During the holiday, I got the chance for a short escape to Borneo after a long time never being able to explore islands out of Java.

I flew off Java with great excitement and expectations about this particular island I’ve never been in. When I think of Borneo, I think about its lucious green rainforests with Asian Amazon running through the land like veins. I realised just as I arrived, the habitat of people, look not much different from the ones in Java.

The time the plane landed, I was welcomed by the sparkles of Balikpapan below me. I could realised tall building along the edge of oceans so I was convinced that Balikpapan is just the same as other Indonesian cities turning metropolitan. Fore sure, it doesn’t look remote. Neither it looks provincial. However, at that time I still hoped that during my trip I will somehow encounter those lucious rainforests like the hill where Dian Fossey devoted her life for gorillas, hiding behind the mists.

From Balikpapan, it was a few hours trip to Samarinda. Along the road, lands covered with plants stretched across. However, theyweren’t some sort of jungle so I asked, “Where’s the jungle?”. I can sum up the answers I received and came up with a conclusion that there’s no more jungle except in the most remote area that I probably won’t encounter during my trip. All of the jungles are mostly gone due to heavy activities of mining and such. East Borneo has very little jungle these days. Most of the jungles are only left in Central Borneo because of its far location from the coast. Therefore Central Borneo has very little mining or industrial activity there. The fact that I won’t encounter any jungle was another dissapointment, but I found something that trully amazes me. As we entered Samarinda, I could see a body of water stretching across. I was the Mahakam river, but at a glance it looks more like a lake or even the sea. It was so wide, that it just automatically support my image about Borneo’s Asian Amazons. From all of the rivers I’ve seen: The Ciliwing, the Citarum, the Torrens, Charles river, Brisbane river, The Chao Praya are almost nothing in term of width.

Later on, I also heard about the poignant story of the Mahakam pesuts (similiar to dugongs). Mahakam was famous for this fresh water creatures. These days, due to many heavy activites on the river, nobody has ever seen the existence of these pesuts. Maybe a few people have seen a couple of pesuts but far away on the upstream of Mahakam. The rest of the pesuts, are only statues, paintings, and the local government logo. It’s heartbreaking to know to see these fresh water dolphins swept away by the big boats that carry coals and nobody knows in which corner of the river they are hiding :’(

Actually written on Samarinda, 20th January 2008 but I only had time to copy it to a blog posting right now. Just a story to share.