Re:Born(eo)

A 3-minute video montage of my month in Borneo. Underwater footage taken by Stephen Traina-Dorge. Music: Jauh Di Mata by Tingkilan Ensemble

Bolivia

After our minds were blown at Iguazu, we had a nice 35-hour bus trip to process it all, ending up in La Quiaca, a town on the border of Argentina and Bolivia. Through entirely our own fault, Arsalan and I had some problems entering Bolivia.

Travel tips 101:

1. Have photocopies of your passport.
2. Have extra passport photos.
3. Know how much money you need to enter a country.

Long story short, we were told we needed photocopies to enter Bolivia, and they pointed us to a photocopy place on the Bolivian side. Only problem was the power was out for the next 6 hours, so no photocopies were possible. Eventually we convinced the border patrol to let us in without photocopies, but they still needed the $160 visa fee per person. No problem! I whipped out $320 in real US dollars, only for them to be inspected thoroughly. Most of the bills were turned down. We had to get stamped back into Argentina to go to an ATM (ATMs weren't working in Bolivia due to the power outage), return back to Bolivia to exchange the Argentine pesos for US dollars, and go back to the border. The border patrol agent (let's call him Nacho) still gave us a hard time, but Arsalan showed him a $5 bill and told him to put it in his pocket (as a joke). Nacho changed his mind and decided our bills were good enough. Then the police guy came up to us and told us to actually give him the $5 bill.

Arsalan doing the dirty

Breakfast of champions

After finally entering Bolivia, we took a bus up to Tupiza where we booked a tour for the next 4 days through the Bolivian mountains, valleys, lakes, and most famously, Salar de Uyuni (salt flats). A quick night in Tupiza yielded an awesome meal and some cool street art. Che is big in Bolivia given it was his death place.

We'd heard the food in Bolivia was supbar but that ended up being very false

Che

The next day, we set out. Put bluntly, Bolivia was insane, and if it wasn't on your radar it should be. In 4 days, we saw all kinds of landscapes, going from incredible mountains, colored lakes, alien swamps, and complete vastness. Here are some pictures.

"Casa de Llama"

Arsalan bought a hat

Sepanta bought a hat

<33333

Ruins

Majestic llama (lol)

Arsalan kept doing this, I'm not sure why

Bubbling pools of goo

Laguna Colorado

Reflections

More reflections

Vast

The beginning of the silly salt flat photos

Trying to take a picture

Canelle and her kids

Llama ribs

Dr. Arsalan taking my stitches out back in La Paz. Don't worry everyone, I did great.

Iguazu

After saying goodbye to Buenos Aires (and Milhouse), Arsalan and I took the 18-hour bus to Iguazu in the north of Argentina. If you haven't heard of it, Iguazu is one of the most beautiful places in the world situated on the border of Argentina and Brazil, with an incredible series of waterfalls numbering over 150. There's not a whole lot to say other than that if you can, go check it out at some point in your lifetime. It's well worth the trip.

Paraguay (left) and Brazil (right), as seen from Argentina.

Shot on iPhone 5S

The least f-boi picture of us

Struggling to capture the beauty of this place.

Some butterflies enjoying the view.

Buenos Aires, "Good Airs"

I had a 3 day layover in NYC between Indonesia and South America, where I checked on my old travel partner Reza. He was, of course, on his phone.

It was great to catch up with Reza.

After a couple days of R&R in NYC, I continued on to Buenos Aires to meet up with the one and only Arsalan "You're Awesome" Derakhshan. We coordinated to meet up at the Buenos Aires airport when we landed (different flights) but then realized we were flying into different airports. I cabbed to Milhouse Hostel and waited for him. (Side note: if you want a nice, quiet place to set up as your base in Buenos Aires, Milhouse is not it. If you want a place that will suck you into a bubble from the outside world where you go out all night and wake up at 6pm over and over, Milhouse will be your Mecca. After 6 days, we saw a chance to escape and we took it, booking a quaint airbnb in Palermo with no parties or cool people to distract us from our tourism.)

