While I was there, my company was awarded another project for a plant on the same island. Since I was already only about 200 miles away (straight line distance…this will be important later), it made sense for me to travel down there, extend my trip by 1 week, and do the initial site visit. It was decided we would hire a driver to pick up me and another co-worker (Indonesian and bi-lingual…this too will be important later) in Soroako and drive to the other plant. So, a 200 mile drive doesn’t sound that bad, eh? Well, like I said before, it is 200 miles straight line distance…not actual miles. It takes 9 HOURS to drive from Soroako to Kolaka!!! OK, no problem. The roads around Soroako are nice roads. Surely this must be how all the major roads/highways are. HA! It was 9 hours of winding up and down mountains on roads, broken roads, and demolished roads that are about the width of 1 lane in North America, all the while dodging people that don’t have sense enough to stay out of the road or even walk facing traffic, dodging animals (cows, horses, chickens, and dogs), dodging other passenger cars/trucks, and dodging buses and freight trucks. So we left Soroako at 7:30 am, stopped for lunch (fried chicken, soup and rice…see the post below) and a couple times to stretch our legs, and finally arrived in Kolaka at 4:30 pm. Our driver only spoke Bahasa (Indonesian), so for 9 hours, I listened to the driver, his brother, and my co-worker speak in a language that I only know about 10-20 words. When I wasn’t trying to figure out what they were talking about, they had a cassette tape playing of some popular American music they thought I might like to listen to. It’s funny actually. One of the other long road trips I have been on, I listened to the same music for an extended period of time. Now, I know some of you may like her music, but about an hour is all I can really stand of SHANIA TWAIN!!!