Independance Day

August 17 is “Hari Merdeka” – Independence Day – in Indonesia. Our original plan for this holdiay was to work, doing one more day of heath surveys along the road before heading home to Pontianak. However, steady morning rains ruined our plans so we decided to take the speedboat to a small village on the Kapuas River called Semitau, where we could catch a 12 hour bus ride to Pontianak. Unfortunately, we had miscalculated our money needs and after paying for the bus tickets, we could not pay the boat driver in full. The single ATM in town would not accept our credit cards, and the banks (which would have changed the $20 US Marion had in her belt) were closed because of the holiday. We even tried to change the money at a Chinese-run shop, but they were not interested. We resolved this highly embarrassing situation by promising to mail our driver the cash – along with a nice tip – upon arrival in Pontianak.

The bus ride home was bumpy yet uneventful. We arrived in Pontianak at about 2:30 am and crashed into bed, expecting to have a long weekend break from our adventures. Of course this was not to be – but more on that later!

Mountains and Monkeys

The next morning was damp. We cooked breakfast (actually, our village guides cooked breakfast), broke camp, and headed up the mountain towards the summit, taking points in kerangas forest along the way. The forest was rather odd – lots of massive thorny palms, pitcher plants, and red trees with eucalyptus-type bark. Marion seemed in heaven, and I was happy to just chill out and do as told, which mostly involved taking photos and soil cores.

After reaching the summit at around 11 am, we took a break to admire the amazing views of the lakes below, and then quickly headed home, reaching the village by 4 pm. Our party of five quickly dug in to sweet cold drinks and little cakes after a day of eating only sardines, rice and noodles. We happily set off towards Lanjak in the speedboat after paying and thanking our guides, and were rewarded with a long look at a group of about 20 proboscis monkeys playing along the side of the river plus an amazing sunset. I feel asleep to the sound of rain, appreciating the fact that my bed was made of cotton, not small poles!

Melingkung Success

Today was the first in a two-day second attempt to survey the kerangas forest at the top of Bukit Melingkung. This time, we found a couple of guides who knew the area well, and we planned to stay the night in the forest to allow more time for research. After a long trip to the foot of the mountain, we took a very different path to the plateau at the top – it turns out the walk is rather short, only ~2 hours. Once on top we confirmed that the forest was indeed kerangas (classically, with white sand soils and small trees very different than the clay-soil Dipterocarp-dominated forest that we had been walking through on the way to the plateau). Marion and I grabbed a bite to eat then headed to the forest to do some assessments, while our guides began constructing our camp for the night. We returned to camp to see that they had built a hut from poles, twine, and a tarp – in just two hours! Sleeping on poles in a mosquito-ridden forests was not terribly comfortable, but at least we were warm and dry through a long night of rain. Marion, our national park guide, and I had mosquito nets and got some sleep, but our two village guides stayed up all night slapping mosquitoes and complaining about the weather. I always thought the locals were less bothered by the mosquitoes here, but apparently I was wrong.

Motorbike madness

Pita and I headed out on a rented motorbike this morning to do a bit of scoping for possible future socio-economic surveys in the region. Oil palm is being developed to the northwest of the park, and we decided to head to that region to talk to communities and check out their perspectives on the plantation (which happens to be RSPO certified). The road runs very near to Malaysia, and we were tempted to drop the field work and play in the border town for the day, but held to the plan and drove onward to a set of Dayak communities. I had my first Dayak long-house experience when we pulled up to a very small dusun (only 21 households!) along the road. Everyone lived in a rather modern longhouse, which consisted of an outer covered common space, and a row of doors leading to individual living quarters for each family. Quite comfortable – I can imagine that research here would be much easier that research in Melayu villages where households can be spread out over kilometers; in a longhouse, everyone we need to talk to lives under one roof!

