Monday 24^th July 2017

Raymond, the rally organiser, helped us to negotiate a ride into the main town of the island, Langurr, and we were dropped off at the market place. 

We wandered around and found the fish market where we decided not to buy anything, and a fruit and veggie market where we bought papaya, bananas, melon, tomatoes, cucumber and green beans.  There was some interesting fruit that looked like small pears, which we tried but found way too sharp!

Our own private taxi/bus to Langurr.

We were dropped off by these brightly coloured stalls.                                   The smell told us this was the fish market!

Roots which looked like enormous maggots.                                                       A colourful array of fresh vegetables.

It was by now lunchtime, and after a bit of a walk we found a local restaurant where we had our first nasi goreng seafood, which was very nice.  As we left, a car pulled up and a chap jumped out and introduced himself as Tukan.  He would drive us back to Debut for 200,000 rupiah.  Too much, we said. (It had cost 150,000 to get here.)  As we walked off, the price went down to 100,000.    We were pretty tired by now, so decided to go for it.  Once in the car he asked if we needed a supermarket.  We didn’t really, but were interested to see one, and when he said it was on the way to Tual, the “City” as the locals call it, we decided to go there and then have a look at Tual after.

Tual is on the neighbouring island and is joined by one bridge.  It was certainly an interesting journey, with lots of traffic and noise, made even more so by Tukan’s tendency to stop anywhere he liked to show us points of interest to photograph which made the horn-beeping even worse!  Two examples are below – approaching the bridge across to Tual, and an important landmark on the main road into the City.  At the latter, he was beeped and yelled at, so he jumped back in and set off...without Sue!  We were telling him she wasn’t with us, but he didn’t seem to understand until he turned around and saw she wasn’t there.  His face was a picture!  Luckily he hadn’t gone too far and Sue managed to catch us up before the beeping reached a second crescendo!

Approaching the bridge across to Tual.                                  An important landmark in Tual.

We stopped at a huge supermarket and took our time looking around in our first taste of air-conditioning for a while.  All we bought were some apples which had not been available at the local market. 

As we got out of Tukan’s car, Steve spotted this extremely bald front tyre!

Then Tukan took us for a drive around the port and the local market which was enormous.  We didn’t need anything so didn’t stop, but it was very interesting to see the difference between life in the City and life in a small town like Debut.  Of course when we got back to Debut  the bill was now 200,000, but we had been aware that the extra time and distance would add some, and felt that between the four of us that was a reasonable price.  So we stumped up the equivalent of £3 each, thanked Tukan, and headed back to the boat.