To take a break from my lengthy 3 year recounting of what exactly where I was till now I have decided every other day to post a place where I have been.
As you may have noticed on the right hand side of the page there is a book in which I recount some of the experiences over my youthful years. All these places I saw were not all expense paid vacations but simply a reward for doing something I loved. I never thought I would be able to see such places at any time and certainly not now as I approach the golden years. Having a family kind of puts an end to thinking about going to places like Ujung Pandang now called Makassar.
It was 1995 on New Year's Day I landed in Singapore to work with Renaissance Cruises as a Captain in the dining room. It was my fifth contract with them and I was having a good time. We were scheduled to do 10 day cruises between Singapore and Bali. Usually the stops were all the same but on this contract rather than see the well known places I got the opportunity to catch a glimpse of some others that I never heard of like this one.
Indonesia was pretty cool but some of these out of the way places really gave the tourist a different prospective. There was less commercial spots around where tourists would go to buy souvenirs. Even though this was a port city the locals couldn't care less about the tourists which made it all the better. Although right now I see there are close to two million people who live there and has a bit of tourism going but 25 years ago on that day anyway it seemed pretty quiet. It is a big city in the south of the island of Sulawesi.
In fact all the passengers went on a tour taking them to somewhere else so it was free time for us during lunch. This gave us a chance to check it out.
I never took photos which I sort of regret but a lot of our travels and memories we saved on CD Rom downloaded from our video camera thanks mainly to my wife. She was never with me at this place though to take a photo.
What I can tell you are two things. One is I had my first and only ride in a rickshaw. A bunch of us did that. The second was when we were walking around we saw an outdoor classroom with primary age school students in it. When they saw us walking by they started laughing and pointing their finger at me. The teacher waved me over and explained they thought I looked like a giant. Now it's pretty rare you see a tall Indonesian from what I noticed. I think I looked like a basketball player to them.
Anyway I played the part and signed a few autographs for the kids who were holding out a pen and paper. I think I said make sure you listen to the teacher and do good in school!
That was February 7th of that year. My 36th birthday!
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