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.

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.

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… — 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 lo… — 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

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.