In Reply to: Any chance posted by masuraka on Thursday, 2. April 2009 at 17:28 Bali Time:
We were suprised when we landed to find a big new airport, very nice and modern. We flew over with Garuda and back with Lion Air, took only 1hr 10 mins, no problem. We stayed in a hotel on the harbour called the Pantai Gapura, it is a nice hotel with a restaurant shaped as a boat, nice shaped pool and some lovely bungalows overlooking the sea.
From the restaurant we could see local boats going back and forth, probably water Taxi's, there seemed to be islands close by.
Unfortunately because of needing to be at the different wedding ceremonies we didn't have much free time but we managed a quick look around the local streets to the hotel, there was one particular street that buy and sell gold, they had men outside each one with scales, buyers I guess.
There were a lot of the local transport, they are similar to the trishaws of Singapore but the guy on the bike was at the back, lots of local people used them, John reckoned that we were at the front to protect the driver, lol,they did crazy stuff like just crossing a busy street without waiting for a gap in the traffic, not for the faint hearted. We did see Taxi's but not that many and we were told that they are expensive.
Apparently at night by the side of our Hotel there appeared many, many foodstalls, it was advertised as one of the longest foodstalls
eatery in the world, we didn't get to see it though, sigh !
There were a few beaches we saw advertised in the hotel info and a place called Fort Rotterdam, if you put Makassar into your server it will come up with places of interest, shame we missed it really.
Makassar seems more like a business district than a tourist area, there is a big shopping mall with all the known dept stores in there as well as supermarkets and hundreds of small shops and eating places, we were very amused to see that they even had a durian eating place in the middle of it, you could smell it long before you got there, it is all very modern, clean and new.
Sorry can't tell you anymore but hope it helps.
Maureen