We checked into our room and met our roommates. A couple people you should meet:

Man-bun Series: Over the next 10 days in Buenos Aires, Taco became a good friend. We made fun of him for being the shortest Dutch guy we'd met on this trip (he's 6'2").

Man-bun Series: Ataif won our admiration for 2 reasons: his deep dish t-shirts, and the fact that for 4 days in a row, he was supposed to check out that day, and for 4 nights in a row, he extended his check out by 1 day when he got back from the club at 6am. It was because of him that we finally realized we had to get out of Milhouse Hostel.

We walked around our immediate neighborhood (downtown) and then returned to our hostel to prepare for the night's festivities. Here are the highlights from our time in Buenos Aires.

From left to right: Ataif, Vicky, Imogen, Emily, and Taco all sporting the man-bun in honor of this blog.

Dinner example #1

Dinner example #2

Arsalan was constantly broing out. Here he is doing pull-ups on a construction site.

Here he is squatting Imogen.

After the club, we hung out with some Argentine fishermen until around noon.

They showed us an Argentine drink called Fernet con Cola. It was pretty strong.

Obama visited Argentina the week before we were there.

"More voices, more democracy"

Arsalan and I

Look who we ran into!!! (fake Diego Maradona)

Imogen and Vicky had some difficulty learning Arsalan and my names. On the last night, they wrote down all the different names they'd called us.

Arsalan

Arse Line
Line of arses
Aslan
Hair Salon
Arse Land
Arse Taker
Arse Please

Sepanta

Surplanta
Surpanta
Surplantro
Surplant
Serpenta
Serpant
Sir-pant-a-lot
Serpanties
Sir-pansy
Serpantro
Cilantro
Serpantra

The Islands

On the previous episode of Sepanta’s blog, Stephen and Sepanta were just about to head to the Derawan Archipelago off the eastern coast of Borneo.

After a tumultuous night at Embassy (great club name), we awoke to catch our morning flight to Berau, a city on the eastern side of Kalimantan. From there, we took a taxi for 2.5 hours to Tanjung Batu, a town on the coast through some of the most stomach-challenging roads. After that, it was a bumpy boat ride to Derawan Island (the closest of the islands in the Derawan Archipelago), but we finally made it and settled in for the night at a hostel-like place called Pelangi. We went to nap at 6pm, and woke up the next morning.

Derawan Island is an interesting place. We’d been expecting something of a backpacker’s haven, but realized pretty quickly that we were the only ones staying at our hostel that night (30+ rooms), and we didn’t see any foreigners for a couple days. The island has most of the infrastructure for tourists (almost every house is a “homestay”, almost every kitchen is a “restaurant", etc), so it was very strange being there pretty much alone. We spent the next few days trying to figure out what exactly people on Derawan do…it turns out that most of them just cater to tourists, which made it even more strange that there was no one else there. Basically it was a village of people doing almost nothing…we’d come to the right place.

People taking pictures with us per usual.

We rented bikes for the day and set off on a loop around the island to explore…that took about 20 minutes. The island was smaller than we expected. Back where we started, we began to look for a scuba instructor. Our main reason for coming to the Derawan Archipelago was for the highly-rated diving and coral reefs, and we were hoping to get scuba-certified during our time there. We went to about 5-10 places (all of them), and as it turned out every single dive instructor was out of town. Bummer.

Pretty sweet sunset view from our hostel though.

Urchins being urchins.

Turtles being turtles.

Lionfish being AHHH GET OUT OF THE WATER!!!

Having a beach day with this 5 ft monitor lizard.

One thing you should know if you decide to go to Derawan and stay at Pelangi is that they have karaoke, 24/7 (I am exaggerating). In fact, it might be more accurate to say it’s a karaoke bar with some hostel rooms. There was karaoke when we went to bed, and there was karaoke when we woke up…usually with just the 3 people that worked at the hostel. We began to have a love/hate relationship with it. 

Our hostel.

Thursday night, a few Indonesian guys showed up, and after talking to them we found out one of them was the owner’s nephew, and he visited almost every weekend. They invited us to go fishing with them the next day and then we went to bed.

