The Allure of Alor

Kitchen on site






Boat heading out to where I will be working

















The dock at the farm













The village of Calabahi across the bay in the background















The expat house (my house)














The mountains on the drive from N Bali


































This week has definitely been interesting. In the beginning of the week I went up to the N Bali site again with Evan. A ship was being loaded to transport oysters to another Indo site so I got to see how it was loaded and how that process works. In the afternoon, I spent some time on a cleaning boat getting dirty and grungy pressuring washing and chiseling in fouling off of the oysters. It’s a monotonous and dirty job but the 5-6 people working on these boats for 12 hours a day, like the work and some of them have been doing it for 8+ years. I enjoyed my 3 ½ hours but that was enough for me! The following morning I again went out for another 3 hours on a different cleaning boat to work with a different crew. That group was less friendly to me, but still helped me along and I got to learn how to do everyone’s job. The following afternoon, Evan and I packed it up again and drove the 2 ½ hours back to Sanur. I have traveled a fair bit between N Bali and Sanur, and it’s not a fun drive at all. Pretty scenery but def not fun. Hairpin turns up and down a mountain with motorbikes (scooters, motorcycles) with the husband, wife, newborn baby, and week’s worth of groceries onboard, zooming past your large SUV around the blind corner ahead, just as a pickup truck carrying a load of his three prized cows comes flying by in the other lane. There is a lot of this action, motorbikes far too overloaded bobbing and weaving in and out of traffic, and a lot of horn usage to say the least(bright lights flashing on at night).
We did make it back to Sanur ok, Evan is a great aggressive Indonesian driver (you have to be!). I was back in my nice hotel in Sanur enjoying my steaming hot shower and good internet. That night I decided to go for it! I took a taxi to the touristy strip in town. I found a path that lead down to the boardwalk at the beach. Went for an app and a beer and watched a killer surf break as the sun set. Then I went to a nice touristy restaurant on the beach boardwalk and had a nice salad and finally a fresh squeezed pineapple and banana juice drink (with ice) that I have been wanting to try. Any idea what happened next….you will learn soon enough!! The following morning the office in Sanur held a managers meeting of all the expats from the different Indo sites. It was my first real board meeting with a job and it lasted all day. Got to meet 2 of the big wigs in the company too. I def learned a lot during the meeting and was glad I could make it. That night I went to a restaurant near my hotel and was up at midnight with horrible stomach cramps and having to get up and go to the bathroom. Then the same thing at 2, 4, 5, 6 and I was up for the day. I took a Pepto and a Cipro antibiotic, but I was still feeling like crap! I was stressing because I didn’t know how I would be able to sit all day through another day of managers meeting. Had breakfast in my room and made my way to the office. As much as I didn’t want to I stopped by my boss’s office and told him about my problem. Well it turns out someone else in the office was feeling the same way I was and they insisted I went to the clinic to make sure it wasn’t dengue fever. I stuck it out through the morning session of the meeting and I didn’t need to rush to the toilet every two minutes either.

I took a taxi to the SOS International Clinic in Bali (that we have insurance for), and I was really impressed with the facility. Clean, not long to wait, and a nice young doctor helped me out the whole time. Well it turns out I had amoebic dysentery and I’m so glad my boss talked me into going to the doctor. I got four different meds, including an anti amoeba and anti nausea med. I have to take them for 10 days and then check to see if there are still little amoebas in me. Lol! Kind of weird, I know! But the medication has definitely helped and I don’t have the cramping or need to go to the bathroom all the time anymore.

