Banda Neira and its surrounding islands are real jewels in the middle of the ocean. Trading for spices has taken place here for over 1000 years, mostly for the Nutmeg which at one time was only found here. Many battles have taken place and there are many well preserved forts to be sen around the place. The underwater life is also very special with many volcanic vents. The Banda sea is the deepest sea(thats not a trench) and the surrounding waters are 7000m deep causing many cold water upwellings in the area. All in all and amazing place and I hope you'll like this video.
Enjoi!

#Indonesia #Learningbydoing #sailing

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Closed Captions (CC):

0:23
Hey guys, welcome to another video here, Learning By Doing.
0:28
We're in Banda, it's a tiny little group of islands in the middle of the Banda sea, about uh
0:33
200 miles sort of from anywhere. Pretty much in the middle of nowhere to be honest and it's
0:38
pretty amazing. this thing behind me here is a volcano called uppi and then bandanas
0:44
over here to the other side and uh we've been exploring it for a few days now and yeah we're
0:49
sort of yeah it's another one of those places we've fallen in love with very very different
0:53
than the last place we were at and just again like we've been around indonesia for a couple
0:58
of three four years now but it just still blows us away that you sail for a couple of days and
1:04
it's just like another country totally different languages different customs different cultures
1:10
different looking people even and uh yeah pretty amazing so yeah today we're going to show you
1:15
uh some pretty cool plastic recycling initiatives they've got here on the island it's really um
1:22
interesting and you know obviously we've talked in the past about plastic issues in indonesia
1:26
here's an island that is actually doing something about it that's a really interesting thing we go
1:31
for snorkel out behind there there's a lava flow off the back of this volcano and it's
1:36
caused those pretty cool coral beds to grow so we're going and show you that and uh yeah we
1:41
had some couple of rough nights here with a bit of extra wind and it was blowing us around there and
1:46
these boats were banging on us and so yeah we sort of show you how we're trying to figure out
1:51
the ropes and everything to to make us secure here so now we are in bandar for more than a week and
1:57
in the main street we can see many products from nutmeg they dry them with sugar they put they do
2:04
some jam some syrup some coffee with spices inside too they have also cinnamons and canary nuts so
2:11
today we're gonna visit the plantation because we are quite curious about how they grow this nutmegs
2:34
foreign
3:22
let's go
3:40
okay so we came over by boat to uh banda basar which means big it's a big island here and today
3:46
we have lukman is guiding us he's a historian and has his own youtube channel there's a link up here
3:53
you can have a look he's made some history videos about this amazing area good morning look man good
3:58
morning what is this bloodstone um the bluster is the brush time because you know with the hats
4:10
the stone so this stone is full of blood all around blood's turned wow
4:24
it is the last uh latin plantation from the dutch era
4:28
and that's the new plantation of a different way of putting trees or harvest yeah yeah yeah
4:36
it's a different concept here because before and the beer the canary and the nightmare is a canal
4:44
tree is protecting the nutmeg from the direct sunlight and then
4:58
so we're in the nutmeg plantation now but it's just as much a almond plantation it's that massive
5:04
tree i just showed you that's called a dutch almond and uh yeah it's just a different sort
5:09
of almond they call it canary nut here and you can find it in the shops it's all you know you
5:14
can find these nuts they're huge trees they're over 200 years old and they're actually planted
5:20
here they were brought by the dutch and all under them all of these other trees around here are all
5:24
nutmeg and that's the real value crop but the canary trees sort of shelter the nutmeg from
5:30
storms and direct sunlight so that's why they planted them here but they're amazing trees huge
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so
6:01
right one
6:17
smelling better when it's fresh for me to not make them when it's dry
6:21
quite like like this so it's the first time i'm seeing a cinnamon tree
6:27
and so they are using the bath that's really the powder we have in europe and even the leaves like
6:34
when you pick the leaves and you smell it it's really you can recognize even more the essential
6:40
oil of a cinnamon than really the powder we can find in europe it's super strong smell
7:08
so
7:25
so we're standing on top of the hollandia fort
7:28
one of 12 forts that are around these islands here and yeah look at this view
7:39
this is you said the last time the volcano
7:50
last time erupted 1988
7:54
wow what a view we did a lot of motorbikes as we've rented motorbikes for the whole day
8:04
we decided to just do a whole lap of of banda basar it's about 20 kilometer loop
8:09
and uh lookman said there was some pretty cool things to see around the place and
8:13
and how you know us from other videos we just love cruising around motorbikes and uh just stopping in
8:18
random places and seeing what we see and uh yeah that worked out again we saw a couple of pretty
8:22
cool forts so now we are in another fort called concordia fort in another part of the island
8:41
um
9:06
and we sort of just rode into the middle of this wedding that was going on
9:10
and uh worked out to be pretty cool out the front were just
9:14
you know 50 men sitting around smoking listening to indo-pop music yeah at the
9:18
back all the women were cooking and making coffee and stuff like that but they had a traditional