20 minutes later, they pulled us out of bed to go drink their bottle of whiskey, and after finding out that Steve and I had been in an a cappella group in college, they made us join in on the karaoke. A few Bon Jovi songs later our voices were gone and we went to bed for real.

It's Steve's liiiiiiife and it's now or neveeeeer

The next day, we woke up and hopped on their boat. They took us to their favorite spot, a completely uninhabited island that was essentially just a sand bank in the middle of the ocean. Crazy. We frolicked for a bit and then headed back to land.

Romantic private island time with 6 dudes.

Later that afternoon, we got ready and went fishing. They informed that they ran out of fishing poles and that I would have to fish “manual”. I ended up ruining Stephen's and my streak of no fish by catching a giant travelly (that is the name, I’m not bragging about the size), and we had it for dinner a few hours later. The owner of the hostel was also on our boat, and every time he got a bite he would yell “Strike, man!” (some of the little English he knew). So we started calling him Strikeman and are going to send him a Superman t-shirt.

My "manual" fishing gear.

Catch of the day/dinner.

After the fishing trip, Steve and I decided to buy them beer as a thank you and went to the local store. Only problem is they sold them individually for 25,000 rupiah ~$2, which works when you buy individually but here in Indonesia they don’t really make deals. After a good 15 minutes of haggling,  we made literally 0 progress and ended up paying $60 for 30 beers. Most expensive 30 ever.

The rest of our time on Derawan we pretty much alternated between sitting in the sun and swimming in the water. The sea life was very diverse, and we saw lots of turtles, starfish, fish of all kinds, and other things. 

Steve eating ikan bakar (grilled fish).

Steve eating more ikan bakar, this time with a shirt.

Though we were unable to find a dive instructor, we still wanted to check out the other islands in the archipelago, the main ones being Sangalaki, Kakaban, and Maratua. We booked someone to take us on Monday, and decided we’d stay in Maratua the last 3 nights of our trip. We hugged Strikeman goodbye and went on our way.

Bye to the homies.

On our way to Sangalaki, we tried to find whale sharks but had no luck. As we learned, they like to come close to the fishing traps that are set up in the ocean, and that’s where we looked. Unfortunately, when the moon is full, less fish fall for the traps since they’re able to see the nets better, and therefore whale shark sightings are also rarer because they don’t hang out near the traps as much. So no whale shark but I did get this picture.

Fishing outpost in the ocean.

Following that, we went to Sangalaki, which is famous for its manta rays. During the high season, apparently the ocean goes black with as many as 50 or 100 manta rays. From our boat, we could see about 6 or 7, and Steve and I jumped in and swam with them. Crazy creatures, big and peaceful.

After Sangalaki, we went to Kakaban Island, which is famous for its “Stingless Jellyfish Lake”. Most of the island is taken up by the lake, and other than that is virtually untouched (other than a dock and walkway to the lake). It basically looked like the island from King Kong. Steve and I went to the lake and swam around with the jellyfish, which were everywhere. We accidentally hit a few while we were swimming around, but surprise, they didn’t sting. It was really eerie because the water was pretty cloudy, and as you swam, jellyfish would suddenly appear around you and then disappear behind you. They’re pretty creepy. After about an hour, we headed back to our boat to be dropped off at Maratua.

I'm pretty sure dinosaurs live here, but we didn't see any.

Maratua is the largest of the islands, and also not very accessible, though there are a couple resorts on the island. It contains 4 villages, but the island itself doesn’t have electricity (everybody runs personal generators). However, the government is building an airport there to the frustration of some. We were glad we were getting to go before the airport was completed, since the island will likely change a good bit in the next few years.

