How did I end up in Borneo? You might wonder. Well, it is simple. I got on a plane, and I arrived. Was it that simple? Yes.
You see, there was a group of four girls, who were part of the Sulawesi trip who were planning on visiting Kalimantan right after we left Makassar. Kalimantan is the Indonesian side of the island of Borneo. There are two ETAs who live just outside Banjarmasin, and the plan was for all six of them to fly from Makassar to Banjarmasin via Surabaya, spend a couple days together at their sites in Martapura, and then the four girls were going to the nearby town of Loksado to do some jungle adventuring. Then one of them decided she couldn’t go, I forget why. I needed a ticket from Makassar to Surabaya anyway, so I offered to buy part of her ticket from her, since she couldn’t get a refund from the airline. Of course, the other five tried to persuade me to come with them to Kalimantan for a few days, since I had the ticket anyway. But I was trying to be responsible. I should go back to the pesantren for a few days since I’ve been traveling for such a long time. And I should do some laundry and pick up some nice clothes before the mid-year conference. If I did decide to go to Kalimantan, I’d have to go directly from there to the conference.
So I was pretty much set on going back to Java, but on the plane ride to Surabaya, about five minutes before we landed I remembered that going to Borneo was one of my life goals. I don’t remember why, but at some point I had decided that Borneo was one of those places that I just had to go. I was planning on going anyway, later in the year, but what if there was a series of terrorist bombings in Indonesia and all the Fulbrighters were sent home before I got the chance to go? What if I was fired for something silly (AMINEF would do that) and missed my chance. I turned to Dan, who was sitting next to me and asked him if Kalimantan was a good idea. Yes, he said. Well then I’ll go. Five minutes later, when we landed, I grabbed my bag and walked right onto the next plane with the other five. And that’s how I ended up in Borneo. Life goal: CHECK!
So what did we do in Kalimantan? The first day, we all went to the Martapura market to buy some fresh fruits, vegetables, spices, herbs, tofu and tempe for a delicious family dinner. Somehow I kind of ended up in charge of cooking, which is silly right? I think Dan got stressed out, so I took over. We started chopping, slicing and generally preparing all the ingredients for a number of dishes I decided on, and then realized the stove didn’t work. So we ended up stowing the food away until we could get the stove fixed and got some take-out chicken. We ended up sitting around watching The Prince and Me which is just the type of movie that I love watching in this country. I’m not sure why, but chick-flicks have major appeal to me in Indonesia. I’ve consulted with other female ETAs and for some reason, we all really enjoy sappy, corny love stories much more than usual.
The next morning, Emmy, the one who lives in Martapura, took the other three girls to visit her school, which is also a pesantren. Emmy and I are the only girls who teach in pesantrens. I decided not to go 1. because I was tired and wanted to sleep in, and 2. because I didn’t want to put on a jilbab while on vacation. I think Emmy understood. We were supposed to leave for Loksado that afternoon, but Maria got really sick, so we postponed our departure for the next day. None of us minded another day of hanging around Emmy’s house eating chicken and watching movies. We watched the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, which I thought was even better than the first one, and The Prince and Me 2. That one was not so great. Emmy also got the stove fixed so we were able to make dinner. It was another lazy, wonderful day.
The next morning, no one wanted to go to school with Emmy, so I did, even though I didn’t want to put on a jilbab. It turned out she didn’t teach that day anyway, so I just walked around with her quickly, to compare pesantrens, and then we went back to her house. Maria was feeling better so we loaded up our stuff and caught a “cab” to the city of Kandangan.
“Cab” gets quotation marks, because it’s not a cab in the American sense. It’s more like a shared ride van, but more cramped and without air conditioning. We took that to the city of Kandangan (about three hours away) and then transferred to another “cab” to the town of Loksado. The second cab was even better. It was a truck with a tarp over the truck bed and some benches and a lot of cargo in the back. That was a fun ride, and we got to travel with some cute old ladies.
Loksado isn’t really a town so much as a fork in the road with some food stands and a hotel. The hotel is cool though because its on a little island in the middle of a tiny little river. We didn’t get in until kind of late in the afternoon, but we had time for a quick hike before sunset. Our guide was just some random guy who didn’t talk to us, but he took us to a Dayak village nearby and then to a couple of waterfalls. The Dayak village included a pretty big longhouse, which I guess was kind of cool, but after Tana Toraja it was kind of boring. The waterfalls were fun though. We decided to do some cliff-jumping and swimming in our clothes. For dinner we had some decent food at a warung and then spent the rest of the night hanging out in our hotel room.
The next morning we were psyched for some bamboo rafting. Check out the pictures for these. The rafts are great because they float (obviously), but on rapids they just sort of cut through the water. A couple times I was in rapids up to my chest. It was really fun, and we had a great river guide. Watching him pole down the river was like watching a pole-vaulter. We rafted by some pretty remote village and some beautiful scenery…rice paddies and mountains, the usual. My favorite part was seeing these super remote bamboo huts in the middle of nowhere with gigantic satellites in their front yard. You have to wonder how they got there when there’s no road access.
The whole rafting trip took about two hours, and it was exciting, but also super relaxing. There were long, quiet stretches where we could just zone out and think. Not that I don’t already have too much time to think in this country.
Because of the mid-year conference and our delay in getting there, we only got to spend one night in Loksado, but I think we would’ve run out of things to do there anyway, had we stayed longer. We headed back to Martapura a little after noon that day, but instead of a “cab” we took ojeks back to Kandangan. This was, by far, the best ojek ride I’ve had in Indonesia. Riding through the mountains of Kalimantan has to be done by ojek. A car just doesn’t do it justice. Everything was so green and the sky was so blue. It was perfect. By the end of the hour and a half ride, though, my butt hurt and I was glad to hop back into a “cab.”
We got back to Martapura in the evening and had one more evening of take-out chicken and bad movies before leaving. We started to watch The Prince and Me 3. Isn’t that awful? What’s even worse is that Emmy actually owns all three of them. Ha. We didn’t finish it though. It was that bad. The next day, Caitlin and I headed back to Surabaya together to spend the night before we flew to Jakarta for our conference. Since I didn’t go back to my pesantren before the conference, I ended up wearing a combination of smelly clothes I’d bought and worn during my travels and some stuff that Dre let me borrow. But, being smelly in a nice hotel in Jakarta is a small price to pay for a trip to Kalimantan.
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