9:23
music uh drums and i think it's called gong sembalan nine bells or something like that and uh
9:29
really cool to watch them they're just like going off and having turns and each song lasts about 15
9:34
minutes but they just sort of take turns and have a bit of a rest and the women were loving it and
9:39
that was actually where the party was at marie had a nice little dance and that was real cool to see
9:53
do
10:31
you
10:49
hello hello yeah kept driving around after that it was it's awesome just beautiful roads actually
10:57
but really narrow and lots of people working in the nutmeg plantations all over the place and
11:03
one of the most peaceful and beautiful islands we've ever visited to be honest
11:18
everywhere you go there's cloves and nutmeg and cinnamon and spices of all sorts just
11:25
drying on the lawns and on the side of the roads of people's houses because they've just up in the
11:29
woods up in the forest all day picking them and yeah they've spread them out on tops and
11:33
blankets when it's good weather and dry them out and the smell is pretty amazing as you're
11:38
cruising along on your motorbike it's just these different oh there's clothes there's
11:41
cinnamon it's it's pretty amazing and it's uh really a special um experience for sure
11:50
so we've done the circle around the island now and lukman took us to his other family house here
11:56
and here all the ladies are cooking and baking and
12:00
weaving and all sorts of things and we getting to taste all their goodies
12:09
each one tastes the same each color or different no it's the same just different color yeah same
12:17
chips oh
12:31
of course they wouldn't let us leave without a big packet of all
12:33
of the different stuff that they made and believe me i enjoyed it the next few days
13:02
hi guys we're here in banda naira and we've come across this awesome um project that's
13:07
dealing with the waste management here as you've seen in previous videos there are huge problems
13:12
with plastic and waste management in general in indonesia obviously the packaging and all this the
13:17
locals are just using plastic more and more but there's no infrastructure to deal with that and so
13:21
it ends up in the ocean or in the jungle mostly in the rivers and then in the ocean but so these guys
13:27
here have actually come up with a good project that deals with it and not just you know
13:33
roughly they really have an end goal on this so i'd like to show you their project and we're
13:38
here in their recycling hall right now and we're going to show you around what they actually do
13:43
my name is smaraka i'm living in banda since 2015 i'm co-founder of bunner theme and of the
13:53
yaya sans or the illumination foundation the local foundation that we have here in order to conduct
13:59
waste management and education about environmental issues hello my name is vaga i work with mauricio
14:08
we work hard for the fix the problem with the plastic in mandarin europe
14:12
so the foundation employs 16 people permanently there are people who are collecting the trash
14:18
out of the cans that are that around the city there are a couple of people on a boat who haul
14:24
stuff out of the water and off the beaches but also collect rubbish from other outlying islands
14:29
there are a bunch of guys here in the workshop that are collecting and sorting and grinding up
14:35
the plastic that's been already collected and yeah so it's a pretty good organization the um
14:42
some of this plastic gets shredded as you see here and sent to surabaya and they're actually
14:48
buying that in surabaya so they get money back for that and some of the trash here is really sorted
14:55
and there's ladies on the island who who weave it into baskets and make other products and that's
15:00
sold in germany and other places in europe and here on the island and then the certain sorts of
15:06
plastic gets put in this paralysis machine and actually turned into diesel and petrol
15:11
and kerosene for use in cars and boats and other things like that so here they've got a paralysis
15:18
machine this is a machine that turns used plastic into diesel petrol and kerosene so tell us how
15:26
this this all works yeah so the plastic starts you can put in is the polypropylene and polyethylene
15:34
and they are heated up without oxygen actually so they are not burning but instead they evaporate
15:41
and then condensate again so you get a crude oil and this oil gets distilled
15:47
and then becomes depending on the temperature becomes diesel benzene or kerosene and so what's
15:52
the what's the payback on that if you've got 10 kilos of polypropylene oil bottles uh what do
15:59
you get back from that from 10 kilos of plastic you get 5 liters of diesel normally 2 liters
16:05
of benson and 1.5 liters of kerosene and the kerosene is enough to to run the entire process
16:12
as you've seen there are plenty of forts all around the islands of banda they're mostly
16:17
built by the dutch to protect their investment in the nutmeg industry the two main ones on
16:24
bandar naira itself fought belgica and fort nassau belgica is the massive one up on the
16:32
hill it was first built in 1611. a very small fort and the one you see here was finished in 1673
16:44
and it was lost to the british then re-given to the dutch and then lost to the british again so
16:48
yeah like most things it's been battled over but yeah pretty interesting to walk
16:52
around these places um thought belgium has been restored fully in 1991 i think and it's
16:59
possible to walk around the entire thing climb all the towers and you get an amazing view from
17:04
up there and really cool to imagine how they would have lived back then in this in this colossus
17:19
the smaller one down the bottom of the hill is fort nassau
17:23