We checked into the Maratua Guesthouse (being by a good bit the youngest people there) and set off to explore the island. Maratua was much larger than Derawan, so we decided first we needed bikes. We walked to the nearest village, 2 km away, and found the one bike rental on the whole island. The bikes were set at 25,000 rupiah/hour (~$2), which is okay if you’re getting an hour, but we were looking to get 2 days. But like I said, they don’t really make deals in Indonesia so the guy maintained that that was the price regardless of time. After about an hour of haggling and playing soccer with his 4-year-old kids, we got it down to 500,000 rupiah for the 2 days and left grumbling while he sat there with his stupid sunglasses smoking his stupid cigarette counting the money we handed him. We headed out on a loop of the island. It was much bigger than we expected. 

This led to a pepper farm.

Soccer field facing the ocean.

Maratua is long and skinny and by the time we reached one end, the sun was already setting. What we thought had been 3 km had actually been closer to 15 km. We began the hour-long journey home and were within a few km when it got completely dark. Fortunately, a family on a motorbike was nice enough to drive behind us so we could use the light from their headlight.

Here is a lesson - don’t bike at night, kids. Karma is real. Throughout our trip, I’d made fun of Steve for tripping and getting stitches. We went up a hill and as I tried to slow down, my front wheel went into a hole, and my front brake made the back of the bike go straight up and do a perfect front flip on top of me. My hand was bleeding pretty bad, and the motorbike dad took no time getting off and demanding me to ride the motorbike with his daughter back to my guesthouse. I said no I’m fine but he didn't budget so I did.

Reenacting the fall the next day (and almost getting run over by a truck in the process).

The girl who saved my life.

When I got to the guesthouse, I began cleaning out the wound, only to find there was a rock stuck pretty deep inside. Having seen plenty of movies where the character has to at some point remove a bullet, I grabbed my pair of tweezers, took a deep breath, and dug out the rock. There was tissue hanging out and everything!

I decided I should go to the hospital…only thing was I was on a pretty remote island so it was more of a “hospital”. I motorbiked to the same village wand waited for Dr. Berri to show up. He was about my age. He anesthetized, cleaned, and stitched up my hand, and sent me on my way. $15.

My medical team/facility.

Unfortunately, this meant no snorkeling for me on Maratua, which has some beautiful reefs, but I got to hang out on the beach for the next 3 days. We met some great people, shared stories, and ate chocolate pancakes and nasi goreng (fried rice) to our heart’s content. Steve did the best snorkeling of his life as I watched from shore.

The following day, Steve went to get his stitches removed by Dr. Berri. We showed up to the "hospital" again, and someone called Dr. Berri over (he was in the middle of a badminton game). He and his boys arrived drenched in sweat, and his entourage watched as he removed the stitches. Then we all took pictures together.

Steve undergoing his procedure.

The medical/badminton crew.

On Thursday, Steve and I made the reverse trip from Maratua back to the airport by boat and car, filming a guerrilla rendition of our old a cappella group's theme song in order to feel in touch with the reunion that had just happened in Boston a couple nights before. We then said our goodbyes. Steve continued on to Tanjung Selor (definitely a name out of Lord of the Rings) and then on to Malaysia, and I'm heading to South America with an extended layover in NYC. But not, of course, without one last night at Embassy.

I promise they were happy to see me.

Boat Trip up the Mahakam

On the previous episode of Sepanta’s blog, Stephen and Sepanta viewed the eclipse and then set off for Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan (Kalimantan is the Indonesian portion of Borneo, which is the island that is shared with Malaysia and Brunei).

After the craziest drive ever, we tried checking into a hotel we’d looked up, only to be told there was no room and to try the hotel next door. We walked over but were immediately told they were full too (suspicious…we later tried booking a room for the following week and upon being told they were fully booked we realized that they just didn’t want two scraggly backpackers staying there…).

That is the story of how we ended up staying at The Grand Jamrud Hotel for 2 nights. The best way to describe The Grand Jamrud is that it is probably the hotel that gave Wes Anderson the idea for The Grand Budapest Hotel. We imagined the hotel to have had its heyday back in the 1970s, being the epicenter of culture and a who’s who of Southeast Asia…and then was never touched again and had slowly begun to fall apart. The free breakfast was pretty good, though.

