A Tour of Duty in North Sulawesi

The port town of Bitung with its fine natural harbour protected by the adjacent island of Lembeh is the centre for shipbuilding and maintenance as well as commercial fishing. Also, since the harbour in Manado silted up, large ships now all call into Bitung, including some of the magnificent passenger cruise-liners. The town itself has a quaint provincial charm and is distinguished by its 12m replica of the Eiffel Tower at one of the roundabout intersections leading into town. Apparently the unusual monument was built by a previous mayor who had studied in Paris in his earlier years, and was built as a testament of his love for the "City of Lights".Take a boat ride across and down the Lembeh Strait and you’ll come across an equally odd and intriguing monument; the Trikora Monument. Constructed in the 70s this mammoth structure towering some 100 meters into the sky was built to celebrate the success of the Indonesian military’s campaign in Irian Jaya. With an enormous Monaslike tower flanked by two annexes which look something like robotic flowers in bloom, the inside wall which encircles the base of the monument shows scenes of recruiting soldiers and then sending them off to war.Attached to the monument has been mounted an old DC3 aircraft that was used in the military campaign. A ladder on one side provides access inside where you can go and sit in the cockpit and live out your fantasy of being a fighter pilot – bring your own sound effects. This is a popular hangout for local kids.You can’t mention Bitung and Lembeh without mentioning the diving in Lembeh Strait. Relatively unknown compared to Bunaken, Lembeh has fast developed a reputation as being the place for muck. That may sound disgusting but allow me to explain. The sheltered straits form a kind of bottleneck in the surrounding sea, which has led to an abundance of plankton. This siltybottomed strait therefore doesn’t have the same spectacular coral walls of Bunaken but it does mean that the conditions are just right for serious divers to see a menagery of weird and wonderful creatures up close that they rarely, if ever, get to see anywhere else. Creatures with weird descriptive names that conjure up all sorts of strange images are common here – the ornate ghost pipefish, neon coloured nudibranchs (a kind of seaslug), mimic octopuses and flamboyant cuttlefish, as well as the diminutive pygmy seahorse and the aptly named frogfish can all be seen hiding among the crevices of the Lembeh Strait. Several dive resorts have been built here and offers easy, direct access to Lembeh, without the need for the long boat ride from Manado for day-trippers.