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*WARNING*
This is not a blog it is a novel, in fact it makes Tolkins books look like short stories.
This story is not fabricated; in fact I wish I were able to make stories this good up. The events that you are about to read about are true events and are not embellished in any way. The things that make you laugh probably made us cry and in all truth our Kalimantan experience was stranger than fiction! Its quite a long story and in real time happened over a course of 8 days, it may take a while to read but I promise you will not be disappointed.
As you may remember we celebrated leaving Malaysia heading for Tarakan the boarder island of Indonesia. We had nothing in mind for Kalimantan except that we were trying to get to Bali to meet Ma Fitz and Haze, and if we could get there early to acclimatise all the better, we had two weeks how hard could it be?
So as we arrived we had to pass through customs and immigration, all the locals flew straight through, the two westerners with giant backpacks were of course pulled aside. Our bag of drugs had been spotted and had to be checked. The customs officers said they were looking for hormone pills but we think they just wanted to chat as each member of the team then produced their own mobile phone and wanted pictures taking with both of us, by the time this was done we had missed our connecting boat regardless of the fact we had no Indonesian currency to pay for it anyway. We then asked the customs officers where we would find a bank and hotel as we would now have to stay for the night and they kindly supplied us with written instructions. While we walked to the bank maybe 1.5k we discussed how nice it was to be in Indonesia and how friendly every one was, people were shouting "hello mister" from their houses and all cars seemed to give us a friendly beep us on their way past. We arrived at the bank to discover the ATM was out of order but might be working later on in the day, we were given directions to another bank that was another k away, this was a locals bank for local people and wouldn't accept our foreign bank cards. The only English speaking person in the bank was a young lady who felt so bad that we had walked so far with such big bags that she offered to pay for a taxi for us to a hotel. Being far to English for our own good we declined her generosity and walked back in to town checking out the only hotel we saw on our way past. It soon became evident by the hotels swanky reception that this would not be the place for us, however Rob left me in the reception of the hotel with the bags and bliss air conditioning while he went and looked for the hotel that had been recommended to us at customs. He returned 40mins later with cash in his pockets a room booked in the hotel that had been recommended a clear idea of how to get back there and a story to boot. Rob had been stoped by a local who asked where he was going; when he told him the guy offered Rob a lift and he gratefully accepted and climbed aboard his motorbike. While we were now together standing at the side of the road a small van beeped at us and Rob waved it down, since meeting his new friend with the motorbike it had become apparent to him that the friendly beeping we had heard earlier while walking was actually small taxis called bemo's trying to attract our attention in case we needed a lift. I was shocked when we climbed in to the bemo and Rob ask to be taken to the harbour please. We had walked straight past the hotel, which was literally the next building up from the harbour entrance, how did we miss it? Anyway at last we were settled and could go and explore the town without our luggage. It soon become apparent to us that this area of Kalimantan must not see many white faces as we were celebrities everywhere we went, people would shout out any random word in English they knew just to speak to us, surely this would change when we arrived on the main land?
6am the next day we were up and ready to get the first boat to Baru our escape to civilisation and our ticket to Bali as we could catch a ferry from there. We knew the ferry was going to take between 2-5 days but time was something we had on our side. Us and 6000 other people crowded on to the 12-seat boat to Baru that had one way on and one way off, no life jackets except for the pilots and too many people on board, heaven forbid there would be an emergency. After the leisurely/terrifying (trying not to think of Indonesian boat disasters) 2 hour cruise to Baru we arrived, checked in to a hotel with a fantastic sea view and later went to book our beds on the Pelni ferry to Bali. To our shock the ferry was not as regular as we had been led to believe and the next one would get us to Bali after Ma Fitz and Hazel had arrived, much as our sea view was nice their was nothing to keep us here for 5 days waiting for the ferry. We returned to our hotel and asked where we could catch a bus to Balikpapan from as we knew there to be an airport there and we could fly the last leg to Bali. Asking where the bus station was left the receptionist with a blank look, we tried again with our best pigeon English, she replied in perfect English, “we don’t have buses we only have bemo". How much would it cost to get a bemo to Balikpapan which made her laugh until she realised we were serious, "this is an island she told us, you have to get the boat or fly!" What a bombshell, we didn't even know we were on an island. We found out the best way to do it was to fly there, we figured that if we just turned up to the airport we could get a cheap last minute flight the way I’ve heard you can in England. Next morning that’s exactly what we did, well we turned up to the airport at