22::Ujung Pandung
2.12.97 Wednesday
Sulawesi is missing the mark with tourism - trying to be international instead of Indonesian. Sad European meals, sadder attempts at American pop music. Should learn from Bali.
Activities:
Bantimurung Park: Watkins Glen type gorge and public swimming. Long climb up carved steps to limestone caves with stalactites, etc. Used flashlights to descent via rickety boardwalk steps. A sweaty adventure that was anti-climactic compared to the other parts of our trip.
Long lunch at a U.P. restaurant with Yunus.
Back shopping at Somba Opu area.
About Yunus (his name means Jonah) Small stature with lively brown eyes and big-toothed broad grin. High energy: whole body moves when he talks enthusiastically. Father is Makassarese and mother is Torajan.
Story: he went to a cabin on an island with a client. Cabin overhanging the water. Rat in cabin when they arrived. Tried to get rat out through hole in the floor but it got stuck partway through and they beat on it to get it through. Later, hot restless night… Yunus dreaming of the rat getting bigger and bigger - woke up shrieking. Everyone ran to him. His leg was bloody: the rat had actually come back.
Moslem: fasting during Ramadan.
Pressure: he is agitated about pressure to get married to a girl who has been in love with him for 2-1/2 years and who has turned down two other marriage proposals because of him. His mother and sisters are pressuring him to settle down but he loves his freewheeling life and doesn’t love the girl. "But who am I," he asks himself, "to want more? Shouldn’t I be happy she loves me?"
"Shit," he cursed, his first sin after Ramadan. When I asked if he was planning to travel abroad, he sighed - he’ll probably be saving money for his marriage.
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