That Sengkank Feeling

That Sengkank Feeling
Sengkang, Indonesia

Sengkang, Indonesia

After yet another long long drive through Sulawesi we arrived in the less than noteworthy Sengkang, this little town really didn’t seem to have anything very exciting about it but we trusted our guide so went along with the flow and checked into our hotel as directed. After our little hotel in makassar and our homestay in Tana Toraja we had low expectations of Sengkang and were very quickly blown away. The hotel was huge, it had a massive pool in reception and the guy who checked us in told us that we had one of the new rooms and he was not kidding. It had huge big luxury beds with nice bedding, new wallpaper, a huge bathroom and even a TV, we felt like we had won the lottery and were very excited to hear that we had a few hours to relax before our afternoon tour. We had no problem whiling away a few hours in our air-conditioned room watching terrible tv.

The main novelty of Sengkang is actually the huge lake in the middle of the town, where numerous fish farms have appeared in amongst the floating houses. We started by visiting a stilt village which floods during wet season and is known for its silk weaving. We were there just a few days before a big Muslim festival so there were very few people to be found. We had a walk through the village and took in the view over the luscious rice paddies.

We hopped back into our long tail boat and set off on a sunset trip onto the lake. We pulled up at one floating house and were invited to sit on the terrace and eat Pisang Goreng (Fried banana) whilst the sun set behind us. It really was quite beautiful watching the birds dart through the sun set.

The one slightly worrying aspect of this trip is that heading home through the lake and its river system just after sunset was apparently bath time for the locals that live on and along aside the lake so we were greeting by more full moons than I have ever seen as the lake became a giant bath and toilet. Nice!

Next stop Bira Beach…