Kalimantan

Nat: We had quite a few visitors in December including Candice's brother Brenton and my sister Tabitha. Tabitha wanted to do some travel with us so on the 17th of December 2011, just before Christmas we flew to East Kalimantan in the Indonesian part of Borneo to explore the famous River Mahakam. It was weird being so close yet so far from Sabah. I had thought about visiting Kalimantan for years but land travel from Sabah is virtually impossible due to dense jungle.

Tabitha and I on our trusty boat on the Mahakam

We pre-arranged a guide, Pak Rustam and spent the first night in Samarinda at his home. That was a lovely experience although Samarinda itself is nothing special.


Coal is what keeps Samarinda in business. These conveyors loading barges dot the riverside near the city.

Just because I don’t want to forget all the places we went, I’m going to briefly list out the places on our trip which to my recollection went something like this:

Day 1 – Balikpapan to Samarinda.

Day 2 – Samarinda to Kota Bangun by road. We then got in our boat and took the Mahakam River to the Kahala River to Lake Semayang to the Berinding River to Muara Muntai where we spent the night.

Day 3 - We took the Mahakam River to Lake Jempang via a village called Jantu to the Ohong River via Muara Ohong. We had lunch at Mancong, a Dayak Benuak village and then doubled back around to the lake and then stayed in a longhouse at Tanjung Isuy

Day 4 – We went via the Baruh river to Muara Pahu for lunch and then briefly down the Pahu River. We spent the night in Muara Muntai again.

Day 5- We made our way back to Kota Bangun, got back in the car and headed back to Samarinda. We hired a car and went to Balikpapan where we spent our last night

Day 6 – Balikpapan and bye-bye Kalimantan.

Phew! We went through so many cities, villages, towns, lakes and rivers that I knew I decided to document their names. The trip was amazing and we saw heaps of wildlife including snakes, macaques, proboscis monkeys, otters (known as barang-barang locally), cranes, big stalk-like birds called tung-tungs, buffalo and lizards, especially on days 3 and 4. The only downside was that we missed out on seeing freshwater dolphins.

A proboscis monkey leaps from one tree to the next


Pushing through the reeds on Lake Jempang


Sunset on the Mahakam


Jempang village on the water

Our nights in Muara Muntai and Tanjung Isuy were great. Muara Muntai had raised streets made of wood as it sits partially over the river and is prone to flooding. The people were friendly and the kids adorable. Being made up mainly of Banjar Malays, Muara Muntai was Muslim. Tanjung Isuy on the other hand was Dayak and so they were Christian.

The wooden streets of Muara Muntai


Benuak headdress in the long house we stayed at in Tanjung Isuy


A hole in the floor of a floating hut is toilet, shower and sink all rolled into one for the people on the Mahakam and Ohong rivers. Fish circle the hole, waiting to eat your poo.


At Tanjung Isuy

A big thank you to our guide, Pak Rustam who also leads cross-Borneo treks that take 20 days. I’ve decided that one day I’ll do one of those. Rustam is recommended by the Lonely Planet and his email address is rustam_kalimantan@yahoo.co.id and phone number is 0541 735641 if anyone’s interested.


Our guide Rustam beat me in a hard-fought battle of chess in Muara Muntai. Indonesians are crazy about chess.


Candice falls in love with the locals at Muara Muntai

We spent our last night in Balikpapan in a hotel. It was weird to be back in civilization, although it also meant the pollution was more evident. Minus the cities, East Kalimantan was beautiful, the only downside was the pollution in villages and towns. Sanitation and health education is a big problem – as we found out directly. All three of us fell really ill with bacterial infections. We ended up with the runs for nearly a month.

Our hotel in Balikpapan advertised itself as having a "beach view". This was the view.

The view from our hotel