After an afternoon of interviews, we arrived back in Badau at about 4 pm to meet with the rest of the group which was focused on heath-hunting and ground-truthing. Marion happened to meet a man from a village about an hour away (in the direction we had just come from, and the opposite direction of our base in Lanjak) who claimed to be from a village – Empaik - surrounded by heath forest. She couldn’t resist checking this out, so instead of going home to our beds for the evening we got back on the motorbike and arrived at said village at about 6 pm. Neli and Pita were planning to travel back to Pontianak the following day so they could not join us, the result being that two white girls knocked on the door of the head of the village of Empaik and asked permission to spend the night. We slept in the house of the man Marion met on the road, and awoke the next morning to a grey sunrise over a very quiet little village on the edge of Danau Sentarum.

As I’ve mentioned before, August is supposed to be a dry month in Kalimantan. We had been lucky for the first week of research, with rain coming only at night. Today (August 14) the rains started at about 7 am, the same time we set off to identify the lowland heath forests surrounding Empaik. Soaking wet but exceedingly happy to find kerangas that was NOT on top of a mountain, we returned to the village at about noon to chow down on a full spread of rice, fried noodles, eggs, sardines, and coffee. We also appreciated the fish swimming around in the back yard, which had been converted into a pond. The arowana is a highly valuable animal native to Danau Sentarum and Kalimantan – it sells for astoundingly high prices, and is gorgeous to watch. Unfortunately, over-harvesting arowana from the lakes means that wild populations are highly threatened.

At about 2 pm we started the trip back to Lanjak. With the muddy, slippery roads, we assumed it would take us quite a while for the return trip so we budgeted extra time. After a quick stop in the border town – Badau – to grab a snack and an iced tea, we continued onwards to Lanjak at about 4 pm. There had been an unhappy sound coming from the motorbike chain since the day before, but Pita had assured me that this was not a problem – the chain was simply slightly loose. I thought about having the bike serviced in Badau, but figured the problem could wait until we were back in Lanjak. Boy was I wrong!

Exactly halfway between Lanjak and Badau at around 5 pm, a link in the chain broke, and the bike was rendered unusable. Marion and I looked at our surroundings and realized we hadn’t seen a village for many kilometers, there was no one else on the road, and it was getting dark. So we dragged the bike to the side of the road, gathered our belongings, and started walking toward Lanjak in the hopes that a village would soon appear or that we could hitch a ride with another traveler. All traffic, however, was in the opposite direction towards Badau, and no one seemed terribly interested in helping two stranded white girls. So, we kept walking. After about 20-30 minutes, we walked into a small Dayak village and asked if someone could come out to the motorbike and fix the chain. By this time it was totally dark outside. A couple of young women led me into the longhouse while Marion waited on the road to flag down a ride, just in case. In the longhouse, we walked down a candle-lit hallway with doors every 10 meters. The longhouse was built of wood, and families were lounging around candles placed in front of each door.

While we waited for the young man who quickly volunteered to fix the chain, a group of young and old Iban Dayak surrounded me and started chattering in Dayak. I was a bit dazed due to the two days of travel, but tried to smile and catch some of what they were saying – they asked where I was from, and urged me to spend the night. Someday I hope to have a chance to return to the village and asleep there, but we were exhausted from two days of travel, our clothes were filthy, and we had another field trip planned for the next day, so I declined in what I hope was a polite manner. Luckily, our on-the-fly mechanic was soon ready and we headed back to the road to repair the chain.

I am constantly amazed at the resourcefulness of the people who live in Kalimantan. They know how to fix/build/cook everything in their lives, because they cannot call in experts. If a car breaks, they cannot have it towed to the car shop, because the nearest one might be hours away. If they want to build a house, they simply go to the forest, gather timber, buy nails and concrete, recruit some neighbors to assist, and start building. Luckily motorbikes are the same way – our young Dayak mechanic brought a spare chain and replaced the chain by flashlight, on the road, in the dark. We were soon on our way, and arrived in Lanjak at about 8 pm where were immediately arranged our trip for the next day, washed our clothes, and fell into bed.

