Bau Bau

The fairly short hop around to Bau Bau was completed via a stop at what looked like an idyllic coral lagoon. Unfortunately it was rolly and stormy so we left again the following morning at daybreak.

Like most of the other boats, we too decided to anchor just before the main town avoiding the crowds for another few days. It turned out to be in front of a small resort owned by a Norwegian and his wife. A Ramadan free zone.




We did the 15min recon trip to town by motorbike and eventually were encouraged to move around to the town center to enable the officials to show us what a great place Bau Bau is. Tourism is in its infancy here and yes we are the guinea pigs.

Our first excursion was to a cave. This turned out to be far more than we expected. A dodgy generator at the entrance was running half a string of lights (bulbs blown in the rest) and in we crawled… well the braver of the guinea pigs. A candle was lit every now and again I think to monitor oxygen levels and strangely enough no guinea pigs slipped and fell to their deaths at any number of points along the way.

The next day after taking in some of the sights from around the city, we were taken out to the Bau Bau Hollywood sign, once again with a police escort……. of course.

The guinea pigs were herded onto the bus in the afternoon to visit an old fort. Or that was what we thought. Firstly we stopped to see some local crafts been produced.

Then yes we made it to the fort where we were let out to eat some grass. I mean view the fort.

Here is where it got interesting. The bus took us up the road and we disembarked into a crowd of thousands. Different cultural shows were underway and we were eventually herded undercover for what looked like another show. After a lot of confusion we ended up seated one person opposite a girl in traditional dress. Our Girl. Apparently we couldn’t keep her however the idea was she was to feed us traditional food that her family had made. I would have washed and put on good clothes had I known.