The Road To Hell is Paved With Nothing

Samarinda, Borneo island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: the journey from hell, to hell / eating chicken steak in a post office car park / famous for being white / and the mad chicken lady

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The Derawan islands had been difficult to reach, and that meant one thing - they were difficult to leave and not because they were so supremely relaxing. More the fact we had to take a three hundred mile onwards journey down a route the Lonely Planet travel guide describe as being something akin to a Top Gear challenge, and for once how right they were.

Leaving Derawan island itself we took yet another exciting speedboat ride back to the mainland before spotting the young taxi driver who'd brought us to the port a few days before, who smoothly whipped us the two and a half hour journey to the nondescript coal town of Berau. Having managed to forget to withdraw extra money before going to the islands, with basically just loose change remaining in our pockets and a sense of relief at having just got away with what we had, Rene and I dragged our sorry selves to the ATM to get us some rupiahs for the long and bumpy road ahead. 

This 'road' to our destination of Samarinda turned out to be so bad that buses no longer travel it, so a share taxi was the only option bar an expensive flight. The going was rocky from the start - upon walking to the taxi area a driver ran across the road and hurriedly persuaded us to use his services which we took up then promptly drove us to his home, where we waited a few minutes before puzzlingly going back to exactly that same spot. We were then quickly ushered into another people carrier and before I knew it we were off. After contemplating the blur that had just occurred it all felt wrong - the people carrier had a spotty oik texting-and-driving at the wheel, a big noisy exhaust, a racing steering wheel literally from a go-kart (no kidding, who wants and airbag anyway) and no seat belts. There was no way I was spending the fourteen hour journey like this, so half a mile down the road I made him turn back which he did after a little persuasion. After another hour of waiting and watching the group of idle taxi drivers play cards, it was third time lucky with a comfortable 'Kijang' people carrier at the ready and a driver who at least appeared half decent and we took off. But within five minutes we stopped at a small shop where the owner of this car lived, and were ushered out for twenty minutes whilst it drove off before reappearing again without explanation. We wondered if we'd ever actually leave, but finally the six of us on our way. It was a bad start, and only got worse.

The good bit

Go-kart racing steering wheel on a people carrier! Oh man.

This huge Butterfly landed on me at a food 

stop whilst passing through the jungle 

The first couple of hours passed quickly on decent roads thanks to the many coal mines which had obviously pumped money into the area, but once the coal had gone so did the tarmac. Now I've been down a few rough farm tracks in my time, but never one that lasts two hundred miles like this. Despite being the main and only road along the south-east of Borneo, somehow the government had left it to rack and ruin with most of the tarmac weathered away leaving a mixture of broken surface, gravel and potholes for mile after mile. Very occasionally there was relief from a short section of fresh road, before the tease was over and it was back to hell. To top it off the driver insisted on treating the rough bits like a rally stage and the smooth like a Formula 1 track. Just what you want.

The night drew in and the miles slowly passed by. Some unidentified insect flew in the window and after bouncing off every surface inside the car decided to bite my arm. I have no idea what it was, but it hurt worse than any bee sting I've ever had and I still felt it the following morning. Passing through a logging community the driver slowed to a crawl whilst passing a number of brothels seemingly in the middle of the forest, upon which point him and another old male passenger ogled and sniggered between themselves, whilst the one-eyed lady in the front seat gazed into space without a word. I felt embarrassed for her. 

After a rest stop for food, the driver then drove through the night for six hours solid whilst all of us dreamed of sleeping without actually accomplishing it. To keep himself awake he insisted not on rest stops, coffee or red bull, but an apparently effective mixture of rolling his shoulders and playing very loud, cheesy hard house music non-stop including at a couple of points the same song ten times in a row, before I kindly suggested maybe he could change it (it was still in my head the next evening!). At 3am we pulled in for a break and he fell asleep in the corner for the next two hours, before a couple of us nudged him to get on and get this ordeal over and done with. At 6am now back on good roads at last, we passed over the equator officially into the Southern Hemisphere, not that any of us noticed in our state of sleep-deprivation, and finally, at last, thank the stars, we arrived in our destination of Samarinda. The hotel we were dropped at was terrible but neither of us cared and we passed out until lunchtime.

