A place where the only sound is the rustling of big falling leaves, the hum of gentle waves and the flutter of bird wings. One that is so hard to reach that you start having second thoughts halfway: was it really good idea? During the last part of the journey you are so stressed and exhausted after several days of lack of sleep and living like sardine in cans in the local buses that you start thinking: this better be worth it. If will not be pure awesomeness then… I simply don’t know what I’m going to do. Well, I definitely won’t be mad since I don’t have any strength left for that. It is so far and the road to it is so devoid of comfort that you simply feel as if you went out on a limb and cannot choose to quit. You can’t just turn back and say:
“Sorry, not my cup of tea, I’m out”.
Best case scenario is three days of travelling. In a slightly worse scenario this goes up to five days. If you’re lucky you’ll only be exhausted. If not – like me – you’re as sick as a dog after you learn that air-conditioning is not necessarily your best friend during a heat wave. Fever, cough, stuffy nose and clogged ears (which I still have problems with despite the 9 months that passed). So there’s a dilemma – is it better to turn back (and do yourself some good by going to the hospital) or to continue (since you’re already halfway or even a little bit further).
I have been travelling for many years and it has never been so dramatically difficult as in Sulawesi. It takes from 2 to 2.5 days to travel 300 km on that land. After going through 420 km by land and then by boat, when you’re sick and tired, you don’t even have any expectations anymore. (None! Pretty landscapes, tasty food, great people – at that point you cease thinking about it.) You just know you HAVE TO like it. You don’t have a choice. A ferry comes only twice a week. So either you like it or voluntarily continue your torment.
When the overcrowded boat (“no limits passengers” – I didn’t even know such a thing exists) arrives at its destination and you see a tiny green island encircled by white sandy beaches, what you feel depends heavily on how sensitive and exhausted you are. Those most resistant to the hardships of travel feel relief, while those more sensitive (like me) feel moved and euphoric. But there is one thing we have in common – the thought that it was worth it!
Kididiri is what you’d call an embodiment of the idea of a paradise island. Even the centre there, which is boisterously called a resort
, is named “Paradise”. It’s a place where waterside silence meets underwater silence. The guests are asked not to leave food in their room because the host is not responsible for any animals that can come out of the jungle – be it monkeys or reptiles. And there is no Internet there. Actually, mobiles are not working either. (Truth be told, there is one place where if you leave your mobile it might find signal after a while. It happened only once for me. But the fact that I got no messages (me – who losing batteried in iphone after 3 hours of responding on messages was a proof that it didn’t really work (spitfull say that’s its because its in PLAY. But its not true. Because somebody in the sky loves me too much and wants to protect me) The beauty of palms, sand and water is so gigantic and phenomenal that it’s almost fitting for a kitschy postcard.
You don’t want to speak, because you don’t want to destroy the harmony of natural sounds.
You are so detached from the world that you stop worrying about it. And diving is so peaceful and magical that you might think you still haven’t woken up.
This place is so special that one can only ponder why it has to be so remote. I could stay longer but it would be very extravagant (or irresponsible, or escapist) to remain cut off from the world for so long. Getting here is so difficult that I cannot imagine repeating it anytime soon.
“This place is paradise exactly because it is so hard to reach. If it was easy to come here, this wouldn’t be a paradise but holiday in Turkey,” says Maru, a local driver, and perhaps he’s right. (I wonder, though, how does he know what Turkey is like if he’s never been there and says he never met even one tourist from Turkey…)
“You know, the only thing I miss in this paradise is a beach bar. Give me drinks with umbrellas and I think I could live here.” – sayin me – beach drinker 😉
“If there was a bar here, there would be no paradise. A bar means music, music means lack of silence. And that means the end of paradise.”
Holidays in Turkey… Perhaps there was also a paradise there until they started to “improve” it and make it perfect.
I took my paradise whole, without any adjustments. Its silence allowed me to discover my own.
And for a while, the paradise was inside me.
Thanks to that I learned that I can prefer staying silent to talking, simply being to having fun and contemplating to sightseeing.
Sometimes it is good to follow the silence and let oneself become whole with it…
He reflects exactly what i think about PERFECT: “You can never fall in love with a perfect person. THERE MUST ME SOME SMALL DISCTURBING ELEMENT”.
With one maybe difference i think often it’s now “IN SPITE OF” this imperfection but “THANKS TO THIS” imperfection – i love you.“
(…)JUST DON’T LOSE 3- 4 pounds to be perfect”
If you lose this 3 pounds – you would not be perfect – you will be PLAIN. The illusion of perfection is created exactly by this excessif. You don’t get this excess you don’t get perfection. WHAT makes you fall in love is ALWAY sign of IMPERFECTION”
I know it’s maybe disturbing to watch him but he is really worth it 🙂
From that moment on, the rest of the journey was more comfortable. Sure, the ship was crowded, but there was a bit of space here and tobacco smoke did not sting my eyes all the time. Besides, while being on that ship I felt that I’m not going to a tourist location – there were almost only local people there who didn’t speak English at all. In such situation it’s the children that I communicate best with 🙂
You can already see this space and the sea… All the doubts are slowly disappearing.
The closer I am to the island, the more I feel how the effort I put into getting here becomes less of a burden. In the end it was not a bad decision at all.
The most extravagant entertainment on the island is kayaking or sailing around in a boat. The only sounds come from the sea and the birds.
Silence, pervasive silence. On a sunny and peaceful day you couldn’t even hear the waves.
For me those were ideal conditions for working.
I saw the most beautiful sunsets in my life. Contrary to what you might expect, it was the most silent when there were only foreign tourists on the island – everyone was sitting and contemplating the final hours of the day. For some reason the local tourists did not cherish silence that much.