least but cheap flights or any flights for that matter were hard to come by. With our hopes of being on the beach in Bali in a day or two slightly dented we changed our plans once again and decided that overland now was the only way to Balikpapan, so we headed back to the ferry port. The limited amount of information "The Book" told us said that from the main land we could catch a 16-hour bus to Balikpapan. When we got talking to the chap who sold ferry tickets he told us that had changed, roads were better now and the journey would only take 8 hours direct from the mainland ferry terminal. We believed him and bought a ticket. We boarded our boat with only 5000 people this time, the last person to board the boat and sit near us had a bag full of boxes of KFC, we thought it was very odd to take KFC from an island to the main land. Surely there would be a KFC on the mainland in the town we were now travelling to; its not like Borneo is mile after mile of undeveloped jungle or anything - is it. Alarm bells really should have rung earlier than this but it was too late we were on our way, now our biggest concern was if the other passengers would notice if we threw the woman overboard and stole her KFC - offcourse we would have shared it. Being the local Celebes everyone wanted their 5 minutes of talk time, and we were reassured several times by several people that yes there was a bus (in SE Asia it is impolite not to answer a question and consequently even if people don’t know what they are talking about they will still say yes!). We arrived on the main land in a town that I forget the name of; this town is in fact so remote that it doesn’t even appear on google maps. We asked the bemo driver to take us to the bus station he also said YES, we got in with 8 other people, randomly drove around town dropping them off and picking up others until a black car pulled in front of us, our driver told us we should now go with his friend to the next town Tanjungselor. We refused and told him that we would take the bus and not go with his friend who inevitably would over charge us; please take us to the bus station. This seemed to cause great confusion and misunderstanding between us and the bemo driver who carried on and took us to the bus depot some 5k outside of town, stoping at the side of the road en-route as he ran out of petrol. Finally we arrived at the deserted bus station that had been deserted for maybe 5 years, well that’s our estimation judging by the amount of weeds growing inside of it. Surprisingly the black car was sitting there waiting for us, and suddenly the trailer for ‘kidnapped abroad’ flashed through both of our minds. Luckily there was a young man in the car who spoke reasonable English, he tried to explain to us that there was no bus service and everyone takes taxis to the next big town where you can catch the bus to Balikpapan. This journey would take 3 hours and cost a shell-shocking amount, we had a heated standoff with the taxi drivers until the black car finally left and we begrudgingly paid the bemo driver even though we felt fobbed off and abandoned once again. We still believed at this point that there would be a bus from here to Balikpapan as that’s what the man who sold us the ferry ticket had told us and the yes men on the boat had confirmed – surely they’d know better than the locals (don’t you hate it when you back the wrong horse?) With little other choice we hitched up our bags and headed for the main road where we met a builder called Joel who delivered a complete body blow by telling us there was no longer a bus service from this town to Balikpapan as nobody ever used it, the only way for us to carry on our journey was in a taxi. We asked him how much this taxi journey should cost a local person, and he told us the same jaw-dropping price OR MORE as we had been offered earlier. By now we were feeling quite foolish as it was apparent that the taxi driver from earlier had only been trying to help us, not rip us off and now we were stranded in the middle of nowhere. We decided to walk in the direction that the taxi had left and hoped that we would pick another one up, we walked so far and uphill that we ended up sitting at the side of the road hoping that someone would feel sorry for us and stop – and they did. The first was an awesome local driving a pickup truck filled with chickens and people who offered us a lift but sadly we were going in different directions, the second guy and his wife were more akin to Bonny and Clyde than the Samaritans as they would help us for $100 US each, clearly we weren’t going anywhere with them. Finally we were picked up by a young guy and his mum for the same price we were offered earlier, by now that seemed like a true bargain. We spent the next three hours on board a roller coaster riding the worst roads since Eastern Cambodia possibly the worst roads on earth – or were they? A mixture of tarmac dirt and gravel made for a truly interesting ride, however we watched the sun set over the Borneo jungle during the journey, and that will be hard to beat. When we arrived in Tanjungselor our driver kindly drove us around the town until he found us a place to stay, we were only to spend one night before moving on the next day our next step closer to Bali.
So to summarise so far, our quest to get to Bali as quickly and cheaply as possible has taken 3 days, 3 boat journeys, 1 fruitless trip to an airport that had no flights suitable for us, a 3 hour jaw dropingly expensive taxi journey over the roughest terrane I’ve ever encountered and a fair few misunderstandings and abandonment’s. Surely now we were on the right tracks. One short bus trip to Balikpapan and soon after we would be in Bali relaxing on the beach?
