Tough Travels

Well, I couldn't have had more of a 180 degree turn from the villa in Bali with the Carlisles and Brennans than this. Went from the most luxury and easy (everything was already planned out by Craig) travel I've had on the trip, to arguably one of the toughest 4 days of travel I've had on the trip. The 4 days would have been quite miserable had they not followed the time in Bali, but they just happened to do that. It all started b/c instead of taking a flight from Bali to Surabaya and then on to Balikpapan, like I had originally planned on doing, I decided to go by ferry. I decided to do the ferry for 3 reasons: 1. what turned out to be poor intel from fellow travellers who said the ferry crossing was easy, cheap, and only 24 hours. 2. I wasn't sure if I would be staying longer in bali so it was difficult to know when to reserve a flight. and 3. I really like riding in boats and I figured that a full 24 hour ferry had a sort of romantic feeling to it. Plus th two overnight (12 and 14 hour) ferries I had been on in the philippines were great with sweet karaoke bars on the deck, nice aircon cabins with personal bunkbeds complete with clean sheets, and good bathrooms.



So after I said my sad goodbye to the Carlisles and Brennans at the airport, I was taken to the bus station to head to Surabaya on Java. Surabaya is only a couple hundred kilometers from denpasar on bali combined with a short ferry crossing, but the whole trip took over 12 hours! The indonesian roads are horrendous. Not smooth and nice like the ones I had grown used to in thailand and malaysia. So instead of getting in around 6 or 7 like I had predicted, I arrived at 2am. On the bus I had a caved in seat, a baby next to me was screaming nearly the entire time, and halfway into the trip I started feeling quite sick again with a fever, chills, and muscle aches. This scared me more than anything b/c I feared a recurrence of dengue, which they say the 2nd time you get it, is much worse. Though I couldn't remember being bit anytime in the previous week I was still nervous. So I arrived at 2am, sick, in an unfamiliar city, in a country I still hadn't figured out yet as a backpacker. No one spoke any english at the bus station and according to my book it was 10km to the city from the station, so at that time of night and with the level of english being spoken (none), I wasn't sure what to do. I found a row of crappy hotels used for the bus station. The area seemed kind of dodgy, but the room didn't actually seem that bad and I'd stayed in worse, and feeling rather sick, I just wanted a place to stay. The next morning I woke up early b/c I didn't know when the ferry would be leaving. Took the bus into surabaya central where I was able to find a tourist info place. Although they didn't know anything about the ferries, they at least spoke english, and were in fact the only english speakers I would find in the whole city. Besides Bali, Indonesia has by far had the poorest english of any country I've been in. Malaysia and the philippines had excellent english spoken by all, which made it very easy to travel in. Thailand had good english in all the touristy areas, and in non-touristy areas usually you could find kids that knew english (the hard langauge barrier in thai was the tonal pronunciation and that they had special thai symbols). And even in burma, the poorest country, lots of people knew english. So I took a bus (all the while feeling quite sick, but this wasn't a city that I felt like visiting a hospital at) to the port and was told there were no ferries. This I didn't believe and eventually found out there were 3. I took the earliest, which was supposed to leave at 5pm. So I headed back to town to try and find a place to hang out and b/c on the bus ride my lock had been lost from my bag (I'm assuming it wasn't picked b/c I had nothing stolen that I knew from my bag, but that I had just forgot to completely close it and it had slipped off), so I needed to buy a new lock as indonesia is known as having the most theft and pickpockets and being the most dangerous of the SE asian countries (though their tourism authority proudly reports that although it's the most dangerous in SE asia it is still less dangerous than almost all of the latin american countries. I randomly checked with a travel agency to see what flights from surabaya to balikpapan would cost. It was 30 bucks! Incredibly cheap, especially considering I had just paid 28 bucks for the ferry (that I would later upgrade to above 30 bucks for a "nicer" cabin) and the ferry that would take 44 hours (I had been told 24). In hindsight I regret not buying the airplane ticket even though I had already purchased the ferry ticket, but at the time I didn't know how crappy the ferry would be nor how long it would take. At the time I was thinking, hey I"m sick and I need rest, 24 hours on a ferry bunk will be good, and of course this was thinking of the ferry as a similar ferry to the ferry I had ridden in the Philippines. Plus with my fever and all the temperature monitoring at airports these days due to H1N1 (hmm...perhaps I had that I began thinking), I was fearful that wouldn't let me through anyways. Before boarding the ferry I went looking for some paracetemol. I have plenty of Ibuprofen, but it apparently thins your blood, which is a bad thing if you have dengue, which maybe I had. Unlike the other areas in asia where there are pharmacies everywhere, I couldn't find one here. So I started asking at random shops for paracetemol. I had my old packet from malaysia and then tried to used my hands to point to pain in my head, make a motion attempting to depict a pill and then swallow with water, though this all had little success. The one funny thing was that one woman seemed to understand and ran into a special area behind closed doors in the back of the store to get the medicine. She came back out with a fifth of whiskey. As much as grandpa's old cough medicine does seem to work in movies, I did not think it would help here. I eventually did find some when I kind of let myself in to behind a counter and searched myself.

