Houseboat, Monkeys, Ceremonies and City!

Well, so much has happened since my last post! On Saturday we traveled North three hours to a port where we hopped on a houseboat. The ship is equipped for 30 but we had the whole place to ourselves; tour guide, cook and three other individuals to help us out! Lunch was ready for us on arrival and was, again, amazing. Spicy veggies, rice (of course), noodles, tofu and fresh fruit have become staples.

We traveled up the Mehekam river all afternoon and through the night, about 16 hours of sailing. Nadine and I couldn't sleep, which seems to be an all too regular occurrence now so we moved outside at 5 and slept for an hour under the stars which was lovely.

Sunday morning we went to a floating market in one of the many villages that have sprouted up literally in the middle of nowhere. With populations of just a couple hundred or less, the houses are built on stilts and there is no land in sight. Anyways, we went to the market and walked around and I hung out with a group of the cutest young girls. They even let me ride around the boardwalks on their pink bike :) I would upload a photo but the internet here is beyond slow and it just wouldn't work.

After the market we hopped in dug outs canoes; three people per boat. They were luxurious! I was in front and stretched out under the cover and slept a lot of the ride! On the way up the river we saw proboscis monkeys, a poisonous snake, a tiny little monkey and stunning forests and mangroves.

In the village The Dayak peoples held a welcome ceremony for us. It was kind of touristy and hocky because holding these ceremonies for tourists is the main income for the village but it was still really interesting to see it.

We houseboated back down the river and are now in Samarinda, the capital city of Kalimantan, for one more night. Tomorrow we head further North on an eight hour 4x4 ride on horrid roads! We will be internet-less for about 10 days and this is when the "roughing it" part of the journey begins... can't wait! Except for the leeches. I can wait for those. I would rather not have my blood sucked out by gooooey slugs with giant jaws. Eeck!

I will update when we have internet again!

xo

North Bound

We're heading out of Balikpapan today and going North up the Mehakam river for three days on a houseboat. Tomorrow we get to go into three different Dayak (Indigenous) villages and see the culture and tradition that live within these villages.

We should arrive in Samarinda Monday evening I believe and will have internet there.

xo

WOW!!!

I'm sitting on the hotel patio, sipping on some fine coffee and thinking how wild the last week has been. We traveled North from Balikpapan to a place called Samboja Lestari, which is 2000 hectares of replanted rainforest that just nine years ago was completely bare from deforestation. THe project was instigated by Willie Smits and Peter Karsono (kinda celebrity status in the conservation world AND who we both got to spend time with!) They found the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) which is now an international organization.

We arrived at Samboja last Saturday to an immaculate ecolodge, equipped with three stories of 360 degree views of thick green forest. From the top floor we could see the "orangutan islands" which are home to numerous orangutans that will not be able to be released into the wild of Samboja, but have a large island (they won't swim so it's surrounded by a mote) and endless swings and hammocks to play on.

We also traveled to Wanariset where BOS started. I won't write all about this because it wasn't the happiest of sights but check out my blog about it on ethicalexpeditions.ning.com. We all posted new blogs yesterday. The photo below is from Wanariset and taken but my roomie Nadine Crowe. (She has a blog too! nadinecrowe.blogspot.com)

Samboja also houses a sun bear rehabilitation sanctuary. These bears are maybe the most interesting mixture of an animal I have come across. I renamed them (in my high academic standing I'm allowed to do that) the dog-bear-monkey-bears. They have long claws and can climb like a monkey but are the size of a medium dog but look like a black bear.

Before this blog gets too long, I'll leave off there for now. I'll probably write another post later today as we have a lazy day in Balikpapan and I awoke at 5 this morning to the prayers from the Mosque beside the hotel being belted out on loud speaker. So in a nut shell, I'm pretty darn tired and have the largest bags under my eyes I have ever seen. Looking GOOD. So yes, I'll be lounging today.

xo

Dirty Water

We are heading off to Samboja Lestari this morning which is an orangutan rehabilitation and survival centre north of Balikpapan. We will be there for a week so this will be my last post for a little while! Tonight when we get there they are throwing us a little party with the sun bear keepers, orangutan keepers etc., so I cannot wait to talk with them.

I just wanted to talk a little more about the village we stayed in for a night, Kumpung Baru. Like I said, it's a coastal village and the houses are built on stilts over the water so that the tide can do it's thing. This water is the dirtiest water I have ever seen. It's overflowing with years and years of garbage being deposited straight from the houses into the water. And if that isn't enough, the washroom facilities that each household has consists of a hole in the floor with a view straight to the water below. I could barely bring myself to pee in the morning because I knew that I would walk the 10 feet from the bathroom to outside and see dozens of children swimming without a care in that same water. It's disturbing to me. A lot of the children have nasty scabs all over their bodies which we were told is scabies I think. This is from a lack of hygiene, so not directly from swimming in the water, but I feel that the two have a tight correlation.

