October 7th 9:40 am  Kumai River, Kalimantan, Indonesia, Borneo  02′ 44.566 S   111′ 43.917 E

Just finished three loads of laundry and shrinking 500 photos.  And I deleted a bunch so you can imagine how many I took.    The overwhelming theme of our 2 adventures combined is the destruction of the rain forest.  The orangutan conservation area is one small part that is being saved.  The orangutans we saw live in their jungle, but it’s hard to believe that they haven’t been changed by their contact with humans.  It is like seeing them in a huge zoo.  The proboscis monkeys won’t interact with humans.  The gibbons did somewhat and the macaques also.  But when you get close to an orangutan, you feel the frustration of not being able to communicate.  Depending whom you read we share 95 or 98 % DNA with the orangutans so maybe they just are attracted to their human cousins.  I will start working on my real emails. 

We also went to see a native Dayak village.  It was a 3 hour bumpy ride through what once was rain forest and is now palm oil tree plantations as far as the eye can see.  ( And a 20 minute speed boat ride at the end.)   Also, small parts of the forest are burned down so rice fields can be planted.  The people in the Davak village chop down and burn the forest to plant rice.  They have to eat.  In this area of Borneo you can work for the logging companies and chop down the forest.  Or you can work for the gold mines and pollute the rivers with mercury.  The people in the Dayak village are poor but like everywhere, the kids seem happy and playful.  The old men seem happy.  The women work hard and the wife of our host never smiled.  The kids go to the small local school.  They are in the process of building a library with government money.  Our host is a teacher there.  He went to the local teacher training university in Pangkalan Bun.  We saw his 10 year old daughter reading and he said she was very smart.  Izzy, our orangutan guide and our Dayak guide translated between us and the villagers who spoke no English. Randal and I hosted (paid for) the traditional ceremony held in our host’s longhouse the evening we were there.  It is how the village makes money.  It was interesting, not too long, and Randal and I even took part as we danced the bird dance.   Randal was draped in a giant sarong and I looked more like a scare crow to scare away the birds with my arms stiffly out to the sides instead of gracefully floating in the symbolic breeze.  I was ok until I heard Izzy’s infectious giggles.  Then I almost lost it. Thankfully it was only almost.  Well they had made us drink a glass a rice wine in an early part of the ceremony during which they sprinkled rice in our hair and tied a traditional folded leaf bracelet to our wrist.  The whole experience was a mix of the ancient, recent past, and modern since they had a satellite dish and a cell phone, a generator for the night time electricity and a squat toilet installed for when guests come as well as a head hunter buried not far from their house.  Yes a real head hunter from their village so he still had his head.  Our host showed us his blow gun but not the magic arrows.  The blow gun was to protect the children from the head hunters who prized the heads of children.  Pretty much a thing of the past. 

October 1  6:40 pm Kumai River    (Off tomorrow early for a 3 day trip up the river to Camp Leakey to see the orang utan conservation area.)

When we lived in China, Hong Kong, Subic, and Kota Kinabalu all for extended periods of time, it was easier to write emails because, mostly, days were uneventful. When something unusual happened, there was time to write about it because the next day was probably filled with routine, leaving lots of time to think about and write an email. I’m only now realizing the luxury of having enough time in one place. And even with the time we had, we both wish for more time in China, places in the Philippines, and Kota Kinabalu. I’d like more time in Hong Kong and Randal in Subic Bay. Now it seems as soon as we arrive, it’s time to go. Tana Toraja and Ubud definitely needed more than 3 days. And we hardly saw Makassar though we were anchored there 8 days. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed with sights and sounds. I guess I am having to become more selective about what I can share. Bits here and there; not long stories about kids and school visits and such. Sometimes, like special trips to places like Tana Toraja and Ubud and our up-coming orang utan conservation area visit, are so special they demand more time and space.

Added to the new anchorages we see, some on a daily basis, are the new Sail Indonesia participants we meet along the way. We cruised from Lovina to Kumai in the company of 5 other boats. During a night passage radio communications is very reassuring. Like when bikers warn each other about pot holes or gravel in the road ahead; cruisers warn each other about fish traps, towed barges and anything else not easily seen at night. It’s easier to interpret a radar screen if someone can say, “yes, those double bits of light are a barge being towed; it already passed us.” Or Peter, from The Southern Cross telling me it’s a squid boat fishing in one spot, so no need to wake Randal to ask what to do. Actually, though Peter was reassuring, when our radar said, DANGEROUS TARGET for the second time and it was within the mile radar ring of our boat, I did wake Randal. But my 3 am to 7 am watch I did completely on my own. The boat Tonic is cruising along too; that’s tonic spelled with a tilted cocktail glass replacing the i. There is also Just Jane, Saraoni, Sea Bunny, and Solan. Jo from Just Jane has the knack for saying the exact right thing. You can hear cruisers speaking to each other over the shared Indonesia Sail channel 77. It’s as if she has read, memorized, or possibly written, one of those “what to say on any occasion” books. Caught off guard or on the spur of the moment I might say something inappropriate, or hopefully just become catatonic in response. Jo says something clever, complementary, or just matter-of-fact. We will all be here on the Kumai River for about 10 days so hopefully I’ll get to know faces to put with the voices and names. I have met some of these people before. But having listened in on shared conversations, sometimes with us too, I have gotten to know them better.