and this construction was completed in 1609 so it's one of the very early ones
17:28
so i'm going to show you a little bit our anchoring situation here in banda very very
17:32
deep here basically it's just volcanoes that goes keep going down underwater so it's just a slope
17:37
you can't really anchor on them so what we've had to do is put the anchor out in 30 something meters
17:43
and then just reverse in as close as we can to the land and tie up on the trees yeah with three boats
17:49
sort of in this little corner here and and uh the wind sort of whips around on the volcano here and
17:54
so everyone's sort of tin pin bowling off each other like we've got all got fenders out
18:00
we're sort of waking up in the middle of the night when a squall hits and we start dancing
18:03
around and hoping we're not going to hit the other boats and i'm continually like re-tying ropes and
18:09
you know just trying to get things working but it's a bit of stress always okay
18:24
i'm gonna go over and tighten up the rope on this middle boat he's
18:28
floating around and bonking into us so i'm gonna go and do that but first
18:33
i gotta empty out the dinghy look this is this is the rain from last night
18:49
so it's actually not just rain it's probably some rain but i forgot to put the bung in
19:01
yeah that happens sometimes too
19:35
fox
19:40
so everyone's been saying lately that uh my hair's getting a bit out of control
19:44
so danny here said we have to go now now now and he's got a friend that's gonna cut it
20:05
yadi hello
20:09
the master hair cutter i'm going to look 25 years younger
20:13
and way more handsome basically it is completely different well yadi is super fast like literally
20:20
three minutes i think and look i told you 25 years younger
20:31
what do you think about my haircut oh huh you're like a businessman
20:35
yeah you know like 20 years younger yeah maybe 23. yeah what do you think
20:44
you're really more beautiful you're just saying that because you have to
21:35
so
21:48
so
22:08
right guys hope you enjoyed that video we had a blast here in banda uh really really cool place
22:15
i mean you know probably said that a lot of times but we're actually having a blast all these places
22:19
around indonesia all so different all so unique uh we hope we're bringing that to you properly i mean
22:26
i guess you guys are getting that right we've been in one country now for what three and a half years
22:31
but it's just there's so much to see here and every time we think oh we know how it
22:35
all works we go somewhere else and it's just different and the people are different and
22:39
there's a different history of different culture it's amazing it's really amazing
22:44
yeah had a blast here as i said we're off to tual kai islands tomorrow morning and uh i'm about to
22:53
jump in the water to give the bottom a bit of a scratch so we can glide along at a good speed
22:59
i don't think there's going to be too much wind tomorrow so we want to at least glide as fast as
23:02
we can so um yeah i'll show you how this uh bottom paint's looking now too i think it's been about
23:09
five or six weeks since i last cleaned it i'm only scraping it using uh this sort of thing
23:16
because if i use a brush or the sponge it just takes all the paint off because this
23:21
hard anti-fowl from international is not at all hard it's just soft uh yeah it's just a cloud
23:28
of blue if you touch it so anyway i'll show you how how that's looking after six weeks
23:33
of being in the water and uh yeah thanks to all the um patrons once again amazing that
23:40
you guys are willing to uh flow us some money for making these videos and for helping it out
23:46
and for helping us out uh you know on our little journey here it's pretty pretty amazing oh yeah
23:53
well i'm looking it's not that i've been here in a muslim town so long that i'm covering my hair
23:58
up um i'm expecting to be a lot of shells and and actual not just slime on the bottom of the
24:05
boat here so there'll probably be a lot of sea lice and little crabs in that i don't want to
24:09
go in my ears or you know start biting me on the scalp so i'm just covering up a little bit
24:14
like long sleeves and and this and i'll put a mask on here obviously yeah patrons you guys
24:21
are awesome it's really really cool to hear from you guys as well and paypal obviously i often
24:28
forget you guys but very nice little presents that just come in unexpectedly so really really cool
24:52
so
25:22
yeah not amazing uh sort of what i expected to be honest but for an anti-fowl that has been in
25:30
the water since late may uh and cleaned like three times and on the move we've done 1500 miles since
25:42
you put it in and normally in small jumps so yeah that's not what you'd expect from an andy fell
25:49
and uh that's not taken to regard that it's not even hard you know it's just soft so it's not
25:54
really working as an anti-fell at all obviously i did a whole video about this there's a link up
26:00
in the corner but as an update to that i still haven't heard anything back from international
26:05
since i sent them a paint sample a couple of months ago now so i haven't heard anything back
26:10
from them i will be hauling out again in sarong uh probably in late february and then yeah i'll just
26:18
have to scrub all this off go back to scratch and uh see what i'm going to do regarding what sort of
26:25
paint i'm going to use or if international come to the table with any sort of a deal for me i don't
26:31
know we'll see anyway but that's further down the track anyway pretty disappointing to see this
26:36
yeah i just could have saved myself a lot of work and money and effort and just
26:40
not changed my hand he felt just left my old one on it to be honest but anyway
26:44
we'll spend a couple more hours scratching this off now see you next time