Balikpapan, Borneo island, Indonesia (map)
In this blog: a strange friend, spolt by local ladies, flight nightmares and a crocodile farm.
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After a month where the longest I'd stayed anywhere was four days, I wanted to stop. I was tired of the road, tired of moving, just tired. In a funny way then it was fortunate then that the city of Balikpapan was nice but boring - a good place for a bit of normality of sorts. But even when i do everything in my power to have a quiet week including spending three days solid on a computer - fun and games still seem to follow and interesting things happen.
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After the epic boat journey we'd had the week before up the Mahakam river, Rene (my Canadian travel buddy) and I arrived back at the city of Samarinda and took a bus to Balikpapan, a journey uneventful bar a busker briefly walking onto the bus playing guitar which made us smile. Once in Balikpapan centre it was back to civilisation, or so it felt anyway. We headed straight to the bakery, after ten days or so without bread left us craving carbs like you wouldn't believe. We then set about finding somewhere to stay, but every place we found was either full, expensive or grotty, and it took a frustrating and sweaty two hours of lots of walking about to finally find a bed - thankfully a fairly rare occurrence on this trip. We relaxed for a bit, walked along a dodgy waterfront market, had tea at a funky cafe with a live band, then passed a party we spotted earlier only to find we'd annoyingly just missed out on free food for all.
The next three days were a blur of computers - two full days of writing blogs on my tablet in the room, then one day copying and uploading pictures in an ear-poppingly noisy and sweaty internet cafe; it all takes forever. The evenings provided some light relief though. I shaved off a five-week travel beard, wandered past a little cafe called 'Bude' (like the Cornish town), then watched some guys playing chess on the street. A local guy got chatting to us - a commercial diver, who upon hearing we'd done some diving recently, instantly whipped out his tablet, and full of joy and excitement showed us underwater videos he'd downloaded from the internet.
Another night we fancied a beer, but being a Muslim country it can be hard to get hold of at times. We asked a guy on the street and he pointed up towards some market stalls and getting there, we asked the owner. She nodded gently, as if to say 'yes, but keep it quiet' and told us a price. As ever in Asia we tried to negotiate, only for her to shake her head in disgust at the price and totally offended, walked away back to her friend. We were as shocked as her, that never happens! When we asked another guy nearby his eyes darted from side to side, before he reached under the counter and quickly pulled out two bottles and put them straight into our rucksacks like nothing had happened, as if it was a drug deal or something.
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Stenly
We were having a wander one evening when a young local guy casually said hello and introduced himself as Stenly, a pleasant but slightly strange young freelance English teacher. 'That's not a very Indonesian name' I pointed out and he agreed without explanation. We asked for a recommendation for somewhere to eat, and he pointed out a place and walked off, before catching us up again saying 'actually there's a better place across the road' and led us there. 'Across the road' ended up being a mile away up a hill, and after an excellent buffet of fish dishes he suggested taking a bus back, which he assumed we would pay his share of. It was cheap, so fine. We went into the Internet cafe where he said he was going in the first place and whilst we spent two hours there, oddly didn't actually use a computer and just sat there chatting or texting.
The following evening Rene and I went to the cinema to see 'Edge of Tomorrow' and he asked if he could tag along. Without realising it we had inadvertently bought tickets in a VIP screen before he arrived where there was just thirty huge plush electric recliners, acres of legroom, a call button for drinks and popcorn, and a blanket each to tackle the ice cold aircon. I'd never experienced anything like it, and at £2.75 it was a complete luxurious bargain. Afterwards when it came to paying though, Stenly said he'd forgotten his wallet saying he'd meet the next morning to pay us back. He never showed up nor replied to any messages. It was only a couple of quid each so the money was incidental, and in the end we decided that he just saw us as rare white 'friends' who could afford to treat him. However, this money soon balanced back out as you'll read later.
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Crocs
Balikpapan is a pleasant city thanks to money from an economy based around the many offshore oil platforms nearby, but is pretty short on anything interesting to see. This was fine with us as we wanted a break from sightseeing, but one attraction was too much to resist - a nearby crocodile farm. It was a proper hoohaa to get there thanks to a bus driver mishearing where we wanted to go and a one hour journey turned into nearly three, but it was worth it.
The bus dropped us in an unassuming spot and we wandered down a quiet lane between some buildings, eventually finding the complex of delapated buildings that formed this commercial crocodile farm which reared hundreds of these brutes for their meat and skin. Inside were a number of concrete pens, which we soon discovered were held shut with nothing but toilet door latches or bits of bent wire - I kid you not! I tentatively looked over the wall for my first glimpse, and the hairs on my neck stood on end briefly. They were grouped by age and pretty packed in, often lying on top of one another motionless, expect for the occasional splash as they quickly moved into the water.
