There’s not much to preface this with other than that this felt like where the real ‘travel’ began. Not to rain on Bali’s parade but it’s suffered from its own success in that it no longer feels like a true adventure destination. It’s been sanitised and watered down and designed to appeal to the westerners that tour there so much so it feels its lost a lot of the charm that had initially attracted them in the first place. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t fantastic, but it missed that alien spark that I had come searching for. This final section had more than just the spark.
Part 3: Labuan Bajo (Flores and the Komodo Islands)
So, having kind of recovered from my initial bout of Lyme induced brokenness, we gathered ourselves up, took the short hop on Vietnam airs to the Island of Flores and the small fishing town of Labuan Bajo. (Side note, the lady in front of me on the plane was eating an entire bulb of garlic. Like an orange. I thought this was odd)
Labuan Bajo is not large by Indonesia standards, you could see from one side to the other pretty easily, and in fact it seemed to lack anything of any particular note if you were looking at the town itself. If you turned away from the town however you were met with something truly spectacular. And I really mean spectacular. The bay of Labuan Bajo was an absolute marvel, it looked out across perfect blue seas and was pitted with green islands sticking out like seeds. Boats of every form and variety scooted this way and that in a lazy chaos that somehow never seemed to result in anything too catastrophic.
Labuan Bajo is a town that hasn’t quite realised it’s a popular tourist spot just yet. Or it has and it just doesn’t care . The sewers are open and run down the streets where usual towns have pavements, the roads are made of dirt with a hint of concrete, there is a perpetual strong smell of fish that has just turned nasty and the people have not gone full predator on every tourist they see. What is the appeal then? Well it’s not the town, but what lies in the sea beyond.
Labuan Bajo is the closest port that you can stay at to the Komodo Island national park. This is a Unesco World Heritage site and often called one of the 7 wonders of the natural world, which is hard to dispute. The volcanic Islands are unparalleled in sheer bizarro beauty, the topsy turvy smattering of volcanic debris that litters the azure blue resembles a giant flick of a paintbrush. It’s the finest work of the Jackson Pollock drip period of Volcanic artistry evolution. Slinking and weaving between these islands every morning is the gentle putputput of two stroke engines as various slow moving tourist boats carry their charges to have their minds blown right apart by the sheer force of natural beauty.
I unfortunately was not fully recovered from Mr. Lyme and friends so I did miss out on a day of adventuring where my trusty colleagues explored the Komodo Island itself, the pink sand beaches and the unreal views of Pulau Padar. Still, I did manage to get out myself for some excellent snorkeling and to go visit the dragons on Rinka Island. And my word, they really are dragons holy shit. You see Komodo Dragons on the BBC documentaries, softly narrated by David Attenborough and although the great man does do them justice, it’s without the spine tingling terror of being in the presence of a genuine apex predator. Everything about them screams ‘run away from me’, the way they walk, the way they move their heads as though sniffing the blood in your veins, even when they’re basking in the sun they still looked poised to rip your head off. A komodo dragon can run faster than you, contains bacteria in its bite that will rot the flesh from your bones whilst you’re still alive and failing that it can tear you to pieces in seconds with it’s massive jaws, I mean thank God we had our half stoned guide armed with a stick to reassure us… Naturally we took a load of stupid and arguably dangerous photos with them.
It really is the most astonishing collection of islands I’ve ever seen, each one of them would be the jewel in the crown of any other nation, the biodiversity on each is phenmomenal, the views are hard to believe and the sheer shape of them is downright confusing. As a Westerner I’m used to my hills and mountains having gentle slopes to ease you into them, gradually introducing you to the concept of a change in height. They don’t suddenly spear upwards from the seabed in almost vertical slopes that tower above your little wooden boats whilst monkeys howl at you to fuck off quick. Then next to this spear of rock you’ll have another even bigger one, and beside that will be one that barely even scrapes the water’s surface but rather sits flat and perfect on the glass of the ocean, inviting you to come get sunburnt as you just lie back and think ‘what deranged lunatic designed this place?’
If you’re bored of having your brain melted by islands from another universe though, you can always head into the interior from Labuan Bajo, into the large island of Flores. As it hasn’t quite realised that it’s a popular tourist spot yet, Flores is blissfully unspoilt. Little mopeds are cheap to rent and you can scoot off inland for a day of adventure and terror as you try and avoid pitching into the enormous potholes, get murdered by a passing truck or simply have your bike run off without you because you’re slightly incompetent. Waterfalls and jungles abound in Flores and they’re surprisingly easy to find despite infrastructure being a single road that occasionally just has giant rectangles deleted from the surface in the middle of blind corners. Beyond that though it’s the views that astound. Mile upon unbroken mile of unadulterated jungle, the view not so much of rolling hills, but more cascading, flowing oceans of green that dominate the senses. As far as a day trip for some variation from perfect beaches and sapphire blue seas go it’s not a bad option.
The thing is though, on paper this was all very similar to our time in Bali. Beautiful islands, gorgeous jungle covered interior, views that stab you in the gut, so why am I waxing lyrical about Flores whilst kind of raining on Bali’s parade? Well what really made this last part of the trip stand out wasn’t just the nature and the scenes themselves, it was our interaction with them, how we were melded into the surrounding world. As I said, Flores has yet to realise it’s a true tourist destination, Komodo has only just been named a World Heritage site and as yet the simple transport links do not exist to get there. This meant that during our time spent in Labuan Bajo we didn’t feel as though the experience was catered for us. It wasn’t a town designed by tourists for tourists as the rest of Bali had been, it felt like just a simple fishing harbour that was a popular spot for ships to stop in on their way through. We were observing true Indonesian culture from the inside, not bending it to our expectations, so what if the sewers were open, the locals couldn’t give a damn so why should we? Who cares if the main jetty stinks of fish? It’s a fishing port, the fact that the other jetties we saw didn’t smell like that is frankly suspicious.
I think this is the reason why the week we spent on Flores and the Komodos really hit home with me so hard. We had stopped being ‘tourists’ at this point and instead we had managed to immerse ourselves a little more, get up to new and wild experiences and really just be able to go ‘wow’ without someone shoving a big mac in your face. It was adventure and intrigue and eyeopening fascination and I truly loved every second.
And thus ends our adventure in Indonesia. To say it was incredible would be... probably right on the money. It was ups and downs, twists and turns. There were moments of awe inspiring madness coupled to mind numbing frustrations. All said and done however it was a place that was both remarkable and fascinating at every turn, a combination of immersion in a new world and an observation of clashes with a world a little too familiar. It was near death experiences and life affirming moments and I wouldn’t have changed any part of it for the world.