It is now many days later and we have in fact gotten to know Peter and Kathryn from “The Southern Cross” and Jo and Arnold from “Just Jane”. They came for a Happy Hour(s) on DoraMac one evening last week. Really nice, friendly, interesting people; all Australians. All of us were about the same age, though Randal, at 60, was the oldest. Peter was in politics, though not a politician he was quick to point out, Kathryn worked with the people who had suffered brain injuries, Jo was a special ed teacher of emotionally challenged elementary age children and Arnold managed a company that dealt with electrical concerns. We tried to talk him into climbing our mast to fix the anchor light, but no luck! We talked cruising, boats, books, world politics….the time flew. We only knew bits and pieces of their stories when they left. Hopefully we will have more chances along the way for another Happy Hour. I did lend Kathryn a Jane Austen biography so I know we will meet up again. I hadn’t read it yet so couldn’t give it to her. But I did pass along eat pray love since I had read it and they had also been to Ubud. When I mentioned the library Kathryn gave Peter a “how did we miss it?” look. I told her I had already read about it so knew it was there to look for. It really isn’t on the list of tourist stops in any literature about Ubud.

They asked if we knew much about Australia and its politics. “No.” Though I did get some points for having read Jill Kerr Conway’s Road from Courain and had seen” A Town Like” Alice on Masterpiece Theatre. Crocodile Dundee gets you no points. I pled New England provincialism. If it wasn’t happening in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont or Massachusetts (eastern Mass that is) than I didn’t really know about it. Except for Viet Nam and Russia which I did study at U Mass. And the time I spent in Chicago. Aussies and Canadians either don’t see us as idealistic though (sometimes bumbling) do gooders trying to help the world’s people. They see us as having a nationalistic and economic agenda and basing our foreign policy on those principles. I don’t argue because how they see us comes from their Australian or Canadian view of the world. I guess I still believe someone has to stand up to tyrants. As everyone was leaving I asked about the name, “Just Jane”. I happen to like it; sounds like a Young Adult book title. Far from it!!! Joe and Arnold bought the boat already named by its original owner after a British stripper named Jane. She would take off her clothes and then it would be….just Jane! Since it’s bad luck to change a boat’s name, Just Jane it is still. The Southern Cross was named for the stars. Randal and I both called it Southern Comfort, much to Peter’s chagrin.

The little water front town of Kumai has little to offer but its warm friendliness and cute smiling waving kids yelling, “hello Mister!” Hello Mister!!! When Randal and I got separated on the main street while shopping for food (me) and hardware (Randal), the locals pointed the way I should go when they saw me looking around and around for him. The kids call out, teens call out and ask, “where are you going?” and the old people, shy, steal looks until I look back and smile and then they give a big smile in return. No beggars, no one trying to sell you something. We eat in the same restaurant every day, where the locals eat. Wash your hands first at the sink by the door, because that’s what the Muslim people do, get a plate, get your rice and point to the other food you want. My favorite is the corn fritter. Eat too much, pay very little.

And how ‘bout them Sox!! Going to the playoffs!!! We will be up the river on our way to the Urang Utan Conservation area when they start playing the LA Angeles. But I have done all I can do; bought lucky charms, made an offering to Neptune, and will even be wearing my red 2004 World Series socks when we start off tomorrow. The rest is up to Theo, Tito and the team.

September 29   8 am

   Here are some first photos of our walk in Kumai yesterday.  We’ll probably wait until after Ramadan ends to take our trip to the Orang Utan Conservation Area.  Apparently September 30th and October 1st are days of celebration that no one wants to miss.  We took the dinghy to shore, ate a huge lunch of rice and fried everything else.  One thing was a vegetable fritter and some tempeh and something that looked like a fried clam minus the stomach, just the long neck.  Could have been who knows what really; intestines of some kind.  The women working in the restaurant didn’t speak English.  But I did eat enough fried food to last me a good long while, or until we go there again. 