Samarinda

This city thirty miles inland from the coast wasn't exactly on the must-see list for Rene or myself and in truth we could have passed it by without regret, but with things to catch up on and stuff to plan for an imminent adventure ahead, we stopped off for three days. Despite the exotic-sounding name it was a pretty characterless city, unless you count grotty concrete buildings, rats roaming around, brothels disguised as karaoke bars, and rubbish lined streets as character, at which point you'd be stretching the truth somewhat but it wasn't as unpleasant as it might sound - easily tolerable is a pretty good description. Given that the local economy is fueled almost entirely (90% some say) by coal money from the many nearby mines, we naturally expected it to be a bit nicer but it seems most of the big money goes straight to big conglomerates abroad as sadly often happens. The locals just deal with the aftermath - http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2013/oct/30/coal-mining-uk-profits-indonesia

As you might expect then, the city didn't really say 'come explore me', and after nearly a week without internet on Derawan island we probably spent more time inside the hotel than out for once. But when we did get out it was interesting nonetheless.

The mad chicken lady

Rested and fresh after the 'epic journey', Rene and I went out for a wander. We exchanged pleasantries with locals on the pier by the Mahakam river and watched huge coal barges pass every few minutes. We passed the main city mosque, and briefly watched some local teenagers play a football match - football is extremely popular in Indonesia. On one of the crowded main streets a small van pulled up, the back half full of live chickens tightly packed into cages. A local woman in her sixties ran across the road smiling, laughing and shouting in Indonesian at us. She was either completely barking mad or very drunk, and upon seeing our cameras pulled all sorts of stupid poses before pointing to the chickens and repeatedly shouting AAYYYYAAAMMM (meaning chicken in Indonesian). It was hilarious, and this story has now taken on legendary status between Rene and I. AAYYYYAAAMMM!!!!

We started walking off before I remembered seeing a doorway into a market, a meat market in fact, so we turned back for a look. Inside it was the stuff of horror movies, a dark dingy room where a handful of locals were mopping up from a hard days of butchering. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like clouds on a stormy day, many live chickens were tightly packed into wooden cages against the wall awaiting their fate, the tiled work tops gleaned, and worst of all huge rats ran around everywhere. At least the locals were friendly to us, and we got some snaps of them carrying in more of these chickens which were in terrible condition. 

The mad chicken lady

Inside the market

Famous for nothing

The city sees so few foreign tourists that we only spotted two foreign faces the whole time we were there, and after the market we had a look around a mall to try and get a few things. Now in India (and China in the past) as a white face I was a novelty, but in Indonesia it's taken on another scale altogether. The mall was fairly quiet and I kid you not almost every shop worker we passed, both male and female, smiled at us and said 'hello mister'. The sound echoed from every angle, it was overwhelming. Some people asked for a photo with us, others tried to have a basic conversation, but all were extremely friendly.

Not what I was after

The following afternoon I headed out for a quick walk with two simple things in mind - to buy a camera cable and find an Internet cafe. Four hours later I managed neither but did have a wedding card, pair of earplugs and a map of Borneo!

On the way I found a street with twenty computer shops, none of which let you use the computers nor sold cables (handy). I went to top up my phone which took an hour of confused looks and note passing, and finally involved speaking to the teacher of the shopowners' daughter who kindly said I could phone her any time afterwards if I needed help translating, which I thought was very kind. I went to a mall where I still found nothing I needed, but was accosted by four friendly young women who had a stall selling footspas and kettles and wanted to chat. 'Are you Christian or Muslim?' they asked almost straight away, an important point in this very religious, Muslim dominated country, and was followed up straight after with 'are you married? we are all single!'. Nothing like getting to the point eh!

Without the ladies in tow I needed to post a letter that night, so went to the post office to find there was no letterbox outside. A guy pointed me round the side and I ended up going right into the sorting room to hand it over! Young men slouched idly, chatting amongst each other and were surprised to see my face. Outside in the Post Office car park some enterprising youngsters had set up a cafe for the night, so Rene and I took the opportunity and ate barbecued chicken steak and drank avocado and chocolate juice, whilst watching Spanish football on a projector screen. Random or what?