Dragonfruit pickup

That evening we went out and had some fantastic street food called sate, which is basically meat on a stick w/rice.

The next day we spent a good hour walking around, looking for a place with wifi listed in Steve’s 2013 Lonely Planet book only to find out it had closed down. Drenched in sweat and starting to burn (it’s hot out here), we finally found a hotel where we spent the majority of the day being lazy and catching up on “work”. There was a professional Indonesian soccer team called Arema Malang hanging out at the hotel with us, so that was pretty cool. Here are some of their highlights that I didn’t watch. 

Later, while walking around, we were approached several times by guys on the street telling us they were tour guides and that their names were listed in Lonely Planet. We told one of them to meet us at our hotel that night in order to plan our jungle tour of the Mahakam River, a huge and hugely important river to the people of Kalimantan. We made plans with our tour guide Suryadi to leave the next morning at 8am. (If anybody has a month available, you can do the cross-Borneo trek with one of these tour guides for around 32 million rupiah ~ $2500 across the whole island by boat and foot.)

The next morning we drove a few hours to the starting point of our boat trip, passing by lots of oil palm trees on roads completely destroyed by the rainy season. We set off on our boat, and for the next 4 days we saw tons of wildlife, stopping by different villages along the way including Kota Bangun, Muara Muntai, Muara Ohong, Mancong, and Tanjung Isuy. Something I hadn’t realized before this trip is how magnificent Indonesian jungle was. I'd always heard about the Amazon, but didn't know Indonesia has one of the most untouched jungle and diverse wildlife populations in the world, with the Borneo jungle hosting all kinds of species, including the most diverse snake population with over 150 different kinds. Within an hour, we saw our first monkey, swinging around in a banana tree trying to grab a banana (AKA the most stereotypical monkey ever). Over the next few days, I decided that the media does a pretty fair representation of monkeys.

About to set out...but first...

Lychees. Lots of lychees.

Some kids from Muara Muntai that were fascinated by us. All the adults were at the mosque for prayer so there was nobody to stop them. At one point, about 25 kids came onto the dock and it began to sink…

Crushing some kids at soccer in Muara Muntai. 0 goals, 3 assists. Talk about generosity/not being able to score.

Before leaving on our boat, Steve and I had bought a fishing pole that we used at various points throughout the boat journey. Everyone told us the bait we were using was worthless, but that just pushed us to want to prove them wrong more. We did not. It may have have to do with the fact that mosquitos got pretty unbearable after about 10 minutes. Or it may have had to do with our bait.

Asking for directions. The river runs through several lakes, and this one has a lot of lake weed that is constantly moving around with the waves and the currents and taking new shapes, meaning it functions as an ever-changing maze and you can get lost for a while, like we did. At some points, our boat driver would just accelerate into fields of grass hoping it would lead somewhere.

Totems, or "hampatong", portraying ancestors and other supernatural guardians to protect dangerous spirits from entering the community.

Highlights of the trip were:

• Seeing amazing wildlife. Overall we saw monkeys (proboscis and macaque), fish eagles (looked like bald eagles but smaller), a bunch of monitor lizards (which can get pretty big), all kinds of other birds, and some sort of snake.
• Freshwater dolphins (this gets its own bullet point). The Irrawaddy dolphin is extremely endangered now, with WWF estimating that there could be as few as 34 left in the whole Mahakam River. There are several causes for their decreasing population, including boat propellers hitting the dolphins due to the heavy traffic on the river, along with the increased industrialization of Borneo that is feeding into that rising traffic. We were lucky enough to see several swimming on our last day heading back, including a baby (woooooo!!!)
• Our guide Suryadi asking us about American slang. He wanted to know under what circumstance “F@ck that sh*t” applies. We listed a bunch of scenarios for him.
• Amazing, amazing meals. Some of the best fish I’ve ever had in my life, over and over.
• Getting really friendly with geckos in the shower

Irrawaddy dolphin

Monitor lizard

Eagles chillin'

A snakeskinner showing off his future products.

