Introducing Flores, in Indonesia

I was in Bali two months ago. There were many touts selling tour packages at inflated prices. I declined them.

Later, I went to a booth selling the packages. The young man had curly hair and is quite dark - does not look like an ordinary Indonesian.

He was friendly, helpful and honest. I bought a tour package from him.

He came from Flores.

I searched Google Map for Flores. It pointed to a spot in the middle of East Nusa Tenggara.

Was Flores a town? I thought that it was a small island.

I learned later that Flores was the original name of East Nusa Tenggara. It is the entire island.

The people of Flores look like the people of New Guinea. Most of them are Christians.

Recently, a friend shared with me a chatty song. It attracted me because of the pretty girls and men dancing a line dance. Here is the video:

You can see the joy in their faces.

By the way, these dancers are stewardess and staff of Lion Air. They had a bad crash recently. I hope that they recover from the negative publicity. They seem to be contributing a lot to Indonesia as the second largest airline.

I learned later that the song is Gemu Fameri.

Here is another video that explain the song:

It is also called the Maumere song. I checked Google and found that Maumere is a town in Flores. The lyrics had some words that I recognized as Bahasa but many words that were strange. It must be a local language in Flores.

Tan Kin Lian