As we checked in to the hotel Rob was laughing and joking with the lady at reception (some might call it flirting!!). She was asking why we were there and where we were going and we used this as an opportunity to try and find out where the bus station was and what time we could catch the bus to Balikpapan. This is where the next bombshell happens, you can’t get a bus to Balikpapan, WHAT!? “No” she said, “first you must take one bus to Samarinda the capital of Kalimantan and then you can take a bus to Balikpapan”. It was Borneo conspiring against us all this time not just Malaysia. “The bus takes 16 hours to get there sometimes up to 20 she added and its very bumpy all the way”, we laughed assuming she was joking, and that after everything it had already taken us to get to this point surely this couldn’t be true, “honestly I took this journey once”. I could have cried the journey so far had taken its toll, physically and mentally exhausted and it clearly wasn’t going to get any better soon. We had again been a little naive thinking that every hour we had travelled so far would be an hour less on this infamous bus to Balikpapan, that already wasn’t the 8 hour direct trip the ferry ticket man had led us to believe. This was in fact a much longer and more convoluted journey than we could have ever imagined. We walked that night to the bus station where we were met by a crowd of friendly locals who confirmed that we were in the right place at last and to return for either the 10am or 1pm bus the next day. We managed to pass the end of that day away in a Chinese restaurant eating yet more chicken sweet corn soup and washing it down with cheap Chinese beer – maybe the worlds not that bad after all.
Next morning as we dined on a strange breakfast of fried rice and prawn crackers and still feeling exhausted our taxi driver from the previous day appeared with a friend. Through all our best pigeon efforts and hand signals we discovered the friend was from the bus station and was arranging to pick us up from the door of the hotel on the bus for the beginning of our epic 16 hour journey. How kind we thought and told him we would like to take the 10am journey, he agreed and said he would pick us up at 10. From then and until 10 we unsuccessfully searched town for a supermarket so we could stock up with supplies for the journey, we managed to get a bar of chocolate each, some god awful crisps and a bottle of juice each, not much for such a long journey I agree but the busses always stop at small towns and services for meals and the drivers to rest and swap over we’d surely pick up something else en-route. At 10am as promised a bus pulled up outside our hotel – we nearly died, the bus looked as old as time itself, large enough to carry 30 people max including the driver, rusting and poorly maintained, with broken seats onboard, the spare tyre inside sitting in the floor space by the back door, no air conditioning and surely to small and rickety to endure a 16 hour journey. There was no bottom step or hand rail to help me on to the bus and with my pack on it took an ungraceful combination of Rob pushing me and the driver pulling me from opposite sides to stop me falling back in to the street. Safely on board I discussed in my best pigeon Indonesian and the driver in his limited English what was happening and managed to establish that this was the bus that would take us to the station to pick up the “big” bus for the journey. We were driven to the station in the rickety boneshaker and for such a short journey it was actually quite good fun. We were greeted at the station by many smiling locals who were fascinated by us and our point it book (a book full of pictures of everyday items to help overcome language barriers), they all wanted a piece of us and all wanted a photo too, we were once again the star attraction. Being the centre of attention like this is fine when you know its for a limited period and is soon to end, however it didn’t take us long to establish that the bus wasn’t going to leave until 1pm and we were now in for three hours of local men wanting me to pose as their new girlfriend. We tried our best to ignore the attention but its difficult when you are the first tourists a town has ever seen. We filled as much time as we could finding ways that we were going to entertain ourselves on a 16 hour bus journey, I was going to turn a pair of trousers in to shorts, we were both going to stitch patches onto our rucksacks, had plenty of reading g material and offcourse catch up on some much needed sleep. It was after an hour or so of broken conversation it finally dawned on us that the bus that had picked us up was the bus for the whole journey, we laughed just to keep from crying, maybe with only a small number of people on board it shouldn’t be such a bad trip. At 5 minutes to 1 the other 20 passengers turned up and we tried to bagsy the backseat near the door with the most leg room as this was a specification all the other seats were missing (Indonesian people are seriously small they don’t need leg room), in a bizarre series of events we managed to loose these seats to a little old lady who has clearly never heard of bagsying. We sardined ourselves in to one of the available seats while the amputated dwarf of a woman relished in her acres of legroom. As if the boxes of sea food and 25kg bags of rice being piled in to