Indonesia - Arrival in Manado

The skies were mostly cloudy between Singapore and Manado. Even though I had a window seat I didn't see a whole lot of stuff. I did however see a vapor trail on the inboard portion of the wing as we took off. It was really cool to see what the airflow over the wing actually looked like. As we decended beneath the clouds on our approach to Manado, we could see tall green mountains buttressed by smaller hills. There are tons of palm trees. Lots of tall palms make up the forest around the airport. It had recently rained and the grass had standing water in some places. The second most profuse thing besides the palms trees was cattle egrets. The big white birds were wandering all over the place and even had to fly out of the way of the airplane. We stopped on the taxiway due to some "foreign objects." I really wish I knew what they were. I was too tired to be totally alert to take in all the sites and sounds as we traveled from the airport to the University Klabat campus. They drive on the left side of the road here, and there are tons of scooters and motorcycles. Most of them are the Honda look alike brand.

In the evening we walked around and drew plants in our notebooks. Then we ate supper and went to bed. The showers are gross, and the water stinks. I slept like a rock though, only waking up once. There is no AC so you gotta be comfortable with the heat and humidity. I like it here.

In the morning we went to see the local open air market. The meat selling section was the craziest. You had to really be careful to avoid the spray from people chopping stuff up. There were chickens, fish, pigs, dogs, rats, and bats. You could buy many different types of fruit and vegetables. A lot of the vegetables were familiar. Most of the fruit was not.

It is hard to get Internet here. Leaving for the mall now.