Failed attempt

We attempted to scale another mountain, Bukit Melingkung, today in the continuing search for kerangas forest. Archives show conflicting reports about the existence of kerangas on top of this mountain, which is rather remote and not often accessed by our park guides. We were delayed in the morning at the police office, who were miffed we had not checked in with them on the first day of our stay in Lanjak. Luckily we had all our documents in order so the visit was painless though lasted longer than it should have due to the lack of electricity (and thus a functioning copier to make photocopies of our documents) during the daylight hours.

By the time we took the speedboat to the village nearest the mountain, and found a guide and a boat, it was around 10 am. Another hour by motorboat took us to the base of the mountain, and we set off at a rapid pace hoping to reach the top in time to collect data before returning to the boat. Unfortunately, our guide had never hiked up this mountain before (a fact revealed days later when we again, successfully, climbed the mountain). So we made it as far as a sheer vertical cliff where we could see red water, a trademark of kerangas forests, pouring down the rock face. We decided to leave the trip up the mountain for another day, returning home to Lanjak after dark.

Two mountains

The morning started early, arriving at the park office at 7 am and soon getting on the speedboat for our first look at Danau Sentarum. Usually this time of year (July-October) is dry in Borneo, but this year the rains have not let up and the lake is flooded. The situation makes transportation by speedboat highly convenient, as the boat can zip through flooded forests with ease, taking shortcuts not available in lower water. Aesthetically, the flooded lake is stunning, and the photo-ops are endless. The speedboat took us first to a small settlement on the lake that subsists via income from fishing, honey, rubber, and shifting rice agriculture. Danau Sentarum is a major honey producer in Borneo, and communities here have worked with NGOs to brand and market organic honey from this region.

Living on a lake makes life interesting in the eyes of a person who has spent most of life on dry land. All the houses are raised on stilts, so high that even the highest water levels will not cause flooding. Everything else in the village floats – outhouses, cows, fish tanks, even grass! The cows looked particularly happy, cooped up in small cages munching on large quantities of this floating grass. The children also looked satisfied, playing in canoes and in the water like little mer-people. Anyone who cannot swim here has a true disability.

After our stop in the village we took the speedboat to the base of a flat mountain – Bukit Semujan – sticking up out of the center of the lake. Heath forest (hereafter called “kerangas”, which apparently means “land on which rice cannot be grown”) is rumored to be on top of this mountain, and we were on a heath hunt. After 2 hours of climbing, including scrambling up vertical inclines hanging onto a rope with one hand, we reached the top, which indeed contained kerangas and offered breathtaking views of the lake below.

We spent last night in a very comfortable national park post on an island (or, in the dry season, a mountain = Bukit Tekenang) in the middle of the lake. For the first time in Borneo I bathed in water that seemed exceedingly clean, with no one washing/bathing/etc upstream or anywhere nearby, as this island is in the middle of the sparsely populated national park. Today is the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, so Pita and Neli awoke at 3 am to eat breakfast and pray. Unfortunately, the fasting practice means that our two amazing field assistants will have to take it easy in this hot climate, where not drinking from 3 am to 6 pm could be rather unhealthy. On the other hand, Ramadan means a month of delicious snacks and goodies at ~6 pm every evening, even for those of us not fasting ;) Upon our return to Lanjak in the late afternoon, we stocked up on fried donuts filled with bean paste, small pandan cakes, egg rolls, and krupuk basah. Who needs dinner?

A bad road

The purpose of this trip north is to scope out potential new study sites – not for me, but for a couple of post-docs in our lab. Marion is studying heath forests – forests which occur on white sand soils – and plans to compare Bornean heath with similar ecosystems in Brazil. David is working on detecting forest degradation from satellite imagery. Pita, Neli, and I are simply field assistants! Which I’m overjoyed about - rather exciting to be in a new part of Borneo without the responsibility of organizing or collecting data. Today we drove from Putussibau to the base camp for the next week of field work – Lanjak. We will be spending most of our time working inside Danau Sentarum National Park, which contains a huge, seasonally flooded lake.

