Flew to Bali

3rd November 2011

Had to get up at 5 to get the flight at 6:40. Said sampai jumpa lagi (until we meet again) to Bu Indra and Pak Surachmad who dropped me at the airport, had said my goodbye's to the rest of the family the day before. I'm excited to continue my travels but also sad to leave, I've had such a great time with them and they have taught me some useful Indonesian language, showed me some great places and introduced me to some awesome food! Will miss the crazy Indonesian kids at the BIEC too!

Here are some pics I took as we flew over Bali at around lunchtime.

I'd booked the first 2 nights at Tune hotel in Kuta which is really cheap for a hotel, about 10 pounds a night for a very small clean room with comfy bed, a fan and a hot shower. I planned to find a cheap hostel to move into while I stayed there.

I chose to check out the beaches and try some of the local cuisine today as I was tired from an early morning. This place is full of westerners!

Also I hired a moped for a few days, which I got a good price on after the guy (Nuri) was impressed by my use of Indonesian language :) He couldn't believe I'd only been learning for about 2 months and I used it as a bargaining tool.


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Visa extension fun, part 1

2nd November 2011

My visa expires on the 9th of November, so I'd been to the immigration office in Balikpapan a few weeks ago and asked about extending it by 30 days. They said it will be extended for 30 days from when you apply for the extension so its best to do it on or near the date of expiry.

I wanted to extend my visa today so it covers me for the rest of my time in Indonesia and I can continue my travels without worrying about having to extend it. Maybe I should have a) asked more questions and b) not left it til the day before my flight to Bali but when I got to the immigration office they told me it will take at least two days for the process to complete. I explained that my flight to Bali would be in the morning and he said that I could extend my visa in Bali. So that seemed like the best thing to do.

Orangutans rock!

31st October 2011

Finally managed to go to the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation Orangutan sanctuary today. Mada and I went early in the morning and arrived there at 8:30am. The sanctuary, Samboja lodge, is deep in a forest owned by BOSF. When you turn off the main road you have to follow a road little more than a bumpy track, god knows how we managed it in the Kijang, you need a 4x4 really. If it was wet we would have got stuck at some point. Didn't help that we went straight past the sanctuary and on to the BOSF office further along the road!


They have over 250 Orangutans and over 50 sun bears there. We arrived at the eco lodge hotel where you can stay in a room overlooking the forest if you like. Its a really nice hotel too. We went up to the top and looked out over the forest for a while. After a drink we went to look for Orangutans.

The Orangutans you can actually see are on two islands near the eco lodge. While we were there one of the islands had about 10 sick Orangutans on it - all of which had hepatitis B, somehow transmitted from humans who had taken them from their natural habitat for pets, they are not curable so will never be released back into the wild. The second island is a home for the Orangutans who will soon be released back into the wild. They are kind of rehabilitated at the sanctuary, and even go to school to brush up on how to live in the wild again.

You cant go on the islands, you can just walk around the perimeter at the opposite side of the river, and you cannot go around the second island where the Orangutans about to be released live because they are trying to reduce their human interaction as much as possible.

One of the staff told us that the depth of the river has to be carefully monitored to ensure the Orangutans cant get off the island. The Orangutans cannot swim but they are clever and use sticks to measure the depth of the water, if its not too deep then they will cross it by walking and just keeping their head above the water. :P

We saw about 8 of the 10 Orangutans on the island. One of them spent the whole time at the top of a really tall tree just chilling out, it looked so comfortable up there even though there were pretty much no branches at all.

Most of them were walking around hunting for food in groups, occasionally stopping to swing around in the play areas which are in abundance on the island. They seem to have so much fun swinging around and climbing. Some of them look so funky, almost like they have retro 70's or 80's hair cuts. :P

We had a driver take us to see the sun bears too. They have 2 areas, one for older bears and one for the adolescent ones. I think the bears are here because its unknown how many are left in the wild.

We got to walk right over their living area on a really sketchy narrow metal walkway with a rail only on one side that felt like if I put all my weight on it then it would have broken! One of the bears in the adult area was isolated because it had been starting fights all day. rar.