The next morning I caught my flight to Alor with a temporary manager that will be working out there with me, Daniel. I talked my way out of $50 of excess baggage fees in Bali by myself, pretty impressive! I just wasn’t going to pay the huge amount they wanted and I stood my ground. We had to change flights in Kupang on Timor, and it really helped having Daniel there for the language. He is from Belgium and his wife is Balinese so he has really had to learn Indonesian. We arrived in Alor to the super small airport around 4. There was a car there waiting for us with a girl that works on the farm. It takes a half hour to get to the farm from the airport. And a half hour from the farm to the main village of Kalabahi. The island has lots of small villages and clusters of houses made of tin, wood, brick, palm frond, whatever is available really. A lot of fires burning rubbish outside of the houses and kids playing in the streets. The island is very similar to Papua New Guinea and other islands I have been to in Indonesia. The farm is nice…quaint. Very small facility, clean, green grounds, and a nice managers house. The house is set up with 3 rooms. All the rooms aren’t connected like a normal house. I have a room and bathroom (with AC! Yes!) with only one entrance to the room from the outside. It opens up to a tiled open air porch, if that makes sense. One of the guys, his room is connected to a dining room area and living room with TV couch and TV table. There is satellite TV and internet so I am not totally unplugged from the world which is nice. The other manager, a hatchery manager, I am living with here is Tomek, from Poland. He has been here for a month without any company so he appreciates having us here. We have a cook and a maid here too. The food is not great but its edible. I wish there were more fresh fruits at least. Daniel is going to try to change the food situation for us. There are a few Indonesian staff that live here all the time but they are in a separate area from us. There is security on the site and out on barges watching the oysters 24/7 which is good. Mosquitoes can be bad at night and in the mornings, but as long as I spray myself with repellent and leave the AC on in my room, they don’t bother me.

The next day Daniel and I toured around the farm a bit with Tomek. Daniel has worked at a site that runs very well near Papua New Guinea, so he is here to setup our site and get it running to its best ability. In Alor we only acquired this site in 2010, so it hasn’t been running very long and there are still a lot of areas and things on the farm that need fixing. Where I work will be a 5 minute boat ride away. It’s a very nice facility, pretty big, and they are just finishing repairs on it now it will be in great condition when we start using it for operations in late February. So my first day went well, still wish my language was better, but that will come with time. That afternoon after the staff had left for the day, we discovered the small road that the farm is on, has been blocked from the village chief not getting along with someone’s son or something like that! Just closed the road because he is mad, like its his road or something! So we had to take a boat across the bay to Kalabahi instead of the car like we had planned. It poured down rain on the boat ride! We were all drenched. I even had my rain jacket on, but was still drenched. That’s why they call it monsoon rains I suppose! It is a dirty little town/village, but there are shops (each selling the same exact blue crap plastic bucket) and a few little markets. Most of the stores are run by Chinese as well, its amazing how the Chinese have spread to this little island to sell their wares. There were lots of people just standing around chewing bettle nut, taking in a busy Saturday night in the village. We ate restaurant down by the water at a shack and picked out our fish from a styrofoam cooler, to be grilled for dinner. Dinner was ok, I think MSG is loaded into everything we eat so it all tastes pretty decent even though MSG is horrible for you! I did have a big headache yesterday but I thought it was just from the meds. After our trip to town we watched the movie War Horse, Daniel had bought in Bali. I enjoyed it, pretty good movie.
This morning, Sunday, I got to sleep in, only until 8 but that’s sleeping in these days. We are up and working at 7:30 at the farm. One of these Sundays I would like to go to church with some of the local staff and just to make a good impression and respect the community. It has been raining today and we have been lounging about. In the afternoon the expat staff went on a muck dive at a site in the bay. Daniel is really big into diving and brought all his gear and fancy underwater camera. But he doesn’t even like to take pics of ordinary things or stuff I think is really cool! Only the best of the best, guess he has been in Raja Ampat and taken amazing pics already. Tomek and I just used the dive gear on the farm. This muck dive was on black sand, rubble, and a few coral heads. We were looking for all sorts of little critters like nudibranches, sea horses, frog fish, and more weird stuff. I saw a few nudis (oh so cute!), but it was just great to see all the cool species of fish and corals in the Pacific again. My boss and a few other staff are coming for a visit next week, and I met my Indo operations manager counterpart, Sugi, this afternoon. So that has been my life in Indo for the past week! Sorry this post so long, but a lot has happened!