Suryadi (guide), Steve, Hery(boat captain), me

On the 4th day, we returned to land and headed back to Samarinda, this time opting for a different hotel than The Grand Jamrud. The following morning we went to explore the Samarinda Islamic Center, which is the 3rd largest mosque in Southeast Asia. I can’t quite express how loud/adorable the kids were, but they were very excited to see 2 foreigners at the mosque and immediately crowded around, jumping, yelling, posing. Apparently they were in school...

We explored the mosque a bit, and then packed up and headed back to our former stomping ground, Balikpapan, with the same crazy driver who’d brought us to Samarinda (more Bon Jovi of course). That night, we revisited our favorite club Embassy, and did ourselves no favors for the following day. We woke up, took a plane, car, and a boat, and eventually landed on Derawan Island. But that’s for next time.

One week later (two weeks later)

Hi friends,

It's been a while since I last posted and much has happened. For one, Stephen has arrived, and though he does not usually wear it in a man-bun, his hair is long enough to pass my test. Here are the highlights so far.

I arrived in Balikpapan late on the evening of March 3 and walked to a nearby hotel. Nothing too eventful, but I had free breakfast so that was nice. After that, I reached out to all my contacts in Balikpapan and was recommended to stay at the Quest Hotel, located in an area called "Superblock". Nice.

Here is what you need to know about Balikpapan. It is a seaport city in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island Borneo (shared with Malaysia and Brunei). City activity seems to be concentrated around 2 areas: Plaza Balikpapan and Superblock, each of which has a "supermall". They're about a 35-minute walk from each other, and in between the two areas, there is an interesting mix of wealth and poverty deeply integrated together. The store selling fancy D-SLRs will sit right next to the grimy mechanic working on repairing the queue of 20 motorbikes. This dichotomy of wealth is perhaps most evident in how these supermalls seem to be transplanted into a heavily developing world, such that it seems like people live in 2 completely different spheres. On one hand, food on the street is so cheap, costing $2 to $3/meal ($10 for a fancy, "overpriced" oceanview restaurant) and on the other, some things are more expensive than even back in the US ($300+ Ray Bans, $18 drinks, etc.) Additionally, the malls haven't had substantive crowds of people, so it's hard to understand what exactly makes them worth building and running. It's been an interesting mix to say the least.

The other thing you need to know about Balikpapan is that it is a center for the Indonesian oil/gas industry, which enables that duality above. The palm oil industry is also rampant here on Borneo and contributing to the rapid destruction of the island's rainforest, and I'll talk about that in a later post. Basically, there are questionable things going on here.

The people have been wonderful. They are constantly waving and exclaiming "hello sir" to us on the street and asking where we are from and why we're visiting their home instead of Bali or somewhere else. Sometimes (often) kids heckle us but I'm sure they mean well...Additionally, we've been asked many times to take pictures with people. Here's one:

The bros (great picture I know)

With that, let me rewind. The first couple days I spent a good deal of time acclimating to my new time zone (sleeping), along with getting to know the mall next door really well. It seemed like most activities in the city revolved around the malls, and even the food recommendations I got were for places inside (seriously, someone told me to go to the food court for good Indonesian food). After that I went back to my room and napped. 6 hours later I woke up and headed to the club, which was popping. I made lots of friends, here they are:

Some of my friends. It's hard to be funny in other languages. One thing is you can't make mean jokes because if they don't understand they think you're just being mean and then you have to explain why it was a joke and then it's not funny anymore.

My bartender friends doing fancy fire stuff.

My friend Bibis right after he yelled "THIS IS MY JAM". It was his jam.

The next day was more malls and napping. I'll skip forward to when Steve arrives. Here he is eating his first meal:

Steve

Steve's arrival injected some much needed energy into the trip, and we explored all over town. For about 20 minutes. Then we went back and napped (a very common theme of our time in Balikpapan). We explored the mall afterwards and I showed Steve all of the sights to see. During that, and I kid you not (for all my Iranian friends), there was an Arash song playing. I Shazam'd it as proof.