Anyways, at 4:30 I boarded the ferry. Apparently I had bought economy class, but the seatless economy class, which meant you sit on the floor. Normally this isn't a huge huge deal as I've had those same sort of seats (or lack thereof) in burma, but I was not feeling well. Plus when I walked into the room where everyone was just sprawled on the ground, it was honestly over 100 degrees with no fans and heavy, still air. I knew I couldn't do that, not in my current condition, so for one of the 1st times on the trip, I buckled, lost my toughness and shelled out more money for the cabin next door that had bunk beds and I was assured aircon. I walked in, and it wasn't a whole lot cooler than the 1st place, but at least it had bunks, albeit with mattresses that had no sheets or anything. There was one girl that spoke english in there and she said the aircon would come on once the engine started. Well...that never happened. A coupld of times during the long 44 hours something resembling cold air did come out and cooled the place a bit, but overall it was a sweatbox. But to me, this was hardly the worst part...in fact, far from it! As a person who has suffered from asthma (and an asthma that my mom believes was caused by the fact that my babysitter was a chain smoker when I was first born back in the days before they knew that secondhand smoke was so bad) and lived in clean rocky mountain air, I can't stand smoking. It's far more than a pet peeve. It's terrible for the health of the person, terrible for the health of people around the smokers, it smells, it leaves residues, it's just gross. In fact, it bothers me so much, that it is one of the few things that can really anger me, though of course I usually keep it down inside me. Well, in asia as I've mentioned before, the locals smoke like crazy (as do most the euros), but indonesia has hit an alltime low for smoking. I'd say that 99.99% of the men here smoke, and spend more time smoking per day than not smoking. Now this is similar to the philippines and burma where they'd smoke on the bus or open aired ferries as well, but here they smoke absolutely everywhere!!! with no regard for anything. Sometimes when in cities I head into malls to cool off and escape the noise and pollution outside. Well here in indo, the malls are hardly airconned and everyone is smoking inside. They are smoking on the bus, in the hotel rooms, and right now I'm coughing and struggling to type as fast as I can as everyone is lighting up in the internet cafe...can you believe that? And I'd just come from malaysia, that has very strict and good rules about smoking, and actually a fair amount of the population doesn't smoke. And of course on the boat, regardless of the fact that there were signs everywhere saying not to smoke, every guy was smoking. So there I was on this hot, cramped, 44 hour ferry, with tons of smokers. You know that designated smoking room you see in airports, where the smoke is so thick, you can see it? That's what I was in! Go to the deck you say...well first of all I was still recovering from sunburn in bali, so I couldn't really go out there during the heat of the day, and in the evening when I did go out, there were so many smokers up there and so much smoke just emanating from the ship, that it still smelled terribly of smoke. At one point on the 2nd day I was so fed up, so angry by the smoke and my lungs were hurting so bad that I walked over to 3 guys just puffing away and confronted them. I pointed to the signs on the wall that said no smoking and they just laughed. I then tried to tell them it makes me sick and I coughed a bunch and they still just laughed. I felt like screaming and just grabbing all their cigarettes and tossing them down the toilet, but I didn't as this would not be very responsible travel. But it was just killing me, and making me even more mad that they would do this thing that not only hurts them, but others.

