V2.C.P1= Towards Kalimantan (starters)

As the tourists call it, ‘Borneo’, is the third largest island in the world (after Greenland and New Guinea) with its 748,168km2 area. It is also the sixth highest island in the world. It is administratively divided between Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia and among them nine provinces; but ecologically it can be divided into seven ecoregions: The Borneo lowland rain forests, Borneo peat swamp forests, the Kerangas (Sundaland heath forests), the Southwest Borneo freshwater swamp forests, and the Sunda Shelf mangroves, Central Borneo’s montane rain forests, and the higher Kinabalu montane alpine meadows. Hence the 30 ethnic groups living on the island share it with about 15,000 species of flowering plants, 3,000 species of trees, 221 species of terrestrial mammals, and 420 species of resident birds.

The word Borneo comes from the Malay word Brunei, one of the largest cities on the island, and was changed by the Portuguese to Borneo. Historically, however, the word belongs to the colonisers (the Dutch, who has weird ways of calling pretty much everything, even themselves, so Borneo is still quite ok. To clarify, I mean the pronunciation of Dutch words in general, which I find quite difficult –which of course is none of my fault ;P But the name joke is even better: together with China, the Netherlands are one the two countries whose dominant population tries to make a cool name out of their long and cumbersome –in this case Christian- names…) so is obsolete among Indonesians, although the tourists for some reason cannot figure this out. Maybe if Lonely Planet (the bible) highlighted this fact it would be educational for some poor western souls...

Anyway, in Indonesia, the island is always referred to as Kalimantan while in Malaysia the northern section is referred to as East Malaysia (as opposed to Western reference of Malaysian Borneo). The Indonesian part occupies the central and southern regions of the island. So I establish that I was in Kalimantan, after a one-night-stay in Java in which (after Aceh) I celebrated being back to a more familiar world (the world of Bintang and familiar faces).

But first I’ve to tell you about the trip: I left Aceh on a foggy day with a Garuda flight. To my surprise they were much better this time: they are on time and they get you where you want to go to unlike some other airlines that were operating at that time: the plane crashed.

I found the hotel Harro “texted” (I can’t get used to this “verb”!) quite easily, liked whatever I saw of Semerang from the taxi (which was very little, but still… I liked the complexity already), joined Vince, Harro, Rob and Timme (from right to left in the pic) in the pub with a few pitchers of Bintang. They were at the end of their Java trip and told me of Mount Bromo and Borobudur (see what I missed/saved for the next trip in the pics) and me about Aceh –a little non-stop I’m afraid...

Naturally, the next morning was one marked by a huge hangover. We also experienced our first delay (which foreshadowed our Christmas day) and out first tiny plane that morning. Yet, we managed to get to Pangkalanbun, then to Kumai, where we were to stay for one night before we started our trip to the rainforest. We got the necessary permits to make the trip and fixed a boat that would be our transport, accommodation and restaurant for the next five days. But Kumai was a hit: The hotel we stayed at, the Aloha Inn, was the filthiest place I’ve ever stayed (for the details refer to the 72nd paragraph of Rob’s post on Indonesia and NOT to the bible, as all holy texts it has its limits and probably not very updated). The town in general was hard to bear and I think I ejected most of it out of my memory but there is a misleading picture I took in the nameless restaurant we ate at. We were surprised to figure we were all alive the next day…

The saddest thing about Kumai was not the noise, the dirt, the smells, the lack of alcohol, clean water and electricity, nor the (can't find the correct adjective here) toilet, the overpopulation of the mosquitoes, not even the stagnant modernism vs. fundamental religion debate of the people we met (which I found very hard to bear), but the fact that powdered milk, insoluble coffee (Nescafé), Coke and Sprite, and Marlboro to be available everywhere and nothing that looked vaguely edible, fresh, natural although we were only three hours away from one of the world's most beautiful rainforests and in the country of some of the best coffee in the world…

The happiest thing about Kumai was leaving it (although those that have left a week after we did on 30th of December would not say that: the ferry sank). When we set sail towards the Orang Utan forests everything turned from a nightmare into a dream…