Speaking of which, 90% of the music played in public places here are either acoustic covers/remakes of popular American songs, or piano covers. My guess is it's cheaper to buy rights from cover artists but they might just really be into acoustic music. That being said, I've heard some great songs here. My hotel lobby was playing Bon Iver - Skinny Love.

Monday was an eventful day for us. I don't remember too well what happened during the day (probably napping) but I'll start with dinner. We decided to treat ourselves to our nicest meal at Ocean's Resto, a place right on the water. We ordered a local grouper and the spiciest crab of all time.

At this point, you may be telling yourself something like "hmm I'm sure it was spicy but I could handle it" or "it couldn't have been that bad Sepanta stop being a drama queen". I am struggling to explain it in a way that will get across how spicy this crab was (it had Rica sauce which our waiter warned us about). I don't think I can put it into words so I won't try too hard, but I don't think it is humanly possible to enjoy it. In fact, I think it's a fake sauce they have on menus to give dumb foreigners who think they can handle spicy exactly what they deserve. After swearing and sweating our way through our meal, and contemplating jumping into the ocean to alleviate the spiciness which had now spread from our lips to our faces to inside our veins, we collapsed back in our chairs and celebrated our survival. To top it off, Steve and I had tried to be experimental with our drink selections. He ordered buttermilk, which is (and tastes like) fermented milk. I ordered cumin water, which is (and tastes like) cumin mixed with water. Not sure what we were expecting but we got it.

Before I tell this next part, you should know that Indonesia streets (and sidewalks) are not pedestrian friendly. They are full of holes and obstacles, and one must be incredibly alert to avoid any accidents. Additionally, you should know that Steve likes to look at people while he talks. Okay.

Steve and I began our walk back to our hotel to get ready for our big Monday night out when suddenly, he let out a little squeal. <-- that is a joke, for those of you that don't know Steve, he has the combined voice of James Earl Jones and Treebeard. He stepped on a nail that had gone through his flip flops and now his foot was gushing blood. We found a pharmacy across the street and went to take care of it.

I am a great friend

Half an hour later, with his wound cleaned up, we recommenced our walk back to our hotel. We hadn't gone one block, when Steve, deep in conversation, look at me, goes down. His foot went through a water grate meant to filter water off the streets during the rainy season. But defeating their own purpose, the spaces in the grate were big enough for Steve's feet to go through. This time it was bad (there was a big gash through which you could see his shin bone) and I refrained from the urge of taking a picture. We quickly hailed a cab to take us to the nearest hospital. Here's a picture of that trip:

40 minutes, several stitches, and $16 later (no insurance necessary), we were back on our merry way and talking about how troubled the US healthcare industry is. We grabbed a couple drinks at a bar and then headed back to my favorite Balikpapan club, Embassy.  All my friends were there again.

The day after was another lazy day, as we awaited the total solar eclipse the following day. Oh did I forget to mention? We found out that completely coincidentally, there was going to be a TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE in Balikpapan, during the time we would be there. For those of you as unfamiliar as I was, these are only visible within a narrow region on the Earth and they happen about once every 18 months on average. By some crazy chance, we would be within that range.

Skip forward to Wednesday, we woke up at 5:30am and took a taxi to Manggar beach (30 minutes away, $4) and watched the sunrise and then had a champion's breakfast of coconut water and ramen.

Eclipse breakfast

The eclipse itself was one of the craziest experiences of my life and very difficult to convey with words or pictures, other than to say it was completely surreal and even later that day, seemed like a dream. Essentially, imagine the world going completely dark for a minute in the middle of the morning. 

Waiting on Manggar Beach with all of Indonesia (we literally did not see a single foreigner)

The next one will be visible from the US on August 17, 2017, and I highly recommend you all to find a place within range to see it then. After the eclipse, many people came up to us for pictures, including a reporter who interviewed us for the news agency, Tribun Kaltim. For the first 20 seconds, Steve and I thought he was taking a picture so we stood there with our arms over each other's shoulders like a couple of idiots. He also showed me the picture he took of the eclipse which completely schooled mine. I, of course, am going to blame it on my equipment.