Unsurprisingly, the road to Lanjak was terrible. Despite hiring a four wheel drive truck for $150 (yes, everything is expensive here), most passengers were carsick for the drive, and our driver had to get out of the truck periodically to plan a route through muddy sinkholes in the road. We pulled one unfortunate truck out of the mud, only to see it get stuck minutes later in the same pothole. Happily, after 5 hours we arrived in Lanjak to find that the place we were planning to spend the night – the national park office – was flooded with ~3 meters of water, thus requiring a boat to get there! Instead of the water bed option, we chose to stay in a little losmen on higher ground thus unflooded.

As our time up north is limited, we planned the next day’s trip with the park officers over a dinner of rice and small dried fish. I’ve apparently acquired a taste for these crunch little tidbits which I couldn’t stand the first time I tasted them three years ago. By eating small fish bones perhaps I make up for the calcium lacking in this dairy-free Indonesian diet?

A flight north

After writing furiously until 5 am, late enough to hear the morning call to prayer, I slept for a few hours then hopped on a plane traveling north from Pontianak to Putussibau, the capital of Kapuas Hulu district. There are only two planes each week to Putussibau – this should give some clue to the size of the city! The plane ride was rather uncomfortable as the plane flew very low and did not seem to have functional AC. Yet the views from my window were fantastic – oxbow lakes along the longest river (Sungai Kapuas) in Borneo, huge swaths of undisturbed peat forest, and of course massive oil palm plantations being newly cleared.

Putussibau strikes me as a city without a purpose – it used to be the center of logging activity but now that logging is no longer king, the city has no core industry. I chose not to bring my computer on this field trip, so I spent the afternoon waiting for the rest of our team to arrive back from the field by wandering around Putussibau and chatting with random shopkeepers. I quickly discovered one of the main attractions here: krupuk basah. This translates to “wet krupuk”. Usually, krupuk are little crackers made from sago + various flavors, dried in the sun, then fried with oil. These snacks are ubiquitous throughout Indonesia. Krupuk basah is made from sago + fish, steamed, and eaten with hot sauce – thus skipping the drying and frying steps. I’m pretty sure this food would not go over terribly well in the US due to its fishy/spicy nature, but it tastes delicious after subsisting entirely on rice and noodles in the field!

not quite 20 questions

If you've read "Eat, Love, Pray", you know that in Bali, a visitor is triangulated with questions - where are you from? are you married? etc.

I've noticed this phenomena is not restricted to Bali, and I've tried over the last two weeks to document the most frequently asked questions. These queries give me great insight into what Indonesians think about me at first glance, and also make me appreciate the diversity/anonymity of the US!

0) Where are you? (I don't answer this one, because it is nonsense, they've just forgotten the "going" bit, as they are trying to speak English)

0.5) Do you speak Indonesian (my new, silly answer, in Indonesian: no, I don't)

1) Are you married? (generally, the answer is "no" unless I am being bothered by a male, in which case I am married to a tall American who is coming to Indonesia next week)

2) How old are you? (to which I say - how old do you think I am? usually they think 18, though I've heard as old as 26 and as young as 14)

3) Where are you from? (Obama's country)

4) What religion are you? (and I choose from the easy answer - Christan - or the harder one - agnostic, which requires some explanation)

5) What are you doing here in Indonesia? (which really should be the first question!)

To put things in perspective, imagine asking these things of a stranger - just because she looked Asian - sitting next to you on the bus in the US. I guess you'd have to pick a language for your first communication attempt - does she look Korean? Thai? Maybe Chinese? I guess I look decidedly English-speaking, because no one has attempted to talk with me in Japanese, yet.