I tried to capture the amount of garbage in these pictures and kind of failed. I just feel like action has to be taken.

Over and out internet world. I'll catch ya in a week!

xo

After uploading our first vodcast and blogs yesterday afternoon, we headed out to Kumpung Baru to spend the night in the village at Stan's house. We arrived at 6 to a herd of children welcoming us in! They all have the biggest smiles and are more than adorable. For about an hour before dinner I danced with the children (to rounds of applause and laughter, especially when I spun the little boys around :) The girls also introduced me to a new version of patty-cake which we played many rounds of until their mothers began calling them in for dinner. These children are amazing! They are so happy with what they have, even though when I looked around the village, the poverty surrounding them was unbelievable.

A local women, Esha, cooked us a delicious dinner of rice (surprise!), tempeh (a less refined version of tofu which looks like little blocks of seeds) and a corn and green bean mixture. The food here is good, but in the last ten years they have taken a turn from baking or boiling everything to frying it in palm oil as that is the cheapest. I'm definitely craving my salads!

After dinner we got invited to hear some of the boys from the village play music in a studio near by. We took the short walk there and hung out at an amazing house. The owner used to work as a mechanic in the oil, coal and gold industries and now owns 4 houses and has given one to each of his children.

After a long day, we returned to Stan's house to head to bed. At around 12:30 there was a rooster sound off showdown where two roosters close by proceeded to cock-a-doodle-doo as loud as they could in competition with each other. I also heard a gnarly rat fight going on in the walls of the house. At one point I swear one crawled over me. And I'm sure I was imagining it but it was still creepy.

Video!

Our group just uploaded our first vodcast and personal blogs. Go to http://ethicalexpeditions.ning.com/ and become a member of Borneo Expedition. From there you can see the uploads of all groups and the progress as we go.

Enjoy!

Monkey See Monkey Do

The last couple days have been amazing here! On Tuesday afternoon our group headed "into the field" to do a survey of the highly endangered species Proboscis monkeys. We took the bus to Stan's house (a researcher who has been helping us with everything along the way). We hung out in the village there with the children for a couple hours until the tide was high enough to get into the boats. He lives in a village where the houses are built over the water on stilts and their "driveways" is the waterway.

The village people and children were so welcoming and excited. A man invited a few of us to sit on his patio on some couches, fully knowing that we wouldn't be able to communicate, but just happy to let us sit. The children also taught us how to count to ten in Bahasa (Indonesian) but of course, I forgot most of it already.

The amount of garbage in the river leading to the ocean in this village is unbelievable. You cannot see even a cm through the water it is so murky and it is filled with bags, plastic, bottles... anything. This village seems so poor financially, but they are so, so happy. The children wear the biggest smiles and are excited to learn anything from us. It was amazing.

So, out in the field we stayed on this wooden platform in the middle of the rainforest! Of course a mosquito net was necessary as it was a malaria risk zone. Tuesday afternoon we took a boat ride for about two hours up the river and for an hour we found this group of Proboscis monkeys playing in the trees next to the river. We stopped and boat and just listened to them jumping around, snapping leaves and calling for one another. We could also see them at some points and through the binoculars we were able to see their ridiculous noses! My friend Cass and I swear we saw a baby monkey fall about 30 feet out of the tree when it tried to jump across. I hope it's ok...

We hung out at camp that night, slept in the sweltering heat and then got up at 5 the next morning to begin the search for more monkeys. A little luck, we found 3 big males. We also headed to an abandoned shrimp farm that has killed miles of mangrove. Don't eat shrimp!!! I'll try and put pictures up. The mangrove where the farm was looks like the elephant graveyard from the Lion King from only one year of production.

We were back at the hotel last night for a much needed shower and rest. Off to stay at Stan's house tonight in the village.

xo

Monkeys!

Sorry, this is a short one. But I'm busy reading and packing as we are heading "into the field" tomorrow with a researcher named Stan. Our group will travel up to his research station with him tomorrow afternoon and start a Proboscis monkey survey at around 4:30. We will spend the night at the station and wake up around 4:30 the next morning to do another survey. We will be doing it from boat as the monkeys prefer to slumber in the trees along the edges of the mangrove waterways.

I'll try and snap some pictures of these "Dutchmen Monkeys". (Named so because of their huge noses and pot bellies... apparently all Dutchmen have similar characteristics?!)

Class Begins. Kind of...

So we've been here for two and a bit days now and every minute has been amazing. We saw our first rain yesterday, other than arrival day, but it cleared after a short downpour and we were able to enjoy another lovely dinner outside. We have gone to this market of street vendors for dinner the last two nights, right on the ocean. Fresh fruit, veggies and the obvious rice and noodles. Always so delicious though.

We had our first day of class yesterday which mostly involved talking about where we will be, what we will be doing and the assignments and projects involved. The schedule literally sounds unbelievable.

The day before last, Saturday, the people that had arrived were able to meet with a couple who run an NGO here. The wife works doing dolphin research in the waterways and the husband works to gain protection of the waterways against illegal fishing activities which are wiping out the dolphin and aquatic life.

