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:

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'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.

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.

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.