Then in my angry and sour and grumpy mood, I began being angry at everything they were doing (things that were not alltogether any different than the other asians in places I'd visited, but had come to a kind of climax here): from throwing all the trash into the ocean to spitting on the floor in the cabin to doing farmer blows onto the bunkbeds, to flicking their cigarette butts and ash onto the floor. This is just so shocking to me, so different than my own culture where all those things are looked down upon, so very different than the villa I had just been at (though terry did from time to time spit onto the floor at dinner and anne marie blow her snot onto the couch while watching movies...haha, j/k obviously). I mean could you imagine people on a trans american airplane flight just spitting into the aisles, blowing their noses into the backs of seats and dropping cigarette butts onto the floor. I began, perhaps unfairly as all the asian countries seem to do it and b/c I'd only been in indonesia a short time, judging and becoming quite angry with them. All that other stuff aside, they were friendly to me...offered me cigarettes, offered me peanuts, said the only english phrases they knew to me (hello...you from australia?...you speak indonesia?). But I was so grumpy being sick, being tired, having my lungs filled with acrid smoke, that I wouldn't even smile (hardly a model tourist and ambassador I know...good thing I just nodded my head at the australia question eh?). And the truth is it's hardly the people's fault. They probably don't know just how nasty smoking is (in malaysia they have nice visuals of deformed babies, black lungs, etc on their cigarette boxes), and rules aren't followed here or english known as well probably b/c they apparently have a crappy government, which must be true b/c they basically have more resources than malaysia, occuppy the same oceans and latitudes as malaysia, share a huge island with malaysia, have many of the same races as malaysia, yet malaysia is the richest large country in SE asia and indonesia one of the poorest. But all that didn't matter to me as I sat on my ratty bunk inhaling smoke as the indonesians played poker and trashed the cabin and the poor girl that spoke english next to me puked from sea-sickness. And here I had envisioned this nice relaxing time on the boat with air-con in the middle of the ocean for reading, moving watching, and perhaps a bit of karaoke just like in the philippines, or in thailand or malaysia.

With all this and in my current state of how I was feeling, I was seriously considering just flying to a couple of the major sites in indonesia and then going home to my smoke-free, clean (dad's nose-picking habit could be forgiven), and wonderful family. People who had had family come and visit them in the middle of a long trip had warned me that it was right after the family visit that they nearly went straight home as well. I had had a basic family visit with my time in bali, and here I was (with a couple other factors adding to it) thinking the same thing. All of the previous things considered and then the fact that after experiencing what I had, I knew that travel here would be much more difficult than in places before with the crappy roads (meaning horrendously long bus rides) and lack of english, which always makes it difficult to figure out how to get to places and make things just work. Amanda, the gal Lindsey had kind of set me up with right before I left that I had gone on a date or two with had told me that she could give me some names of people she knew in Indonesia (she had lived there for a year teaching english...umm, so someone is teaching english?) in case I had trouble b/c she said indonesia would be tough to travel in without knowing their language. I didn't believe her at the time, nor anytime on this trip until now. I'm just hoping it gets easier once I start feeling better and get to maybe areas more on the beaten path, if there is one outside of bali, gili, and yogyakarta. Since I unfortunately had to peel Ashlin's hug away at the airport, I have not seen another westerner since then, so I fear getting lonely b/c there are no travellers here nor anyone that can even speak english. In malaysia and the PI you could always just easily chat with the locals.

Oh an interesting statistic I was noting as I walked to the warnet (internet) b/c I guess I'm just curious. I passed 41 people just hanging out or sitting on my way. 39 were men, of which 38 were smoking at the time I passed. The other 2 were women and not smoking, but that will just tell you the amount of smoking going on. The next time you're walking downtown somewhere count how many of the first 40 you pass are actually smoking at the time.

All this is a bit saddening to me (and frustrating) b/c Indonesia was the main reason I even wanted to come to SE asia in the first place. It was a video Mr. Adams showed in 8th grade geology on all the wonders of indonesia (including it's volcanoes) along with national geographic articles on borneo in highschool, and then in college finding out it makes up a huge part of the triangle of biodiversity that all got me wanting to spend an extended time in indonesia. It was really only my parent's christmas gift of the the lonely planet's book of SE Asia on a shoestring that got me thinking of going outside of indonesia, and here I am worried indo won't work out.



