed about as dolphins cavorted in the distance.

As we approached Bangka Island, the outline of the coral sand shore and the grounds of Mimpi Indah resort appeared below as sweeping vista between two volcanic points spread afar.

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Welcome to Mimpi Indah Resort!

Since Mimpi Indah is a brand new resort, naturally we’re curious as to how it came to be. Multi-National Conglomerate? Multi-location franchise? Millionaire practicing their hobby? We all want to know how two people from two different cultures came to become business partners, friends, and husband and wife living a shared dream.

Owen was born and raised in the Netherlands and after a Masters in Computer Science, started working in the big wide world of IT. At that time he already new that someday he would be working in another country-“preferably warmer” he stated.

While working for several IT companies with projects throughout Europe, he became more and more involved with diving in his spare time.

“Eventually I decided to work my way up to dive instructor and leave the Netherlands to start a dive center.” says Owen. In 2004 he became a scuba instructor and in the plane back to the Netherlands I told a friend that he predicted he would leave the Netherlands within the next year.

Ulva studied English Literature and during her studies became involved in humanitarian work. After her studies she continued working for humanitarian aid companies, like Unicef. She was always part of the “first response team” and was one of the first people to go to Aceh after the Tsunami. She was the logistics manager there.

Ulva also had this big dream of once starting her own dive company in a beautiful place and dive whenever work allowed her. In May 2005 she decided to stop her work and start with a DiveMaster course and at the same time look for a suitable place to start a dive resort.

When Ulva just started her DM course, Owen went to Manado for a dive holiday and at the same time looked for a place to start a dive resort. On the first day of Owen's holiday the two met and started talking. “During those first few weeks we started to know each other and found out we liked each other and shared the same dream of starting a dive resort.” states Owen.

“In January 2006 Owen moved to Indonesia and together we started to realize our dream.” Says Ulva. This involved setting up a company, buying a piece of land after getting the blessing from the local village and then building the resort. It took them until October of 2006 to clear the land, build a dive center, a restaurant and several bungalows. On the first of October of 2006 they officially opened Mimpi Indah resort, which is Indonesian for “Beautiful Dreams” resort.

“To complete our personal dream we got married on our own resort and now we give others to opportunity to get married at our place as well.” according to Ulva. Just look at their website for some pictures of the wedding. Owen added; “We can arrange any style wedding, traditional or western and below above or below water!”

They agree they were lucky to find a great location on a beautiful island right on the beach which is surrounded with some of the worlds best diving spots. “We realize this every day and take the time to enjoy this. We also believe that we have to share our good fortune with others, so everybody is welcome in our resort.” says the Taps.

The Dugong at Mimpi Indah

“We started our company and had no idea about a logo.” says the Taps. They discussed several options but most were just too complicated. “Then one day we went diving and a dugong came to us and stayed with us for maybe half an hour. Since this happened right in front of our resort, we saw this as a sign and took the dugong as our logo. We have since seen the dugong regularly during our dives and it usually comes really close, it almost feels like it's saying hello to us!" said Ulva.

"Since our first encounter Ulva and I have become dugong lovers and are now investigating how we can help the dugong survive. It's number is dwindling and protection of this graceful friendly animal is desperately needed!” according to Owen.

Getting Settled In

After all the gear and luggage was taken to our private bungalow, we had a chance to walk around the sprawling grounds in the late afternoon.

The dining area, the dive shop, the resort grounds, restrooms, and all the really clean bungalows are made of elevated wood structures made from local palm tree wood for the flooring, and bamboo and for the visible components of the structures along with wall surfaces and roof framing. The traditional roofs are covered in palm leaves which work just like shingles, but don’t pollute the environment. Just like duck feathers or roof shingles, these roofs shed water and the entire bungalow was bone dry after a heavy but brief cool evening shower.

I found the whole idea of using rapidly growing bamboo and the manner in which sustainable resources were utilized both responsible and very interesting, and a book they had on bamboo structure engineering was fascinating. The resort furniture is all made from bamboo and split vine material with the usual cloth padding for comfort. In fact some of the other resorts in the Manado area have requested Mimpi local artisans to build their bamboo furniture for them too.

One particular structure that was in the back grounds area of the resort was a rather tall structure. Mimpi Indah built this to be their bamboo treatment facility.

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“All bamboo used in structures must be treated first in our bamboo treatment facility. We start by taking long metal rods and we puncture down the center of each segment cell in the bamboo pole with the exception of the bottom. Then it is treated with a liquid compound of borax and borix, two types of salt, which cures and preserves the bamboo” says Ulva.

Below is a photo of the treatment facility. After the cell diver perforations are made, and the bamboo is filled with natural compound liquid, it remains upright for several weeks during he curing process. Once treated, local artisans begin the building process.

Bamboo destined to become wind or light shades or wall covering is split extremely thin with a ring blade tool with different numbers of cross-secting blades, depending on the desired strip thickness.

As we can see below, the thin strips are laid out and using fishing string, neatly tied into a flexible roll down window covering.

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Locals harvest the many cashew trees for cashew pods, lay them out in the sun to dry, then off to the wholesalers they haul them where they are husked to get to the kernels we all know. When I shot the below photo, I had no idea what they were. What a city slicker I am!

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