Big Mosque

It rained heavily every afternoon whilst we sat tapping away inside the hotel, and I mean real heavy prolonged showers that flooded the roads and one day even took out the power. On the last afternoon in town, after the downpour we headed to have a look at the Samarinda Islamic Centre - a huge new mosque that had been built a couple of miles away by the waterfront and truly dominated it. It was an impressive complex, and Muslim tourists stood outside having their photos taken with each other, some chatting to us inquisitively. Unlike some modern religious buildings in Asia which I find distinctly tacky, this was an impressive piece of architecture - beautifully cut brown stone, with beige and green hues inside, and some beautiful carved wood screens. The main hall was one of the biggest clearspan rooms I've ever been in, and was dominated by the beautifully tiled dome above. It was interesting to note that men pray in the main mosque, whilst as tradition dictates women pray separately in a smaller mosque downstairs.

We took a bus back into town, which immediately did a U-turn in the opposite direction. With time on our hands we decided to roll with it and see where we ended up. Unfortunately it was just another shopping complex though there was a group of people waiting for their supermarket shift to start, one of whom had to dress up as a bumblebee for a promotion. We amusingly posed with him for a pic and I even tried on his sweaty headmask. This was unfortunately pretty much the only buzz about town in Samarinda, and with plans made and our internet fix complete, it was time to move on the next day on a week long adventure up the mighty Mahakan river.

The Samarinda waterfront, a kalidescope of brightly coloured boats 

Cockerels for sale on the roadside

Mall friends!

On The Road

Sibu, then Niah National Park, Malaysian Borneo 

In this blog: on buses and boats with the Borneo travel gang, a quick city stop, and one of the biggest caves in the world.

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After nine months of travelling on my own - happily and willingly, but largely by circumstance rather than choice, I've managed to group up with two sometimes three other backpackers who are heading the same way as me, and over three days we've travelled up the north coast of Malaysian Borneo stopping at cities and sights on the way.

Logging barge on journey from Kuching to Sibu

Because of it's huge rivers, thick jungle and relative lack of population, Borneo doesn't have a lot of roads, so it turned out the best way to take the journey from Kuching to Sibu, was along the coast by boat - a four hour journey vs eight hours by bus. The other guys had left the day before so I headed off alone on the local bus to the ferry port, grouping with three other travellers to find the port amongst a maze of industrial estates once the bus had dumped us in the middle of nowhere. The journey was really interesting, albeit a bit uncomfortable - on the outside deck it was so noisy I could feel my eardrums rupturing, but inside the aircon was turned down so low that early signs of frostbite were visible. The solution I decided was to spend whole journey flipping between the two, thus only being part cold and part deaf, the best of both worlds. The scenery was fantastic though - leaving Kuching and heading up the estuary, going out to see for a couple hours then back inland up another huge, and I mean really huge river, lined by jungle, small villages and over a hundred sawmills along the way, whilst passing huge barges of trees being towed downstream. Deforestation is a big concern in Borneo - the oldest rainforest in the world, and it's very clear they're flat out working at it.

We reached Sibu - a commercial city about fifty miles inland from the sea which was pleasant enough, if not a little short on anything interesting to see or do. With Max who I'd met in Kuching, and Alan, a Dutch guy we'd met earlier that day, we got a little lost looking for a guesthouse, by chance bumping into Canadian Rene and Belgium Christophe on the street by chance who led us to the place they were staying at. The rest of the day was spent sometimes as a group, sometimes apart, having a look around. The biggest market in Malaysia was interesting, particularly seeing the way they sell chickens - live,p but wrapped up in newspaper and string. I had a look in the Sibu Heritage Centre, learning more about the British colonial days and the huge numbers of Chinese immigrants who now dominate. I stopped at a beautiful seven story Chinese pagoda nearby on the riverbank, where I bumped into Dutch Alan again and we climbed it to see the view. He was a bearded guy, slightly older than me, who told me of how he'd visited every county bar three in the Asian continent, and lived in Calcutta, India for six years doing social work on the streets - an very interesting and nice guy, if not a tiny weeny bit of a travel snob with it occasionally. We all met up again that evening and walked to the town's night market, where under a bustle of blue gazebos people sold everything and anything. The food section was what we were interested in, and I took a pick and mix of Pork Bao (steamed Chinese buns), Malaysian thick noodles, and some meat on a stick- chicken, baby squid and an unidentifiable meat as sometimes happens in Asia. 
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Live chickens in market, Sibu

