East Java Night Market!

Hello everyone. Sorry I haven't been able to update in the few days. I've been extremely busy getting a shipment out to the US. Then when I had time, the internet stopped working! So let's continue on now with my Coral Adventures.

Here are some pictures of the night market in Banyuwangi.


So the market is basically a street of locals selling mostly fruits and vegetables. Some have tables set up. Others simply display their goods on the floor.

An assortment of root vegetables make up a big chunk of the goods being sold. Here is a pile of casava roots. I remember eating a bunch back in the Tonga days. Because they don't have freshwater streams or lakes on the main island, rice cannot be grown. So the main stable diet are high carbohydrate roots. This may explain why the Tongans are so big!

Bananas of all sorts. From tiny yellow ones to huge green ones, it always reminds me that I'm in the tropics.

Another common tropical fruit, the papaya. These things get huge here. I don't remember quite such big ones in Tonga.

A big pile of cucumbers and thin corn. For some reason, I didn't see any of the corns that I'm used to eating. All of them had the small kernels.

These piles on the table are tobacco. I remember my Tongan divers used to buy these same tobacco in small bags and roll them up in paper to smoke. It was much cheaper to do this than to buy regular cigarettes. Now that I'm looking at piles of these, I do remember that the tobacco bags had tags that said it was from Indonesia. Brings back memories!

These are jack fruits. I ate the most delicious and sweet ones in Vietnam. My in-laws grow these in front of their house!

Of course, the most popular tropical fruit is the coconut. These all have had their husks removed, and ready to eat!

The fear of bird flu is not really present in Indonesia. Unlike here, the restaurants in Vietnam don't even serve chicken, afraid of the avian influenza. I remember back about 4 years ago, we were strongly advised to not to eat chicken as we were heading for Thailand.


An assortment of dried beans. The brown round things in the blue basket in the front are chunks of raw sugar.

Here is a staple that all Indonesians like, soybeans! They cut these into small cubes and find thousand ways to prepare them. They actually are a good source of protein. I believe most of the locals get the protein they need from this.

Mangos are out of season right now, but still see some green ones around.

Here is my wife Anne buying some green tangerines. I think these are grown in the mountainous regions of East Java, where the weather is a little cooler. These have very thin skin and lots of meat!

Melons are really tasty here in Indonesia. This cantaloup had green flesh rather than the normal orange that I'm used to.

We also bought this seedless watermelon. It weighed around 3.5 kilos (almost 8 pounds) and only cost $.75. What a bargain!

One of the watermelon was cut opened to display. Actually this was the reason why we bought. It looked so good!


Here is Anne standing in front of the watermelons. The guy on the right is our driver, Awang. He speaks pretty good English and translates for me.

Ok now let's talk about some corals from Banyuwangi!

A beautiful unusual colored lobophyllia. The white spot on the edge is not damaged, just the color on that spot is white!

A cool red cynarina lacrymalis with a daughter that is sprouting. It is very rare to find such double specimens on these corals, as they normally are solitary.

Stunning red and blue blastomussa!

Very nice Acanthastrea Lordhowensis. This one even has purple color in it!

Just too amazing! Cynarinas are just one of the beautiful species of solitary corals. With it's translucent tissue, it is truly beautiful. This one is exceptional in that it sports a purple color on the outer tissue!

Another nice Cynarina lacrymalis. This one is in the shape of a heart! Check out the cool colors. The only thing is that it is slightly damaged. Because it was taken out of the water too long, the skeleton edges broke through the tissue. When it fully opens, you can't tell. But when it retracts, you can see. It will take a while for it to heal up. The Cynarina desheysiana, the donut coral, also has the same problems. I picked out some nice ones, but by the time it got to it's destination, all the tissue had been broken by the sharp skeletal ridges. They can stress easily during shipping.

An immaculate wild colony of Acropora granulosa! The brown may appear green under halides. The purple rim is just too awesome. Some lucky reefer will end up with this piece!

Montipora undata! The undata family has many different morphs. This one has the potential of turning into a show piece in an sps tank. Notice the purple rim!

Check out this little baby! It is a very delicate deepwater acropora. If you guessed Acropora fenneri, you are right! The body appears to be green and the tips are light purplish blue. Definitely not a common acro!


Oh man, watch out! Have a look at this little gem! It appears to be another Montipora undata species. I love this kind of montipora where it has two tiers. Notice the little sarcophyton soft coral trying to make a living between the tiers! Halides! Halides! I need halides!

Such beautiful encrusting/plating montiporas come only from Indonesia. This one sports green with a baby blue rim. Just can't imagine what it will look like under halides! My guess is that this is a Montipora informis!

This nice purple Montipora is very hard to id. The coenosteum ridges resemble a confusa or a spumosa, but really hard to tell. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful piece!


A cool little encrusting orange Montipora tuberculosa! These turn into super red under 10k's!


So my wife took this picture, not me! It actually is green with orange polyps. You can say that this a wild colony of the "reverse sunset monti"!
For sure, it will color up nicely under 20k's! The species appears to be a Montipora turgescens.


Another superb encrusting montipora! Usually the ones from Tonga that have these colors are Montipora nodosas. But this one appears to be a little different. My guess is that this is a Montipora corbettensis.
A killer wild Acropora gomezi colony! It was hard to take a good picture but you can make out the colors. It has a green - blue base with bright purplish blue tips. An amazing sps!

Sorry for the blurred picture, but for some reason my camera would not focus. Ok, so this is one coral that I've been searching for ever since I got here. This is the highly sought after Acropora solitaryensis! This by far is the best wild soli I have ever seen. It was just too gorgeous! The body color is yellow - green with bright blue-purple tips!

I took this picture out of the water. The one before is in the water. Look at the color, still vibrant! I sent this piece to Jakarta for export. Unfortunately it did loose some color. But my customer in the US has informed me today that the soli is incredible under halides! Some lucky reefer will end up with this "Eddie's Elite Edition" wild acro!!! For you reefers in the US that are dying to get hold of some of my corals, I have good news. An online company is coming to town that will be carrying my corals. Stand by and I'll have more info as the news is released!

Ok folks, that is it for today. If I have the time and the internet is working, I will post again tomorrow. For my next topic, I will go over some of the nice and strange anemones that I encountered this past week.

cheers,
Eddie