We went over to visit with Maria and Gary on Merlin. They were a wealth of information, telling us all the best places to go in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. While in Port Douglas we had picked up a cruising magazine with an article about Indonesia, and it turned out they are the authors. They have written a couple other articles for the magazine on Indonesia, as well. Guess we bumped into the right people!
The plan was to Continue reading
May 27, 2007 On Sunday morning we decided to go to church. The tourist guides all said that Polynesians are deeply religious people and everyone goes to church. Dean Richard, our guide, said that was true in his grandparent’s day, but nowadays it was socially acceptable to not attend church. The tourist guides all said the singing was amazing and worth a visit on a Sunday morning.
The Catholic Cathedral we had visited the night before had very high wooden ceilings, rock walls, and lots of statues and crucifixes. The church could have held at least a couple hundred people and there were maybe 40 at the Saturday night service. Everyone sat attentively. The service was in Marquesan. The singing was really beautiful, as promised. The priest and alter boy were dressed in white robes. Since we wandered in out and while the service was going on, we had no contact with the church goers. Continue reading