I motioned to one of the staff to ask where the crocs were killed and he pointed over a wall, so I climbed on a bench for a peek, quite taken back to find the peculiar scene of hundreds of decapatated crocodile heads laying on top of cages. Outside as a side attraction a couple of elephants with chains round their ankles grazed in a field, and some monkeys were kept in small rubbish strewn pens, not very pleasant and the stuff of nightmares for animal rights activists I imagine. I probably only encouraged this more when upon seeing an old guy offering, spontaneously decided to break a phobia of mine by holding a snake for the first time. The skin felt like latex, and the bones were very prominent underneath though thankfully it didn't really wriggle much. It's mouth was curiously held shut with Sellotape, but whilst a little creepy at first, the experience was actually quite tolerable. Another 'things to do before you die' box ticked.
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| With the babies |
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| Personal space? Pah! |
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The butcher's yard
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Where next?
Borneo is a big island and in my mind without thinking I was going to see it all, until Rene mentioned he was thinking of moving on. It had been two months since I arrived from Singapore, and as much as I love Borneo's wild beauty and off the beaten track adventures, suddenly I realised I needed a change. It was time to move on. For a few days it looked like our travel partnership was coming to an end, as we both had different plans since Rene had visas to get for the journey ahead, but at the last moment he worked out a different way of doing things and decided to join me to the crazy looking (on a map at least) Sulawesi island.
The ferry schedule to get there didn't work with our timing, so once again I found myself in the position on trying to book a flight for the same day. It's not normally a major issue as prices don't really go up last-minute in Asia - but on this occasion things conspired against us with flights going up in cost before our eyes, selling out, two lots of payment problems and having to stay another night. After a whole frustrating afternoon disappeared by, eventually we resorted to a good old-fashioned travel agent nearby who surprisingly did it for the same price, and our Borneo exit was sorted.
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Kept men
One night for the week Rene and I stopped at a quiet bar on the waterfront for a drink and got talking to the owner - a 27 year old girl called Ubai (short for Djubaidah), a petite, pretty and chatty 'businesswoman' as she called herself, divorced with a seven year old son. Little did we know what was going to follow!
I mentioned to her I was going to get a haircut the next day. 'I'll show you where to go if you like' she said, so Rene and I met up late the following afternoon with Ubai and her friend Liona. It turned out the place was a few miles away, and she insisted on chauffeuring us there in her shiny one week old Honda wagon. Arriving at this fancy mall the hairdressers there was way too fancy and expensive for my backpacker budget, so we went for seafood soup and rice in a restaurant nearby and Ubai insisted on paying. She then took us to a little neighbourhood barbers nearby where they pruned Rene's mop and travellers beard into a work of art then butchered too much from mine, and this time Liona insisted on paying - the grand sum of £0.75 each!
The girls had planned to go out to a bar that night and invited us to join them, so a couple of hours later Ubai and another friend of her's - Nila, an accountant, collected us and drove a few miles out of town. We reached Joy's bar, full of mostly foreign male expats and local women, and was pretty lively with it's live band and people getting up and dancing on the bar. Most of the expats work locally in the oil and coal industries, and one of them, a chubby double-chinned Kiwi guy who deals with hydraulics came and chatted for a while, crushing our hands with the most almighty of handshakes and proclaiming his love for living in Balikpapan. The owner Jerry introduced himself and handed us a free tequila, whilst a local girl beat every person in the house (including me) at pool. We met loads of people through the girls and had a great night out, yet once again when it came to paying our bar bill at the end of the night, we found the girls had already done it and once again wouldn't accept our share - over £25 of it! As we had a flight the next day, we said goodbye and went home in disbelief at the generosity.
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It wasn't over though 'cause the next afternoon I received a message asking if we'd like to hang out before our flight, so with a few hours to spare Ubai again drove the four of us to a smart beachside restaurant where the moneyed middle-class hang out, and we had a few fruit juices and chatted away for a couple of hours. Their English was excellent having worked for international companies based locally, and despite our insistence otherwise, the bill was paid again and we were dropped at the airport before saying goodbye.
Rene and I sat in the departure lounge a little dazed by the whole experience. On reflection we decided it was a mixture of the Indonesian warmness we'd experienced previously, and maybe just a little bit of Indonesian women using their money to attract western men, even if they didn't push that idea too much. You know these stories you hear about western men buying foreign brides? Well, in a strange turn of events somehow the opposite nearly happened to us. There's no wedding bells, but a fun story all the same.
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So after two months on Borneo, the third largest island in the world, that's it. I knew it wasn't going to be the untapped paradise it sounded and once was, but I was still surprised by both how developed it is, and just how much it's been ruined by logging and other more dirty industries. There's still an amazing amount of natural beauty though in the primary rainforest when you find it, and some very exotic plants and creatures. Was it what I expected? Yes, and more.
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| Busker on the bus |
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| Rene desperate to tuck in |
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| Hard day at work |
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| Rene, Nila, Ubai and I by the beach |
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