    There are about 10 other Sail Indonesia boats here.  Last night we had visitors from Single Malt.  They had already done the Orang Utan trip and raved so we are really looking forward to it.

  Tiny, but you get the idea.  Our side of the river is tree lined and undeveloped.  The water is brown and pretty dirty.  We are being very conservative with our water because we can’t make water from the dirty river water as we can from the ocean water.  If we run out we’ll have to buy some.  We do have lots of bottled water, but that won’t work for dishes, showers, toilets, or laundry.  We’ve never had to worry about water before.  At marinas you get marina water and at the boat yard we filled up from the hose and not river water.  But we will be here at least a week, not counting our time off to see the Orang Utan.  We filled the tanks coming to Kumai and they hold 250 gallons of water.

  I read about birds’ nest soup in Agnes Keith’s books about Borneo.  Natives would climb very high cave walls to collect the nests the swifts had built. Swifts apparently have some special liquid they use to make the nests and that’s what makes it a delicacy.   Someone in Kumai had the idea to build these huge buildings that mimic caves and thousands of swifts nest there.  There are five or six of these buildings that I saw along the waterfront.  The locals don’t like them because of the noise, bird droppings and fear of bird flu.  But China pays big bucks for the nests.  It’s too bad that the building have to be located where they are.  We had several swifts visit our boat yesterday morning.  My guess is that they feed in the forest across the river and then fly back to nest in the buildings.  Some of the buildings have facades that resemble homes rather than industrial buildings.  But the noise of the roosting birds could be annoying if the street noise ever stopped.  It’s hard to see, but there are openings on the sides of the buildings, like you see in birdhouses.  The birds come and go through the holes.  It would be interesting to see the insides.

  Something you won’t see at home; a motorcycle laden with pineapple.

  Street scene along the public market area.  I bought mango, cabbage, tomato, and cucumber. You can see one of the many mosques along the waterfront.

Half the women wear traditional garb. 

  We saw several women with white paste on their faces.  I guess it’s connected to Ramadan, but I’m not sure.  Maybe I’ll ask if I find someone who speaks English well enough.  My few words of Indonesian are just so limited.

  Boat visitors.  They came by to see the boat and Randal invited them aboard.  We gave them some of the school notebooks we had bought to give to the kids, some fancy pencils I had bought, a jump rope Randal had bought for kids bandannas for all.  After a nice visit of Mountain Dew, little cakes, and lots of photos they continued home.  As I saw them off, the dad offered me a coconut.  Maybe we’ll take it on our Orang Utan trip and let the cook use it for a meal.  Hopefully his wife won’t kill him for coming home without the coconut she had sent him off to get.

While walking along the beach at Gili Air back at the Mataram anchorage we had met a couple traveling around Indonesia. They had been to Ubud and had done an Eco Cycling Tour. Randal added it to our list of things to do in Ubud.

From the leaflet about Eco Tour……..

“Experience the magic and feel the spirit of rural Bali on our famous Eco-Educational cycling tour (suitable for all ages.) We’ll pick you up at your hotel and drive you up to Penelokan (Kintamani) where we’ll breakfast overlooking the active volcano, Mount Batur and its crater lake.”

“ After breakfast we’re off on our mountain bikes through the heartland of Bali, traveling downhill on secret back roads and minor village roads (with no traffic) experiencing untouristed, typical Balinese daily life and enjoying the beautiful Balinese countryside to Ubud.”

The tour was a full day. We were picked up at 7:45 and go back to Ubud about 4:30. First stop was a photo op of a terraced rice field. They are so unique with lovely color patterns.

Next stop, breakfast overlooking the spectacular Mount Batur.

Randal and I had eaten a wonderful 7 am breakfast of fresh fruit and banana pancakes at our hotel. So, though I wasn’t really hungry, I did manage to eat one of the restaurant’s banana pancakes and a chocolate pancake just to be on the safe side. Lunch wouldn’t be till after 2 and our bike riding.

Still driving in the van, we stopped to visit a small plantation where we tasted coffee and tea and learned about local fruits, spices and how the first stage of the special expensive Balinese coffee is passage through the intestinal system of a civet cat!

No one opted for the Luwak special coffee. I tried everything else and they were all good; the coco being very chocolaty.

Then finally to the bicycles. I am always a bit apprehensive of any bike other than my own. These bikes had plain flat pedals with no toe clips. The brake system was a bit unusual and we rode on the left side where Balinese drive. Right turns were the trickiest since you turned right but had to end up on the left side of the road. It was all a gentle downhill ride. They did provide bike helmets and rain gear if needed.

