Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine September 2016 | Page 103

Travel | Wakatobi
© National Geographic Creative / Alamy Stock Photo

5 Senses – Taste
KASUAMI

Don’t leave without sampling
doughy and delicious kasuami, a light
breadlike local speciality made from
cassava. Found in every community
across Wakatobi, it is best eaten either
with spicy coto Makassar beef soup or
tangy sour fish soup. Wanchi’s
early-morning fish market is an
unusually vibrant place to see a
mind-boggling variety of the
inhabitants of Wakatobi’s rich waters.
Jangan meninggalkan Wakatobi
sebelum mencicipi kasuami yang lezat,
sajian khas setempat, semacam roti
yang terbuat dari singkong. Kasuami ini
bisa ditemukan di setiap daerah di
Wakatobi, yang paling pas untuk
menemani Coto Makassar, yaitu sup
daging pedas atau sup ikan kuah asam
dengan rasa yang tajam. Pasar subuh
Wanchi adalah tempat luar biasa hidup
untuk melihat kekayaan laut yang
mencengangkan.

101

I snorkelled on crystal reefs
where the balmy water was
so clear that it was possible
to feel that I was floating
in an invisible ether, rather
than submerged in water.
friends in the timber houses that colonised
the reef. Some were raised on stilted legs over
the water, like gawky herons, but others were
balanced on manmade islets of coral. I realised
that the migrant builders were in fact Orang
Bajau. More commonly known to the outside
world as ‘Sea Gypsies’, the Orang Bajau are one
of countless ethnic groups that live (mostly
settled lives these days) on remote coastlines
from the Malukus to Myanmar. I’d met truly
nomadic Sea Gypsies living in tented shanties
alongside their little jerangka fishing outriggers
while they followed the schooling fish
northwards along the coast of East Sulawesi,
and I’d swum with settled Sea Gypsy children
in the Alor Islands, Borneo and Komodo.
Once I did an assignment on the Sea Gypsies
of Thailand, where they are often known as
‘Moken’. I’d hired a Thai translator for that
story and, minutes into our first interview
with a Moken headman, I’d stunned him
by apparently speaking near-fluent Moken.
(I allowed his astonishment to continue until
I finally pointed out, later that afternoon,
that I’d realised almost immediately that the
language of the now sedentary Moken is almost
entirely derived from Bahasa Indonesia.)
The people of Southern Sulawesi were
historically among the world’s great explorers,

A Bajo elder repairing a fishing net.
A Bajo spear fisherman sits in front of his house on stilts.

and in ancient times they fanned out to colonise
much of eastern Indonesia. It is possible that
historians might never know the exact limits
of their exploration, but these intrepid islanders
(ancestors perhaps of the labouring men from
Kaledupa) might even have sailed so far as to
colonise Madagascar, more than 8,000km
away across the fearsome depths of the Indian
Ocean. As I changed boats at the little jetty in
Tamboeloeroeha town, I realised that some
local place names – Kampenaune, Tolandano,
Mount Sampuagiwolo – were strangely
reminiscent of names I remembered
from my Madagascar travels.
Now, on Hoga Island, I checked in to a tiny
beach-front bungalow, tied my hammock
up near the shoreline and settled down for
a couple of blissful days of beach-bumming
on a deserted strip of sand 1,000km from
the packed beaches of Bali.
I walked almost the full way around the island
without seeing another foreign face, although
a handful of friendly local kids teamed up to act
as impromptu guides. The smallest had to be
carried on her brother ’s back across the sharp
coral outcrops that form the foundations of
many of these islands. I snorkelled on crystal
reefs where the balmy water was so clear that
it was possible to feel that I was floating in an
invisible ether, rather than submerged in water.
Here, in the mineral-rich waters where the
currents of the Banda Sea and the Flores Sea
meet, marine biodiversity seemed to have
run wild and I lost count of the number of
different fish species.
In 2012, Wakatobi was listed as Indonesia’s
12th protected area to come under the umbrella