every crevice wasn’t bad enough the guy hanging hessian bags of live chickens to the bars that ran across the windows made us realise this would be a special trip, but when he sat down clutching his c*** (fighting bird of course) we knew this would be a monumental journey. As we left town on a tarmacked road we discussed sleeping arrangements as we didn’t think we would be able to sleep at the same time, 10 minutes in to the journey the most curious thing happened the road turned from tarmac into lumpy bumpy tarmac, this was the point two interesting things happened 1:The Indonesian sport of chain smoking began, the rules of the game seem to be who can keep a lit cigarette in their mouth for the longest period of time, this usually requires lighting the next cigarette with the one already lit. 2:Half of those chickens turned out to be crowing cockerels, and at every lump and bump cockadoodledooed! 15 minutes out side town something really strange happened the lumpy bumpy tarmac turned in to lumpy bumpy gravel road, the driver doing the same speeds he was on the tarmac people started to get bounced around, a short while later the passengers of the bus started to get some serious airtime as the road got gradually worse. This made us smile as we had a hand rail to hold on to and a floor beneath us, our dwarf friend at the back of the bus didn’t have this luxury and was finding difficulty staying seated as her legs were too short to reach the nearest piece of floor to her, if only she’d understood bagsying. The highlight of the day so far, the gravel road now turned it to a dirt track and we had our very own dust storm inside the bus which actually made us laugh as we all had to cover our nose and mouth to guard against breathing in the dust billowing in through the “sealed” door. Our pixie friend at the back got tangoed very quickly. Now id always thought we carry spare wheels on vehicles out of precaution rather than necessity but these “roads” were so bad we were sure to need the spare sooner or later. When the bus stoped and the spare was rolled out from the back of the bus we were more surprised that the bus was jacked up with all the passengers on board than that the fact the wheel was being changed. We decided to get off the bus and watch, no sooner had we got there than the process was complete, these guys could work in a grand prix pit lane I swear. Just enough time was left to take a photo of our fellow passenger who was desperate to have his picture taken with his c*** (fighting), and get back on board. After the first 6 hours that flew by we both noticed our chair was somewhat more reclining than when we first sat down, and so had the people behind us. Unbelievably with all the bouncing and airtime and the fact that either one of us probably weighs twice that of any Indonesian the back rest on the chair had snapped and we were crushing the people behind us. To avoid injuring our fellow passengers any further Rob came up with an ingenuus plan to make us all more comfortable. The seat in front of us was missing half a backrest and the other half with a rest was not being used, we occupied a row each and tied our bags to the handrail across the window. We could then sit sideways with our legs into the isle, lean back on our bag and fasten the waist and chest straps which then acted a little like seat belts – much more comfortable and much less air time for us and no crushing the people behind. We were now travelling through a part of Borneo that if you check on google maps is not known to have any roads. 9 hours later we broke out of the thick of the jungle and arrived in a small town where we stopped for food, toilet and a replacement spare wheel, sadly half the back row and the guy with the chickens whom we had been getting on famously with got off, and were replaced by twice as many people. You might think that having tied our bags to our seats may have led someone to believe we were sitting there, apparently not in Indonesia. Someone had un-tied our bags, put them in the isle and was sitting in our seats when we returned, after a raised eyebrow and a bit of vigorous pointing the people moved and we reoccupied our seats vowing never to leave them again. The new locals looked on as we tied ourselves into our seats. In a few minutes with an awesome display of pigeon English and charades Rob had got the entire back row to understand our reason for doing this was so we didn’t crush anyone. This all came in very handy 3 hours later when the driver wanted to move us back into our original seat to allow two more people on the bus. The people at the back of the bus were able to explain to the driver why we were siting the way we were and he then proceeded to tell the new passengers to sit on the bags of rice in the isles. Finally tiredness overcame us and now more comfortable in our seats we started to cat nap, only for me to wake up with a small Indonesian man asleep on my shoulder, how he managed to sneak on to my seat with me I’m to this day unsure. At the 17th hour we broke free from the jungle and arrived in Samarinda knowing that we still had another 3 Hour bus journey before arriving in Balikpapan. We shook the hand of the one driver who had driven us for almost 17 hours solid through the jungle and managed to stay awake and not drive off any of the many cliff edges we had passed along the way – what a legend.
