Up the Mahakam - part I

Samarinda to Tenggarong to Muara Muntai

Borneo Island, Indonesia

In this blog: we head off on a river trip, meet a plethora of helpful people, cruise across marshy lakes by longboat, and see the wild west on stilts.

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Our route over 8 days up the Mahakam river

The Mahakam is a motorway on water except with little traffic - a massive river which leads to the heart of Borneo where no roads go. At over five hundred miles it's the longest river on Borneo island, and a journey upstream has been a must do for a while for me. So this past week Rene and I spent eight days on ferries and speedboats, heading inland to places as off the beaten track as I've ever gone, through marshes, lakes, jungle, to small tribal villages and by chance traditional local events. We've also encountered a lot of very friendly and kind people as you'll see. In a three part special (what's this, Top Gear?), here's what went down.

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Sitting on the roof of a small chug-chug old ferry boat, we crossed from our last stop in Samarinda across the near kilometre-wide Mahakam river to the bus station. The contrast on the other side was remarkable; we'd gone from a modern concrete city to a dilapidated wooden slum in just a few minutes. On the half mile walk to the bus station, kids cheerily chased us and even more people than ever shouted 'hello mister' in our direction. 'Wow that was overwhelming' Rene said as we got to the bus station. We'd decided to cut five hours out of the river journey by taking a tiny minibus to the next city and I sat next to a pleasant man in his fifties called Safri who spoke a bit of English. He showed me photos of his family, told me about how he does instrument calibration for industrial plants, then curiously asked away about my trip, eventually deciding to give me his number saying 'any problems or questions in Indonesia, call me and I'll help'. Rene meanwhile was sat next to Handa, a 22 year old Muslim girl wearing the traditional headscarf, who was fascinated by his journey and photos.

Safri and Handa in the bus to Tenggarong

Myself, Rene, the ex-bf and Utariat their house

Tenggarong

We arrived at Tenggarong to find the bus station was way out of town, with no way to make the three mile journey to the centre. Handa suggested we walk before partway managing to flag down a van, which I assumed to be a taxi of sorts, but who knows. We got dropped by a cheap hotel that turned out to not have any spare beds, so walked around for a while hoping to find something with no luck. Stood scratching our heads by a busy street, a couple stopped on their scooter and asked if we needed help - a helpful friendly girl called Utari who's a primary school teacher, and what we understood to be her ex-boyfriend. They tried to phone a guesthouse they knew but couldn't get through, so after Rene and I grabbed some satay chicken for tea, they invited us to their house whilst we they kept trying the number. They seemed sound so we hopped on the back of the scooters and slowly wound a couple of miles to the edge of town, ending up in their colourful wooden house in the suburbs where we had a drink whilst watching part of an Indonesian football game on the TV between two local teams. Eventually a hotel was sorted and they dropped us to the door. More nice people.

Rene and I went for a stroll to track down a beer but found nothing - the Muslim influence on the city was obviously strong - substituting it for an ice cream instead. It was Saturday night and the huge market was closing up for the evening as we passed through, so we continued to the waterfront where a group of twenty or so superbike owners met outside a shop and chatted to us in excited bursts of English. Further along we heard music and crossed the road to find a rave in a skatepark by the road, in fact a 17th birthday party where the birthday girls wore ballgowns and everyone else jumped wildly to the pounding baseline, completely sober. 

We went for a look around the city the next morning, stopping for breakfast in a cafe where four girls of about ten giggled hysterically at us for a good few minutes, and breakfast consisted of a very spicy whole baby chicken - oh I wish I could understand the menus properly before ordering. We headed after to the nearby Keraton Museum; a very unique looking Art Deco building that used to be the local Sultan's palace, and only sees 10-15 foreign visitors a month. Probably because it was so boring inside we decided.

