Bian the Boat Hopper - Medang Island, Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 18 Sep 2010 01:15
08:08.444S  117:22.462E
 
September 6th, we sailed briefly, then motored and sweltered for a good eleven hours and 70 miles west across the top of big Sumbawa Island.  Sumbawa positively bristles with volcanoes and although there are a few villages squeezed into tiny valleys along this stretch of its northern coast, none provided an inviting anchorage, so we continued on to the southwestern side of small Medang Island for an overnight stop.
 
Picture 1 - This picture's quality is poor due to the humid haze hanging in the air that day, but it at least shows one of about ten or more volcano vents positioned down one side of the mother of all volcanoes (sorry, no pictures of the mother of all volcanoes because its head was hidden in the clouds).
 
Picture 2 - Don (half-naked) with Bian (Bee-on), who paid us a visit bright and early the morning of the 7th.  Don wasn't overly excited about receiving a visitor at 6:30am since he had risen early specifically to unplug our head's holding tank, thinking no one would be around to witness the potentially explosive endeavor.  Instead, Don postponed the unplugging while we chatted with Bian, bought some fresh eggs and traded a print out of this picture for some highly polished sea shells.  Unlike a Komodo Village boat boy, Bian wasn't really trying to sell us anything, and he didn't drive a putt-putt, his sea vehicle of choice was a modest, hand-built, motorized outrigger wooden canoe.  Yup, a motorized canoe.  Why paddle when you can zip around your home island with a motor strapped to your outrigger?  Bian was anxious to practice his English (which wasn't bad for a high school kid from a tiny Indonesian island) and made no bones about crawling up the bow of his canoe and on to the stern of our boat uninvited.  Once there, he ran into Don who blocked his path from further travel into our cockpit.  Don wasn't trying to be mean, we've just found that if we don't want to spend a half hour trying to extricate a local from our cockpit, it's best to head them off at the pass.  So we chatted with Bian amiably as he balanced on our stern steps.  After a little while, he left, happy with the egg money and printed picture we gave him.  Later we learned that Bian visited almost every boat that stopped at Medang Island, and always asked to have his picture taken and printed.  We're thinking he's got an entire wall covered with boater pictures in his thatch hut - probably brags to all his friends about his boater friends and uses the pictures to back up his claim.  Who can blame him?  We just wonder why he'd want a bunch of pictures of boaters that all tend to look alike with scruffy clothes (or lack thereof in Don's case), scruffy hair and stupid-looking hats.
 
Oh, and in case you were sitting on the edge of your seat wondering, Don returned to the task at hand as soon as Bian motored away.  With a big WHOOSH and thankfully no explosion, Don was able to unplug our head's holding tank.  I should also take a moment to say that (cross fingers, knock on wood, or as the Brit's would say, touch wood) there have been no maintenance issues on Harmonie since that little generator glitch on the way to Indonesia from Australia.  Well, aside from the plugged holding tank thing....but that's normal in the world of boating and not critical on our boat since we have two heads, each with their own holding tank.  So, Bob's your uncle and off we went leaving Bian and Medang Island behind.
 
Anne

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