Chinese pagoda, Sibu

Night market, Sibu

Half a day in Sibu was enough and the next morning with Canadian Rene and Belgium Christophe, we took a bus five hours north-east which with it's comfy seats and air-con was a total contrast to my experiences in India. Rene and I talked travelling and decided to travel together for next few weeks round Borneo. Christophe slept. Deforestation of ancient forest, both legal and illegal but controversial nonetheless was quite visible out the window. We passed many longhouses, kind-of the Malaysian version of British terraced housing, and many freshly built big empty property developments en-route - over speculation perhaps, or just people putting all their oil and gas money somewhere safe. Most of the journey though, the scenery consisted of nothing but 

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

River

Swamp

Longhouse

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

Jungle

Palm oil plantation

We hopped off at a little service station in the middle of nowhere, and made the short journey to Batu Niah via my first experience of hitc, a slightly odd little untouristy town outside the gates of Niah National Park. It had a bit of a frontier outpost feel to it, being full of drab concrete buildings and pick-up trucks thanks to being based around logging and palm oil we assumed. We shared a two bed room between three in the only hotel in town, with Rene on a bed, Christophe volunteering to sleep on a rock hard bed base, and me on a mattress on the floor - the things you do as a backpacker to save a few quid sometimes! We went for a wander, laughing at all the fake bottles of spirits in the supermarket, before buying a £3 random bottle of a Chinese spirit to try later which turned out to be a bit like rum. Rene spotted a basketball court, and we watched some locals playing for a few minutes before before they invited us to join in for a mess about, speaking a little bit of English between them. All of us were rusty as can be but it was a good fun nonetheless. 

Me making friends with the locals, Niah Batu

Playing basketball with the locals, Niah Batu

The next morning we walked a couple of miles to the park office then took a boat across the river into the main area. Niah National Park. The park is based around a huge limestone outcrop which sits in the middle of an otherwise flat area, and people visit to see it's network of caves within as well as some prehistoric rock graffiti, and excavations of the oldest evidence of human settlement in south-east Asia - about 40,000 year old. 

We walked along a raised wooden pathway through the jungle, passing over swamps, seeing a variety of small and very different looking insects. An excitable Malaysian girl stopped and chatted to us, later inviting us to meet up for drinks in Miri in a couple of days (which we forgot) - that would never have happened in India I thought. After half an hour we reached Traders Cave - a huge overhang set into the hill, sported by huge natural pillars, looking like a piece of cutting edge modern architecture, except as natural as can be.

A little further up the valley we entered The Great Cave - one of the largest caves in the world, with a 250m wide by 60m high entrance. My jaw dropped, it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen - I reckon you could park five jumbo jets in there, with space for a small stadium beside. The scale was just beyond what my mind could process, truly awesome. Within the spcave were various wooden poles which went from the ground right long way up to the roof, which locals precariously climb to collect the nests of Swiftlets for Birds Nest soup. Believe it or not, this expensive Chinese delicacy contains actual birds nest - the saliva of the swiftlets dissolves to give it it's flavour.     

We spent a couple more hours exploring further into the networks of huge cave passages, walking on wooden boardwalks, sometimes lit by other entrances and sometimes requiring torchlight. It sometimes felt like the whole mountain above was just a hollow shell, such was the scale of it all. After sheltering from yet another huge downpour, and seeing some ancient rock paintings which really didn't do anything for me despite their significance, we were on the road again heading for the city of Miri.

An incredible sight we spotted on a washing line, Niah National Park

With some HUGE butress roots, Niah National Park

Traders Cave, Niah National Park

The Great Cave, Niah National Park

Ancient rock art, Niah National Park

Red millipede, Niah National Park