After our last few pieces of chocolate we found a bemo to take us to the other bus station, in our confused state at the time however we thought he was going to drive us to Balikpapan as we had no concept of how far away we still were. Sadly when he pulled into the bus station reality dawned that we were in fact yet another bus journey away from our destination, fortunately the bus was there waiting and we were able to get on board and fall asleep. The rest of that journey is lost in a haze of cigarette smoke, catnaps and delirium. Arriving in Balikpapan we were both far from fresh and suffering from the journey which still wasn’t over, Rob hunted down some red bull and I flagged down a bemo and gave the driver explicit instruction to take us to the nearest shopping mall where we found a much deserved KFC breakfast. The thought of KFC had been hanging over us since the lady on the boat heading to the main land, and as we didn’t steal her KFC and we had only eaten a bar of chocolate each the day before this was well deserved. Feeling slightly more human we began the hunt for a hotel, we tried the hotel directly opposite KFC which was fabulous and of course out of our budget, they were kind enough however to point us in the direction of more affordable accommodation which we trawled for many hours with no reward. Close to collapse, tears, murder and divorce out came Mr CREDIT CARD (for the first time this year mind) and bang we were booked in to the luxury hotel, free drinks at the bar, swimming pool, spa, 5* restaurant, door man and concierge and the most comfortable bed we had slept in all year. We think we deserved it what do you think? A quick freshen up later, and we were off to book flights to Bali before an afternoon swim. After hours of trawling for the cheapest flight we managed to find the best one and tried to book it, only to find Lion Air are harder to deal with Ryan Air and would not accept out of country credit cards. It now being too late for a swim we gave up and treated ourselves with a Pizza Hut dinner, a pizza so big in fact it could have fed the population of that small village in the middle of the Borneo jungle – what a great day for junk food.
Next morning after such a heavy sleep that didn’t really last long enough, we were up and heading off to try our luck at booking some flights again. When we rechecked the ones we wanted they had of course increased in price over night, we were still unable to book them over the Internet. I was by now somewhere near a nervous breakdown over the matter, we had travelled the length of Borneo in search of the airport closest to Bali in the vein hope our proximity would reflect in the price, now we had made it this town we couldn’t book the flights. We went back to our hotel and while Rob checked us out of the room I went to see if the hotel could help us contact Lion Air direct to book the tickets and ease our frustration, that’s when we met Lany. Lany is the customer relations for the hotel, speaks perfect English and is a world traveller herself, and having just returned two weeks previously from 6 months in New Zealand was hugely intrigued by us. We regaled her with our epic journey to Balikpapan and she clearly thought we were insane, we had actually in recent days visited parts of her own island she had never heard of yet alone been to. Fortunately Lany had a friend, a travel agent who managed to book our flights for us before they became unfeasibly expensive. Apparently we were arriving during the Indonesian Independence Day celebrations (we had been wondering what all the bunting was in aid of). Flights booked Lany’s compassion shone through after telling her we had missed our chance of a swim and had to move hotels because hers was too expensive she managed to arrange a free pass for us to use the pool that afternoon. This was the most blissful swim ever, we had the pool to ourselves and all our tension from recent days was washed away. We exchanged phone numbers with Lany and arranged to meet her the next day to go bargain shopping at the traditional market followed by a movie with some of her friends.
Next day Lany proved herself to be the most hard face barterer on the planet and secured some great deals for us, the most shopping we’d done in ages. Later we went with her to see her old work mates in another hotel and she bought us a stack of sweet savouries against our will, she stashed them in her Mary Poppins sized hand bag and said we would eat them in the cinema later. We met up with Lanys friends the fabulous Frank and Jeffri and had coffee before heading off to the cinema to watch ‘Drag Me To Hell’. The film was billed as a horror but after Rob was howling with laughter where others were squealing with terror the audience strangely seemed to start agreeing with Rob and all of a sudden the film was a black comedy. Afterwards we were supposed to go for karaoke but sadly the bar was full so instead Frank gave us a driving tour of Balikpapan at night, which has a surprising amount of oil refineries. At the end of our tour our new friends dropped us off at our hotel and hugged and kissed us goodbye, as we would be flying the next morning. Lany, Frank and Jeffri showed us such kindness when we were having a terrible week and completely restored our opinion of Borneo they will forever be our Facebook friends.
Finally we boarded our first flight to Bali the next day, it connected in Surabaya and even though it was delayed the next plane waited for us. At last we had arrived at our presumed slice of paradise Bali. It had taken 8 days, 3 boats, 1 failed trip to the airport, a handful of Bemo’s, 1 three hour taxi journey, one 17 hour bus journey, and a 3 hour bus journey, 2 flights, several sense of humour failures, a dose of exhaustion and three new friends – what a week!!
Bali can wait for another day, until then:
Wayne: So, Coach, how's your parole coming?
Coach Norton: Not good. The victim's whiny family keeps complaining
J.D.: God! What is their PROBLEM?
Love and miss you all,
the shoe string two
XoXo
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