I'm off to class again, but tomorrow night our group heads into the field to a research station to do Probiscus monkey surveys. Can't wait!

Singapore and Beyond

We made it to Balikpapan alive! (slightly to my surprise). After my last post in Seoul, we flew another six hours to Singapore which I successfully slept for most of after popping a couple Gravol. Luckily, I just happened to wake up when dinner was being served. And speaking of food on the airplanes, my mother, the wonderful and caring lady that she is, went to the trouble of ordering me vegetarian meals throughout each leg of the trip. Well, what I didn't know is that every meal served, four in total, would be Indian. I realized I haven't eaten breakfast in three days, just Indian lentils, Indian spinach, Indian rice, Indian vegetables etc. My stomach is quite confused, as it keeps going from point of starvation to a couple bites of airplane Indian, back to starvation. But I must not complain, because for airplane food, it was pretty damn good; just a lot of Indian.

But yes, back to Singapore. So, we arrived into Singapore at about 1 in the morning. I think that made it 12 noon the previous day in Ontario and 10 in the morning in Denver, both of the times zones I was used to at the time. So of course Bean (my roommate Nadine) and I were wide awake and began what became a failed search for the coveted Singapore Tea House in the airport. We walked for about an hour, followed countless directions with no luck. But, we did find a pond full of very big fish and a butterfly room, jungle thing. Pretty cool for an airport. At about 4:30 I fell asleep and slept semi soundly until 4:55! Big sleep. At that time, the airport began to become inhabited and the day was in full swing.

Mid-morning, we took the "Free Singapore Tour" into downtown Singapore from the airport. Oh, and P.S., it was 37 degrees when we landed at 1 in the morning. HOT, but nice. Anyways, we got to explore a Chinese temple as well as drive through Little India. I'll try and attach some pictures of Singapore. In a nutshell, it's the city of a million cranes. Buildings are going up everywhere. And it's also the city of a weirdly high number of golf courses. 22 or something crazy just in the vicinity of the airport.

When that ended, we were in the final two hours of the 13 hour lay-over and killed time by enjoying some well needed coffee and Skype-ing with some friends all the way back home.

Sorry, this is getting really long. So, we flew out of Singapore in a little plane to our final destination of Balikpapan, Borneo, which is in the Indonesian part of Borneo. Flying in may have been the craziest sight I have seen. So much dense rainforest beneath us with huge areas that had been clear cut (or burnt). We were about to land when the pilot pulled the plane back up... the weather was too rough and I believe I heard him say the smoke was too thick (a regular occurrence due to the heavy burning of the rainforest.) We came in a different way and finally landed in heavy rain, thunder and humidity.

But we are here! And it's great. The trip leaders met us at the airport and we headed to Hotel Sagita (quite posh for Balikpapan standards). We enjoyed a simply dinner at a vendor on the street and I am now settled into bed. At 8 at night.

A little shopping at the markets is happening tomorrow. Cannot wait.

xo

Chocolate Koalas?

Love this blogging thing! After about a 12 hour flight, we are is Seoul, South Korea for an hour and then off for another long haul to Singapore. Good thing Singapore Airlines provided complimentary support hoes to keep my ankles from swelling to those of a pregnant women's :)

I didn't sleep on the flight and officially feel like I have been run over by a bus. Then reversed over. Then run over again. It's the night of the 7th here I believe and our flight leaves soon so I best be off.

Ciao!

P.S... since we're kind of close to Japan here I'm on the search for the best cookies ever... chocolate koalas. I ate about 3 boxes a day last year in Japan.

Off and Away!

Well, here goes my attempt at blogging. I'm sitting in my hotel in San Fran, about to head to the airport to begin the adventures. I'm meeting up with my roommate from school, Nadine, as well as two others and together we will fly to Seoul, carry on to Singapore and finally to Balikpapan, Borneo. We have about a 13 hour lay-over in Singapore and are hoping to be able to head into the city and explore for a while- I have heard only amazing things about it.

With the time change and such, we should hopefully be in Borneo on January 8th. The course begins January 10th so we will have a day to explore the city and get our travel legs under us.

For those of you who I haven't told, I'm heading to Borneo for two months as part of a school trip with Quest University. We pretty much got evicted from school during the Olympics so they organized some two months trips to keep our credits up. There are 16 of us going on this trip, and the point of it is to try and put a stop, or at least instigate a stop, to the rapid deforestation of the rainforest due to palm oil plantations being developed. This deforestation not only effects the rainforest itself, but the plant and animal life within it. We will primarily be looking at the orangutan populations, as well as the effects of the deforestation on the livelihood of the dolphins, sea turtles and coral.

Anyways, that's all I've got for my first ever blog. It's pretty fun actually. I'll try and keep updating as often as I can, but I'm not sure what the internet situation will be like in far far away land. I'll shoot for more pictures than words cause they're better :)