Well, I'm obviously a bit worked up, which will happen after being sick on a long bus ride, then a long boat ride in a cancer filled smoke cabin, and having not really talked to a soul in 4+ days. Lucas you want to quit fires and come down? Bro, give up grad school? =)

Well, I know it will get better when I get a chance to get out there. It was already much better when I walked a bit around Balikpapan (although the smoke is still everywhere). There's no hostels or tourist hotels in this town, but 4 local hotels mentioned by the book. The first 3 were all full for some local thing going on, but luckily the last one had a few places. Not a very nice place at all, and all I really wanted was a nice shower to clean off the grime from the boat ride, but no, your typical rural asian shower of bucket and basin (though we're in a city here?). You should have seen my face that I saw in mirror. Fairly black, covered in grime and suit and smoke from the boat ride, and peeling from sunburn.

But all will be better soon, I am certain. I feel nearly 100% tonight from my illness, and when I get out doing things it should be better. Coming into a new country at first is always a bit of a shock, and perhaps I will meet up with some good travel companions. And the truth is I'll only be in indonesia for maybe 10 more days (depending on travel time) before I'm back in malaysia for a bit to get my long visa

7-30-09
Update: Well this morning I took a bus from Balikpapan to Samarinda. Wow, what a short trip. Only 2.5 hours. I had hardly even settled into my seat by the time I made it to samarinda. But then spent hours walking around the dirty city trying to find a hotel. They were all booked up. Not really sure by who, but eventually a nice man that spoke english at a nice hotel that I was trying hard to bargain down (I was getting it a bit down) b/c I feared it would be the only place to stay, but was way out of my budget, helped by calling up some people for me. He found one, but when I went there it was supposedly full, until I dropped his name, and then it was cleared up. Of course another fairly crappy place.
The reason i'm here is to get a boat to go upriver to some of the dyak settlements, but there is nothing to do in this dirty, polluted town. Went to the mall to see if I could watch a movie, but they were all in bahasa indo except for harry potter, which I haven't seen the previous movies yet, so that would be pointless. Though it was so cheap at 1.50 that I almost went anyways. but did walk around the mall a bit. As expected, things here are dirt cheap even for nice designer clothes. Indo overall appears to be cheaper than malaysia and perhaps cheaper than thailand and the philippines in certain things, though it's accomadation is a complete rip off. the cheapest digs are at the highest level I would spend in the other countries, but for 1/3 of the quality. Today I paid the most I've paid for accomadation yet on my trip, yet the place would be in the bottom 10% of the worst places I've stayed. For the price I'm paying I would get a nice aircon bungalow on the beach with a hot shower and a good bed in thailand.
I talked to some guides today about guiding me up the river b/c it sort of appears like it would just be such a hassle to do it on my own if you don't know bahasa and would be less fun and more hassle. but the prices for 1 person are pretty high (400 dollars for a 3 day trip), though if you get more people it's the same price just divided up, which would be great. Course I haven't seen any westerners around at all...but when I was talking to the guides there were rumours that there had been some sightings of other whiteys out there, so I was hopeful. I left a note at the hotel they were rumoured to be at and stopped by tonight, and low and behold, two frenchies and a dutch. The french appear to be set on their own thing, but the dutch guy and I went out for a soda pop (strict muslims here) and talked about it and tomorrow we'll either try and get a guide together or try and go up together independently. What made me feel a bit better about myself and that I just wasn't going weak was that the frenchies said that the place they were staying at was one of the worst they've ever stayed at in asia, and they've been travelling for some time. And the dutch guy (hugo I think it was) had had similar travel issues. He said he's been in borneo for 6 days and only done something real for 2 of them, the rest was travel or stuck in bad cities. He eventually broke down and got a flight to get here, but he agrees with me that it's been pretty crazy. He came here to get away from the touristicness of thailand, but he thinks this is too much on the other end of the spectrum b/c there are no tourists, no tourist facilities, and you really need to know bahasa to get around. With all this in mind, I think I may just do this river trip, go to one national park I want to see, and then head back to malaysian borneo to do a couple things there I didn't get to that I would like to do. From there I'll go back to KL to get my 2 month indo visa and then head through the rest of indo, which hopefully will be slightly more easy to travel and have better accomadations.
So tomorrow, heading off up to sungai mahakam most likely for possibly 3-4 days, so if you don't hear from me, that's where I am.