We stopped to visit a local family compound, where they made bamboo matting for floors and ceilings;

The man is working on the cut bamboo beginning the process that will end with the woven bamboo mats standing at the top right hand corner of the photo.

Women creating the thin strips of bamboo for weaving.

The whole family worked on the bamboo products. BBC Dharma said. Bamboo, banana and coconut tree products were the product used for production and for daily life. Dharma said that many people never travel further than Ubud in their lives! Electricity and television have come after Kennedy was president! It is also a structured life with a more moderate form of caste system. Most people in Bali are Hindu while the rest of Indonesia is Muslim.

Dharma holding a banana leaf. Banana leaves were used as plates, spoons, bowls, everything. And when no longer needed, they could be thrown on a heap to return to the earth. When plastic arrived in these rural areas it was treated like the banana leaves. Caused lots of problems. People had to be educated as to what plastic was and that it wasn’t disposable like the banana leaves. We should have stuck to banana leaves.

The family also raised pink Balinese pigs and black Australian pigs. The original plot of family land was divided among the sons. The youngest son was expected to stay forever and care for the parents and their land was therefore left to him. Dharma was the youngest son in his family. His story was a bit like Rusli’s, our guide in Tana Toraja. Both men are about 40. Their family was very poor so they gone to work away from home as children; had managed to get an education and learn English so they could work with the English speaking tourists. When he was 14 Dharma went off with a family from Java only to find himself the household drudge working before sun up till late at night. He was determined to go to school and did along with all of his household tasks. . He managed to learn English well enough so finally left the family to work in a hotel where his brother was already working. He worked as a cleaner too shy to use his English. Encouraged by his brother, Dharma eventually learned most hotel jobs and worked while putting himself through university to graduate with a degree in English. He returned to Ubud and became a teacher. Soon after that he became a tour guide for the Australian Eco Tour Company. By telling us his story, he was telling us the story of many of his generation. Culture dictated that as the youngest he must return to his family home to live with and care for his parents. Understandably, his wife and mother took several years to work out their relationship. He has 2 sons, but won’t expect the youngest one to take care of him. He will expect both of them to work together. Children are the Balinese Social Security System. If you read eat pray love, you will learn a good bit about the culture. I was familiar with much of what Dharma told us from reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book. (However, Lori who moved to Ubud 17 years ago from one of those out west rugged U.S. states, and helped found the local library, said she had a different view of Balinese society but allowed that Elizabeth Gilbert had different experiences so probably valid opinions.)

Woodcarvers;

a rice field to watch the workers process the harvested rice;

a huge banyan tree with dreadlock vines hundreds of years old upstaged by a ragtag band of kids and their simple musical instruments and lots of beautiful countryside.

Dharma called it the “rasta” tree because of its long dreadlocks. We had snacks of water, bananas and crackers. Some for the local kids too. They played their musical instruments drowning out Dharma. The boy with the drum has a cracker in his mouth, not an harmonica.

At one point the downhill ended and short, steep uphills began. We were offered the chance to get off the bike and ride in the van. One couple, probably the youngest there, got off the bikes. After some steep uphill when everyone tried to figure out their shifting systems, more people took the van. One woman, having fallen off her bike for the second time, also stopped riding. Finally it was one man from Iceland, Randal, two guides, and me. I had left my pack in the van with my Gatorade so the heat and the hills were getting to me. The secondary guide, Randal and the Iceland man went on ahead and Dharma, our primary guide rode with me. At the very last part when we hit the main road, I stopped. I knew I could make it eventually, but everyone would have been long done with lunch by then. I didn’t want to hold up the works so Dharma called a van to come get us. It really wasn’t so far to the restaurant, but I wan bonked and that was that. Food was great. It was a buffet, but I didn’t overeat because I was still to hot to be hungry. Back in the van we headed back to Ubud and our last stop. The Monkey Forest from which Monkey Forest Road gets its name. What a hoot. Hundreds of monkeys behaving like monkeys. I bought $.50 worth of bananas for 2,000 rp (about $2.30) but one of the biking couples took half for 1,000 rp. It is hard to hold lots of bananas and try to feed individual monkeys. They know you have more. I took way too many pictures but it was so entertaining. Monkeys are silly until you look them in the eye and then you are amazed. Mom monkeys with babies were most fascinating to me. Some of the babies were just so tiny!

After about an hour Randal and I left the forest and walked back to Ubud center. It had been a great day and we had both enjoyed getting on bikes again.

I have so many more photos of each stop we made. Wish I could send them all.