Bau Bau S05 27 129 E 122 36 439
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An overnight passage took us down to the Buton Channel, a narrow cut between 2 large islands. It was a shame we had little time to stop as there were interesting villages up the many side channels of what was effectively an inland sea. However, there is a major seaweed farming industry producing agar-agar and alginates we believe. This involves lines of moored plastic bottles on which the weed grows. Each bay had many thousands of plastic bottles so it can make for interesting anchoring.
Eventually after a couple of quiet nights we reached Bau Bau where our contact Mukmin was soon found and helped us over the next 3 days not only to get the usual essential ship’s stores but also to explore the delights of this interesting town. His English was good and it was easy to find out about life here.
The town is strategically placed at the south-east corner of Sulawesi and was important long before the Dutch arrived and took control. The hilltop above the town is covered in a sprawling fortified area with many miles of well preserved walls and attractive traditional wooden houses.
It also had the oldest flagpole in the world…and it looked it too. As throughout Indonesia it was the ordinary people who made the place memorable, including this market lady who was excited to have sold us her tomatoes!   Mukmin has worked for the tourist board and he was the perfect host and ambassador for Bau Bau. The highlight for us was when he invited us to attend the wedding breakfast of his niece in a posh hotel. We were greeted as long-time friends of the family by rows of beautifully dressed family members.
We were introduced to the lucky bride and groom who were forced to sit on a stage and shake hands with an unending stream of people while the guests ate and drank (no booze!)
We were in danger of upstaging the happy couple as needless to say we were a bit of an oddity in this town that has a total expat population of about 15.
Bride, groom, respective parents…. and who the heck are they? It was a really enjoyable insight into a family occasion in Indonesia with excellent food and good company…some of whom spoke a bit of English.
Thank you Mukmin for a memorable couple of days in Bau Bau.
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