Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2060820&l=63a42&id=1101094
We set off for the jungle at eight the following morning. The first part of the trip was by land via a road that was once paved but had suffered through enough wet seasons that it was now nothing but a collection of potholes, and I managed to keep my breakfast in my stomach only by focusing my eyes on the verdant, rolling hills that extended to the horizon. Three hours and four sore rear ends later, we traded the car for a ces (motorized canoe) in a town called Kota Bangun. The rest of the journey, and indeed the better part of the next three days, would be spent aboard this ces.
We started up the mighty Sungai Mahakam, the region’s dominant geographic feature, but soon we branched off onto smaller, more scenic rivers and shallow lakes. We stopped for lunch at Muara Muntai, a colorful town built literally on the water. All the houses in the village sat on stilts, and the roads were boardwalks—wooden planks that allowed the town’s ubiquitous motorcycles to buzz around the otherwise-peaceful town. After lunch we walked around town a bit before boarding the ces and continuing upriver.
We reached our destination, a village called Tanjung Isuy, in mid-afternoon. Set on the shores of Danau Jempang, a large, shallow lake that is connected to Sungai Mahakam by a series of tributaries, Tanjung Isuy is the closest Dayak village to Samarinda. Dayak, I should mention, is a term that is used to describe the various indigenous tribes that inhabit Kalimantan. The Dayak tribe in Tanjung Isuy is known as the Banuaq, but you wouldn’t know the villagers were Dayak except for the fact that they’re not Muslim. Sadly, Dayak traditions such as colorful dress and stretched earlobes of the women have been replaced by electricity and satellite TV.
But Tanjung Isuy was a relaxing village that would serve as a convenient base for exploring the jungle over the next few days. We dropped our packs at the one guesthouse in town and accompanied Suryadi to purchase that night’s dinner.
Food in Tanjung Isuy, like practically every part of daily life, revolves around water. Here, chicken is exotic, while giant catfish and oversized river prawn are staples. The only real industry in the town and the surrounding area is fishing, and it’s the occupation of the majority of the male inhabitants of the village. That makes the supply of fish heavy and the price cheap, which is not so good for the fisherman but quite convenient for us.
Suryadi bought a whole catfish that weighed four kilograms for Rp 60,000 (~$6) and three kilograms of udang galah (river prawn) for about the same price. That food, along with the omnipresent rice and noodles, would serve as our dinner for the next three nights, and not one of us complained about the repetition: Suryadi proved to be an excellent cook, and the food was a treat for those of us who consider fresh fish and shrimp to be a rarity.
Our guesthouse had no electricity, so we ate our dinner by candlelight and then John T., the middle-aged Brit, and I delved into politics. In just over half an hour John T. touched on his general distrust of government, his disdain for taxes, his view that most immigrants were criminals, his conviction that Londoners were nothing but “a bunch of wankers,” his annoyance that marijuana was illegal and alcohol and tobacco were heavily taxed, and his hatred for President Bush, among countless other things. If I had to describe him politically, I guess I’d call him a libertarian isolationist, although even that doesn’t capture the extent of his dislike for basically everyone but himself.
Physically, John T. was quite a bit more comical. Dressed in a black tank top that accentuated his pale white arms, his scraggly gray hair covered in a red bandana, his ear pierced by a gold hoop earring, his teeth brown from years of smoking his hand-rolled cigarettes, and his stubbly snow-white beard revealing his age, he looked something like a pirate. In fact, coupled with his cockney British accent, he would have made a fantastic minor character in Pirates of the Caribbean.
His son, Josh, could not have been more normal, or less like his father. A typical teenage Brit clothed in a t-shirt a zip-off khakis, Josh spent most of the trip taking videos with his camera and displaying a genuine belief that his father was a god for having taken him along on this adventure.
The following morning we set off in our ces, first across the plant-covered Danau Jempang, and then down the beautiful Sungai Ohong. It was on the Ohong that we got the best jungle views of the trip: primary forest hugged the banks of the brown river, macaques and proboscis monkeys leapt from tree to tree, and giant monitor lizards (the largest one we saw was over six feet long) swam in the shallow water and sunned themselves on the bank. We got a glimpse of a giant squirrel scrambling around in a tree, and at over three feet long it was dangerously close to R.O.U.S. status. The bird life was fantastic as well; along with the brilliant kingfisher, with its aqua blue body, yellow head, and bright orange beak, we saw herons, ibises, pelicans, and countless other birds which I couldn’t name.
We stopped by a couple villages during the day, the largest of which was called Mancong. Mancong was a Dayak village with a bit more of its tradition intact than Tanjung Isuy; locals still lived in the picturesque longhouse, and strange wooden statues stood in front of the longhouse, one for each buffalo that had been ceremoniously slaughtered. Everywhere we went, we met curious, wide-eyed children and reserved men and women, all of whom seemed surprised to see us. Clearly, it’s hard times for tourism in Kalimantan.
On the way back to Tanjung Isuy, Suryadi spotted a snake coiled in a tree, and we slowed down for a closer look. Eventually it began to slither down the branch and we got a glimpse of its full length, some six or seven feet. According to Suryadi, its poison was more deadly than that of a cobra.
Also that afternoon, we stopped in at a little house floating on the side of the river that caught snakes and lizards and sold their skin for use in luxury goods. Although I got to hold a recently captured python as well as a couple smaller snakes, I couldn’t help but feel lukewarm about lending moral support to the poaching industry.
We made our way back across Danau Jempang, and as we struggled to make out the next town on the shores of the vast lake, I learned that the silver domes that graced all the mosques in the area were quite useful navigational tools: usually they were the only thing we could see from a distance of five or so kilometers. But as we approached Tanjung Isuy, it wasn’t navigation, but vegetation, that was our main problem. The thick plants that floated on top of the water were blown by the wind during the day such that the path we had taken from the town that morning was now covered in vegetation. The only solution was to try new routes in a guess and check fashion, and it was over an hour before we finally managed to find one that took us to the village. I imagine it must be quite frustrating to be a boat driver around here—each day brings a new battle to reach the shore, and the previous day’s experience is of no aid.
The following day we traversed more jungle landscape and ended up at a town called Muara Pahu, which was the local habitat for the endangered Irrawaddy river dolphins. These dolphins are the same ones I saw in Kratie, Cambodia, so I didn’t much care about seeing them again, which worked out well because after two hours of cruising up and down the river we gave up on spotting them.
On the way back to Tanjung Isuy our propeller hit the bottom and snapped in half, leaving us with nothing but a paddle for the journey home. Luckily, after about two hours of paddling, we came upon a boat that had an extra propeller, and a few minutes later we had repaired our motor and were back at cruising speed.
The following day we returned to Samarinda, and to civilization. Though my stay in the jungle was short, I felt fortunate to have gotten a glimpse of one of the last primary rainforests on earth.
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