This journal entry starts very early on Tuesday morning. The alarm was set for 2:15am and we finished getting things packed up so that we could be ready for a Grab ride to the airport at 3:30. Our flight departure was scheduled for 6am. Everything went as scheduled and the check-in process was very easy at the airport. We were on a domestic flight, so there was no passport control. Takeoff was right on schedule. The announcements on the plane are all made in the national language (Bahasa Indonesian) and then in English. They can speak English fine, but somebody has coached them to finish the announcement as fast as humanly possible and because there is an accent, the three of us occasionally picked up a word here and there. A bun filled with chocolate and one hour later we landed in Pangkalan Bun on the southern edge of the island of Borneo. Kalimantan is the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo and contains more territory than any other island in Indonesia. Portions of the island of Borneo are owned by Malaysia and portions are owned by Brunei.
Our guide for this adventure was there to greet us at the airport. His name is Krishna and he is fantastic. He is 30 years old, has a wife and two young children. The four of them rode on their scooter to the port city of Kumai while we rode in a taxi and this was due to regulations not allowing him to ride in the taxi with us because there would have been five people including the driver. At Kumai we boarded the Rimba Queen klotok. Klotoks are a traditional riverboat in this part of Indonesia, and they ply up and down the river all day long. We met our crew – Captain Sulis, First Mate Ooji, and Chef Sushi. We pushed off and rode for two hours to the lodge in which we would be staying. Sushi made breakfast, which included juice, omelets, and toast.
Along the way we saw our first three orangutans. The draw for us coming here is the Tanjung Puting National Park. Borneo is one of the few places in the world where you can see wild orangutans and this park is a great place to do it.
Rimba Ecolodge gave us a warm greeting upon our arrival and showed us to our rooms.
We unpacked and took naps and then went over to the restaurant for lunch at 1:30. Lunch included veggie and meat soup, rice, fried soybeans, and a cucumber melon syrup dessert. We went down to the dock for our planned 2:30 departure and made the very short ride across the river to the jetty that serves as the landing point for the first of three feeding stations we would visit on this trip. The walk through the forest to the feeding station was about 20 minutes and we were greeted by several semi-wild orangutans making their way through the trees to the feeding station. They consider them semi-wild because they are wild living in the forest but the fact that the rangers and researchers provide this food for them makes them semi-wild. On a side note, there is a movie that we all watched at the lodge called From Orphan to King about one of the orangutans from this area and it is a rather amazing story. It was incredible to watch their behavior as they munched on sweet potatoes, and we were close enough that you could hear the crunching of the potatoes. We saw around 15 orangutans during our 90 minutes there and nearly every female had a baby or young orangutan attached.
At the end of the feeding time, we made our way back to the boat and we were given cold washcloths (a welcome amenity in this heat), a coconut fruit drink, and fried cassava. We did a short sunset cruise on the river, which gave us a chance to see the many Probiscis monkeys with their huge noses settling down for the night in the trees along the river. They move to the riverside trees at night so that their droppings and urine go into the river instead of onto the ground, which would allow the wild cat predators to track them down in the night. We were back at the lodge at 6 and we had dinner at 7. That was it for day one of this adventure and it was great.
We were down at the jetty on Wednesday morning for our 7am departure to head to Camp Leakey, which took around six hours to get to as we stopped to see various animals along the way. We had tea to get started and then Sushi’s breakfast included omelets, pancakes, salad, orange juice, and mandarins. We saw more Probiscis monkeys, baby crocodiles, a hornbill bird in the distance, and several kingfisher birds with beautiful blue, yellow, and orange coloring.
Lunch was on the boat around Noon and this meal included chicken satay, veggie tempura, bananas, rice, and sauteed vegetables. Along the way we read our books and relaxed while seeing the wildlife and views along the river. The river is the Sekonyer River that we were traveling up and down for the whole experience in the National Park. Camp Leakey is named after Dr. Louis Leakey, who was a very well-known primate researcher. Three of his disciples are Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, and Birute Galdikas. Galdikas led the research here for more than 40 years. She lived in Los Angeles but spent a lot of time here at this camp and sadly, died from lung cancer in Los Angeles the day before we visited Camp Leakey. Upon our arrival at the jetty for Camp Leakey we met Arif, a ranger who took us on a one hour trek through the jungle and showed us a woodpecker’s nest in a tree (and the woodpecker proceeded to come out and fly for us), baby birds in a nest and I think they were just hatched, tarantula holes but the tarantulas were sleeping, all kinds of different trees and he and Krishna described what they were used for, a rubber tree, giant ants, and non-stinging bees. It was a neat hour trek and then we arrived at the feeding station and watched the activity for a couple of hours. There weren’t as many orangutans this time – there were a few – but there were lots of long-tailed macaques who came and kind of took over the feeding platform. Again, the behavior of these animals is fascinating to watch. It’s very easy to sit and do it for hours.
As we were leaving, one of the other travelers went off the trail for a “nature break” and came across one of the large males standing by a tree in the area. That worked out well for us because then we got to see him also after he had climbed up the tree. The boat ride back was much faster – no sightseeing as it was getting dark and we were heading downriver. The ride back took two-and-a-half hours and we were back at 7 for dinner at the lodge. The dinner included fried fish – watch out for bones in all of the fish here as it is not fileted usually – fried tofu, rice, cabbage, beef, and cantaloupe.
