North Sulawesi, Indonesia 2010

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By the time we left Bukit Kasih, the sun was setting nicely and kids were out in force flying kites in the field.

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Our last stop before going dinner was this row of "house factories".

For perhaps 1 km or more on this stretch of road, there are lots of local Manado style houses for show and for sale. We stopped by to see some of the show houses. This large one is selling for about 370 million Rupiah, or about HK$370,000 or US$50,000. No cheap at all.

One of the photo below is the spec of this house. Many nails are not completely nailed in, because when someone buys this house, the shop has to disassemble the house plank by plank and ship out.

I asked if there are other options for the roof, and I was told that they used to use some kind of long dry grass. We can still see some houses with the traditional roof, but most are tin/iron-sheet tops. Just like the ones in the photo I took on the plane.

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The truck in the 1st picture is loading a house sold. I did not get the chance to find out how they marked the materials so they can assembly the house on site with the right piece.

The 2nd picture just shows another house for sell.

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We asked the hotel where we can have some local special food, and the hotel told us to go to "Heng-Mien". It was a busy restaurant with lots of locals. The price was cheap at Rp16,000 per person for the set menu. The food came as soon as we sat down.

The special local food that we looked for were RW (dog), Paniki (bat), Babi Hutan (boar), snake, and I forgot the other one.

The day we went to Heng Mien, they only have RW. (Top left dish on the picture.) I did not really like the food there, because all the ingredients were mashed together, and everything is just dark colored. The presentation has a long way to go. (But at HK$16 per person all-you-can-eat, I probably shouldn't expect too much.)

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Finally a clear day. This is the same outlook near the town of Tomohon. The big town in the far end is the Manado city.

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At the outlook, we found a restaurant that is very quiet with very nice view. Here we tried to get the local specialties again. This time, besides RW, I also got Paniki.

See the claw of the bat in the 2nd picture?

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The restaurant is called Rumak Makan Pemandangan (the words respectively means House Eat [name of place]).

The food is much better than Heng Mien. The ingredients were not mashed together, presentation much better. We were joking that by dinner time, the food would be mashed together like Heng Mien.

The first picture is RW and the second picture is Paniki. IMHO the RW is cooked with too much spice that the original meat flavor is overpowered. I have tried dog meat two times in mainland China - stewed in Guangdong and air-dried in Yixing. Stewed is by far the best.

The paniki is my first, and I don't think I will try again. The meat was very tough and the wing was like rubber. This only make sense as the wing is for flying. The boar meat was very gamy and on the tough side.

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Unlike many other nearby restaurants that charge a fixed price per person, this one is charging by the dish. And the reason that it's cleaner and quieter than the other ones. We spend a whopping Rp375,000 or 4 times as much as other fixed price restaurants.

Since we would like to try different dishes, we ordered quite a lot. At the end a friendly old woman in the next table advised us to take home the remaining food. And our driver happily packed up for his dinner.

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At the corner of the dining area is this very steep stairs going down to the kitchen. And old woman was cooking while a little girl was helping out.

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Closer look of the cook.

The little girl by now came back to the dining room floor, went to the back to wash dishes.

It was Thursday, and how come she's not in school? Maybe in Easter holiday? Or maybe I am assume too much that every young person should be schooled formally?