Journey up the Mahakam

Well things got much better once we left the city and started our tour. Hugo (holland) and I with our guide Batu. It was a slow, but relaxing tour and so good to be out of the cities. First we took a car to get farther up the river faster and stopped in Tengarong to look at a town in Kutai Kartanegara Kingdom. They were preparing for a big festival with their king so we checked out the museum in the area and the props set up for the celebration. We then drove onto Kota Bangun where we had lunch along the river. From there we hopped into a small motor canoe for a couple hours ride upriver to reach the fisher village of Melintag, It was a cool village completely on stilts and with a long boardwalk that we walked along to check out the village. The people here subsist entirely on fishing via nets they have out everywhere and by fish farming. To farm the fish they have these large wooden boxes in the water that they raise fish in. One of the species of fish they have is quite aggressive and starts splashing everywhere when you stand on its box. Apparently if you stuck your finger in, you wouldn't have a finger anymore...
From there we continued up river through a huge (but shallow) lake until reaching Muara Muntai. The lake reminded me of one of those lakes they highlight in national geographic that goes completely dry and looks like a huge expansive waste and then freshens up again come the rainy season. This lake was on the downward part of things as it's in the middle of the dry season so you couldn't see trees or anything as far as the eye could see b/c usually the lake is there, but now it's just mud or cracked dirt and then of course what's left of the lake. It's amazing that the whole lake will again fill up and rise up 10 meters. We checked into our losmen at Muara Muntai and then walked around the village. I liked it and found it quite peaceful with just a few motorbikes and no cars. It was like a wooden town. All the houses were made of wood, they were all on stilts, and even the road was made of wood (and stilted). Apparently the whole village burned down a few years back (go figure) so it's also quite new. We played some badminton, which is a huge sport here and so of course everyone was much better than us. As we towered over everyone, we were hoping for some volleyball. At our losmen there was actually another westerner, a german guy. He had been stuck there for a couple days, b/c even though he spoke indonesian he hadn't been able to figure out when the ferry leaves. His whole situation kind of cracked me up. Him just sitting there in this tiny village and stranded.

The next day we headed upriver some more in the boat past the huge lake Jantur to the fishing village of Jantur. Walked around this riverside and stilted village. From here we continued up river to Jempang lake and the completely floating village of Tanjung haur. That's got to be crazy living your entire life floating on water. Shortly after going by the floating village we arrived at Tajung Issuy, a dayak tribe village. Here we stayed at a traditional dayak longhouse that has been converted to a losmen. The coastal people tend to be muslim and the inland tribe people tend to be Christian. Quote of the day by hugo was, "yep, we've reached Christianity again" when we walked outside the longhouse and saw huge crates of bintang beer. At the longhouse we messed around with their big blowpipe and darts that they use to hunt with using poison darts. I found out was a pretty good shot, hitting the target directly on the first 3 tries, even before the guide could do it. Must have been all that practice with various homemade slingshots and bow and arrows with my brother back home as kids in estes. We explored Tanjung Issuy and checked out some things like their unique cemetary. Then we took the boat back accross the lake (getting stuck a couple times) to a small and narrow tributary where we passed by several cool little villages and settlements along the river. Some just a couple of houses on the bank. We also saw several kingfishers and macaques along the river and were lucky to see the proboscis monkeys crossing the river. They start in a tree on one side of the river and jump as far as they can across in order to get buy as many crocodiles as they can and then splash in and swim the rest of the distance with their big noses out of the water. There are also supposedly a few of the freshwater irrawady dolphins in the area, but they are highly endangered, and we didn't see any.
That night we were invited into a dayak house where a medicine man (they mix catholicism with animism) was performing a dance for a sick person. It was quite interesting to see. The guy chanted for a while in a manner and sound very similar to what we are shown on TV as kids that native american medicine men do. He then dance around some hanging sheet for awhile while other people played drums and musical instruments. He then lied on the floor shaking his legs, which had bells on them, and was covered in a sheet and did more chanting. He repeated this process several times before the family brough in a rooster and then he danced with the rooster for a while. At certain times he would also bless the family and put somthing on their heads. I guess this can go on for quite sometime, but I don't know how long as we didn't stay until the end.
We finished the trip up the next day by taking a bus back to samarinda.