Following that, we headed back to our hotel, packed, and wave goodbye to our beloved supermall. We headed to the airport where we convinced someone to drive us directly to Samarinda, the capital of East Kalimantan for the exact same price as the bus (a 3-hour trip). After the most insane driving ever (street lines are very loose guidelines here) while listening to the complete discography of Jon Bon Jovi (American hero) we arrived here in Samarinda. Today we plan to explore it some (there are some beautiful mosques), before heading into the jungle tomorrow on a boat for potentially the next 7 days.

Bonus picture if you made it all the way to the end:

Steve at home playing arcade Temple Run at Fun World...with a man-bun.

Arrival in Indonesia

Well, friends, not much has changed since I last posted from NYC. I'm still at an airport waiting for a flight (but in Jakarta). I still haven't bought vitamins (sorry mom). And I'm still wearing an H&M v-neck (different color).

Here are the highlights:

• I haven't gotten sick yet.
• I've had 3 wonderful airplane meals and semi-considered transitioning this into an airplane food blog but decided I wouldn't have much to write about after the first 3 days. Airplane food blog though - somebody get on this please.
  • Just kidding. There are a bunch already out there...
    • http://www.airlinemeals.net/
    • http://upgrd.com/blogs/inflightdish/
    • http://www.inflightfeed.com/
    • http://www.airplanefood.net/
    • This is getting ridiculous
• I was able to finally catch up on some Oscar movies on my flights (too little too late, I know). Semi-considered transitioning this website to an airplane movie review blog but again that wasn't sustainable.
  • The Big Short - solid movie but 99 Homes covered the same topic and did it better (I haven't seen 99 Homes but I read this somewhere and I believe it. It also did 4% better on Rotten Tomatoes so...)
  • Steve Jobs - Leo, give Michael Fassbender his Oscar back.
  • The Martian - Made me realize how absolutely not prepared I am for being stranded on Mars. I need to learn some skills ASAP.
• Realized my 5 years of Japanese language learning in elementary school has all boiled down to "arigatou gozaimasu" (thank you). I said "arigatou" about 5 million times throughout my journey on my Japanese airline.
  • Insider tip: If you don't know a language, you can pretty much get by with substituting "thank you" for most words including "hello", "goodbye", "you're welcome", "bless you", "please", "help me", "where is the bathroom", etc...
• Indonesia is going to be cheap (11 cent ramen)
• I made my first friend, Fabian (pictured below), and I was inspired to begin a "Man-bun Series" as I search for a new Reza. Unfortunately, he is heading home to Austria today at the culmination of his 3-month trip as I begin mine. Love is fleeting. However, I will use this series to explore the nature of relationships and their transience. Though I may have lost a Reza, there can always be a new, Austrian Reza, and a new friend with a man-bun, around the corner.
  • Footnote: Reza is a friend who was supposed to travel with me but is no longer joining. He, of course, has a man-bun.
• Cab driver got lost on the way to my hotel. I will need to be better with directions. He also tried to charge me 3 times the normal price but I told him I wasn't a gringo (lessons learned from Tulum) and "negotiated" (neither of us could understand the other). When I got to the hotel I asked the staff how much I should have paid and felt good about myself.
• Here are some pictures:

Welcome to Tokyo

Tandoori chicken

In-flight entertainment

Breakfast in Jakarta

The cab ride that wouldn't end

11 cent ramen

These streets were not made for walking

The Coffee Bean I'm writing this at

Man-bun Series: Fabian

Until next time, good night!

NYC --> Tokyo --> Jakarta --> Balikpapan

Hey team,

I'm at the airport now waiting to board my flight (alone) (#WhoNeedsReza). I land in Balikpapan Thursday night and I plan to use this blog as a means of keeping you all posted on my adventures (struggles) for the next 3 months (at least for the first week until it inevitably falls apart). (This time I promise I will actually keep it updated).

Bye Sepanta

Laminated sign of my daily reminders courtesy of mom.

I'll miss you all. Be in touch.

Love,

Sep