We were at the jetty again at 7am on Thursday. The monkeys (long-tail macaques) were active this morning on the roofs of the buildings at the lodge. They sometimes sound like they are coming through the roof. We had breakfast on the boat and arrived at our third different feeding station at 8:30. We were able to see a large male orangutan, two moms with babies, and an older child.
Lots of long-tail macaques arrived a little later and they finished off the feeding.
We left the station at 11 and stopped with a ranger to each plant a tree that will hopefully be going strong the next time we are back or any of our friends come to experience this fascinating place. The trees we planted are called Nyatuhs and they grow to be more than 100 feet tall.
Back at the lodge we cooled off and had lunch – beef soup with rice, corn fritters, and melon juice. At 3:30 we took the boat down the river for a few minutes to visit the village of Sekonyer. At the dock we did a group photo of us with our boat crew.
It has a population of around 250 people and is the home of our boat captain and his assistant (Sulis and Oogi). We had a nice walk through the village and it seemed like a very simple and happy place. We had dinner at the lodge at 7 – fish, rice, tofu and shrimp, salad, veggies, and mung bean dessert, which is common in this part of the world. It is a sweet and syrupy kind of dessert. I watched the From Orphan to King movie while Sandy and Sarah went back to the rooms.
Friday was even earlier with our departure from the jetty at 6am. We had plans for a three-hour forest trek and the idea was to beat the heat as best we could. We had breakfast on the boat and then we pulled off to the side of the river for a while and shortly thereafter learned that our boat had broken down. The process of figuring out the new plan delayed us a little over an hour. A small boat pulled up and took Sarah and Krishna to the jetty from where we would start our hike with a ranger.
A few minutes later, a larger boat came and picked Sandy and me up. The walk ended up being about 2.5 hours and it was hot even though we started in the morning and maybe it would have been a little cooler if we had not lost that hour, but I can’t imagine it would have made that much of a difference. It’s just plain hot and humid here.
At one point, Krishna realized he left the umbrellas he was carrying at a rest point we used and so he had to hustle back to get them. That meant we didn’t see him for the last hour or so of the trek. After a rest at the end of the trek our group got in two canoes and made our way out to the main river.
At that point we started the engines – correction, we started our engine as Sarah’s canoe engine would not start. We towed her group for a little while until they could get the engine going and made our way back to the lodge for lunch at 1. Sarah and Sandy watched From Orphan to King in the afternoon and then we learned that the Rimba Queen was back in business and we took her to the feeding station we visited on our first day in the park. There was lots of activity, and we were very excited to get to see Roger. He is the current king of the group who visits this feeding station.
We relaxed on the boat with snacks (coconut water, Sprite, and fried bananas with chocolate) until 6 when we were able to start a one hour night walk through the forest. It’s a very different experience at night. We saw smoking mushrooms where you can see the spores coming off the mushrooms (they do this in the day also – you just can’t see them), glowing mushrooms, lightning bugs, walking sticks, giant ants, a sleeping red bird, a tarantula, frogs, caterpillars, a scorpion, and lots of spiders.
And in case you are wondering, it was still warm on the walk. It’s nice to have the mosquito net hats we picked up in Greenland, but they don’t do anything to make the air cooler. Dinner was on the boat – tofu, shrimp, rice, pineapple, and papaya and then Sandy and I enjoyed a Bintang beer each when we got back to the lodge.
Today is Saturday and that means we are leaving Borneo after a remarkable experience in the park, especially with the orangutans. We didn’t have to start quite as early today. We had breakfast at the lodge at 8:30 – cantaloupe, eggs, French toast, pancakes, and honey – and then packed so that we could be on the boat at 10:30 for the two-hour ride back to Kumai. Sushi made us lunch along the way – full fish, rice, sauteed spinach, mandarins, and dragon fruit.
We said goodbye to Sushi, Sulis, and Oogi, and then visited a couple of sights in Pangkalan Bun with Krishna. We visited a traditional long house that the Dayak population from this island lived in and we also went to one of the former sultan’s palaces. The area used to be ruled by a sultan (and that is the same in many other parts of the Indonesian islands). We stopped at the ATM for Sarah to get some cash, and she brought back ice cream bars for each of us – perfect snack at the perfect moment. Krishna then dropped us off at the airport. It’s a small airport and the check-in process and security went fine. We had an on-time departure with wheels up at 4:40 and we landed in Jakarta at 5:45. We collected our bags after a wait and then took a Grab car to tonight’s home – the Sheraton at the Jakarta airport. The three of us met for dinner in one of the restaurants at the hotel. Sarah had Indonesian chicken that came with a super spicy sauce that caught her off guard, but she recovered quickly. Sandy had salmon, a salad, and basil mashed potatoes. I had a Philly cheesesteak. Sandy and I went to the gym afterward and did a modified workout because we were tired and it was late, but we wanted to get something done.
This week will certainly go down as a significant memory from our journey. There are lots of aspects that will stick with us – we gained a deeper understanding and appreciation for the orangutan. The gorilla has always been my favorite animal, but maybe the orangutan is right up there now. It was a special place to spend time.
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