With our new biker dude friends

Keraton Museum, Tenggarong - the former sultan's palace

After a walk on the waterfront we decided it was time to move on and tried to get a lift to the out-of-town bus station. Except for some bizarre reason this was a city without taxis if you will. We wandered about and looked, did some waiting, got offered a lift by a guy on a scooter which we declined, but found no taxis. Indonesia feels safe, only richer people can afford cars, and we were a pair, so I proposed hitchhiking the three mile journey and Rene was keen. Within under a minute of sticking my thumb out a car pulled up, and the pleasant driver turned out to not only be going past the bus station, but heading to our destination of Kota Bangun. We hopped in.

The driver was Jul, a guy in his late twenties who was married with two kids, having met his wife whilst working working in Pizza Hut elsewhere in Borneo, the thought of which seemed a million miles from the simple rural villages we were driving through at that moment. He told us he was a taxi driver on a return trip but didn't want any money from us, I questioned it in my mind, but he was true to his word and even bought us lunch in a cafe along the way - oxtail soup and rice, refusing to take any money for it. He told us how he learnt English by watching Hollywood movies (I've heard this a few times now) and chatting to people, and played the usual mixture of terrible dance music and mildly better pop music. It was a first for me to see beggars on country roads - often in the middle of nowhere, where they put tyres and boxes in the centre of the two lane road to slow traffic and held out cardboard boxes or fishing nets to collect money. Very odd, but Jul assured us that's exactly what they were doing. Arriving at the riverside town of Kota Bangun, he took us on a short diversion past his house, lowering all the tinted windows as we slowly passed his Mum and friends as if to say 'look! I have foreign friends!'. 

Lake cruising and Melintang stilt village

We were now back beside the huge Mahakam river, and at a point where some large lakes and marshes open up to each side. The best way to see them was by chartering a ces - a colourful, long and narrow boat powered by a noisy lawnmower engine. Jul had a friend who was a driver so phoned him to meet up with us at the harbour, then helped us translate to negotiate a price before disappearing off - what a delightful guy.

This was turning out to be one action packed day and wasn't over yet. 

With a ces hired for the next hour or two we headed out on the lake. It was a warm sunny afternoon and we felt like kings (but looked like tramps) cruising about on this chauffeur driven boat. The lake looked endless as we cruised across it but got a bit repetitive, so I directed him towards the marshy area at the edge. We went along slowly, spotting a few ibis' and kingfishers. Further into the marsh we could see some fishermen in wood canoes punting their way through, and we stopped for a while whilst they slowly worked towards us. It was a great moment, a very real encounter with a traditional way of life.

Even more remarkable was the next place we reached - Melintang, a town built within the marsh entirely comprised of wooden houses built above the water - a kind of Wild West on stilts and quite magical with it. It was accessible only by boat and so different to anything I'd ever seen before, the sort of thing you see in a David Attenborough documentary - I even questioned whether I was still on this planet (was I ever?!). The pace of life was obviously slow, except for a group of kids who had put a running hose pipe at the top of a wooden ramp and repeatedly slid down into the lake below, or jumped off the adjacent pier full of joy and excitement. I was truly blown away by this place.

Fishermen punting through the reeds

On Lake Melintang

Muara Muntai

The boat then entered a small river maybe five metres wide to connect back to the main one. For half an hour we weaved round bend after bend, and whilst we saw nothing special it was another interesting change of scenery. Arriving at Muara Muntia at sunset, we stopped for the night in an extremely basic wooden guesthouse. 

Muara Muntai, like the previous village was very unique. Remarkably there were no roads, just a wide wooden boardwalk that stretched for a mile and a half, raised a couple of metres from the riverbank below. Everything in sight was made of wood and often colourfully painted, not surprising given that Borneo is mostly covered in trees. There was a remarkable sunset with rayed beams of light that evening, and as we wandered through this town which sees few Westerners people were very friendly to us. Despite being off the road network and a few hours from civilisation, everything you could need was available in then night market, a curious mix of old world and new world.

(Continues in two days time)

Approaching Melintang, some view

One of the most sunique sunsets I've ever seen, Muara Muntai