After the sun bears we went to the BOSF office tower which overlooks the forest. We climbed a really long spiral staircase to reach the top and the view was amazing, the breeze was pleasingly cool on this uber hot day! BOSF are rejuvenating the forest and after having seen pictures of it from 7 years ago you can really see the difference between back then and now from up there. They hope to release some of the Orangutans here in future as it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to find safe places for them to be released.

I'm not any kind of activist in any way but if you go to the Orangutan sanctuary its hard not to be touched by the amazing work that BOSF are doing. They only get half the money they need to look after the Orangutans they have from sponsors. Each Orangutan costs about 3 to 4 million rupiah (about £225 to £300) per month to look after, consider that the average Indonesian's salary is only about 1.1 million Rupiah.

The Orangutans live in the rain forests which are being destroyed more and more to plant kelapa sawit (oil palm) for bio fuel.. silly that people want more of it because its 'eco friendly' but they are cutting down swathes of rain forest to supply the demand, doesn't sound eco friendly to me. Goodbye rain forest, goodbye everything that lived there.

Then the Orangutans that are still in the forests have less forest to roam around and thus less food, so they go into the kelapa sawit plantations and eat them - so now they are seen as pests by the farmers and shot dead. One Malaysian company is even offering 1.5 million rupiah for every dead Orangutan, so actively encouraging people to wipe them out by offering a huge bounty that is more than one months salary for some people. There are some shocking pictures in the photo albums on display at the eco lodge (as well as many really nice ones).

Anyway..

BOSF Website http://www.sambojalodge.com/












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Mangrove forest

27th October 2011

Mada and I went to the Mangrove forest near Balikpapan bay, we were told that you can see long nosed monkeys (or Dutch monkeys) there.  Unfortunately we did not see any, I think maybe they were hiding because there was a lot of noise from building work going on around the area.

The Mangrove forest is pretty dense, you can walk through on a raised platform that goes into it. Strangely while walking through we bumped into the lady that told us about the Mangrove forest the day before while she was helping us arrange a visit to the Orangutan sanctuary.

Tour of Balikpapan

22nd and 23rd October 2011

Pak Rachmad and Bu Indra took me for a tour of Balikpapan over these two evenings. It was good to see outside of the center of Balikpapan where there are some smaller more traditional villages.


Kampung Baru (new village) is a village built on a wooden platform.. it extends over the beach and over the water, all the houses are mostly wooden, built on stilts as well as the 'streets' which people still quite happy ride around on mopeds. We took a walk through to the pier at the far side to see the view across the water. Quite a poor area.

Here are some other pictures I took while we were cruising.

Day trip to Samarinda

16th October 2011


Today we went to Samarinda. First stop was Tenggarong. We went to the Mulawarman museum which is an old Majapahit palace, with a royal cemetery just behind it. In the museum there is a lot of Javanese palace paraphernalia including the King's bed which was pretty huge, preserved in its chambers.

Next we went to the wood museum, you can see the many types of wood produced from trees in Indonesia there. They also have a huge monster crocodile that was caught in 1990 after it ate lots of people! Its at least 3 metres long, I think its degraded a bit but its still huge! The news paper cuttings they have on display show some people opening the stomach of the crocodile and removing an arm and leg! Grim

 

There was some road works on the road leading to the wood museum. It looked pretty sketchy to cross this in the car but the workmen seemed convinced it would be ok. We stopped and they shouted "bisa" "bisa", as in you can! We made it over though.

Afterwards we went to Pampang to see a Kenyah Dayak ceremony in a longhouse there. These happen every sunday. We arrived a little early and after waiting til the start time (and being interviewed twice and photographed by many Indonesians!) we were informed that the ceremony would not take place because someone in the village had passed away. Even the people performing the ceremony didn't know until the last minute. Its a shame we could not see it but we still got to meet some Dayak people though so all was not lost. Dayak people were feared in the past as they are violent warriors and had a tradition of head hunting.


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Poor moped..