A bum numbing bus ride from Balikpapan took me out of
Central Kalimantan and into the Southern region. Thirteen hours on a barely
cushioned vinyl seat is enough to put anyone’s backside to sleep. By Indonesian
standards this is not a long bus journey, on a non-A/C junk heap it seemed a
lot longer though. I didn’t take the cheaper alternative because of price,
there is only a quid difference (£1 for the non-Brits), I actually prefer to
travel with the riffraff. Besides, I’d rather get a bit hot and sweaty than
spend the time shivering from an air conditioning system set to maximum.
Whichever you take, they’re driven at breakneck speed with complete disregard
for any measure of safety. Considering the road safety statistics in most of
Asia, this is cause for concern. But if you ran shy of every dodgy mode of
transport you simply wouldn’t get far travelling here. The only solution is not
to think about it, put your head back and enjoy the scenery. (Photo: View from my balcony at Ailya Homestay, which is really a losmen - Loksado, Southern Kalimantan)
Loksado is claimed to be a haven of peace and tranquillity,
a beautiful riverside village with easy access to jungle treks, Dayak villages
and awesome waterfalls. As it was en-route I just had to check it out, give
myself a bit of time relaxing in relative peace and quite. There was no
alternative to getting dropped in Kandangan, the nearest town, in the middle of
the night. Maybe the three Polish girls didn’t appreciate the inconvenience,
but I was nonplussed. Hanging my hammock in the porch of a seemingly unused
building, I managed about four hours of sleep, easily enough to take the edge
off my state of exhaustion. I’ve learnt my lesson, the hammock is now near the
top of my pack, ready for such contingencies. I must admit, the Indonesian
habit of building porches around buildings is handy, the pillars provide handy
hanging points, and the overhang ensures a dry night’s rest. 
The river here is a far cry from Sungai Mahakam, being much
smaller and unnavigable by anything other than bamboo rafts, whose only means
of propulsion is a punting pole. Of course they don’t fare very well making
their way upstream, the water is shallow, often boulder strewn and fast flowing.
It’s only about twenty metres across and the majority of it can be crossed by
foot, when the levels rise I wouldn’t advise it though, it becomes a raging
torrent. Being surrounded by hills a little rain goes a long way, within an
hour of a deluge the water rose nearly a metre. Village life revolves around
it, morning and night people gather to wash, play and gossip. At the end of the
school day the kids swarm down, they seem to spend most their free time in the
water. The sharp bend at the head of the village provides deeper, slower moving
water for them to launch themselves into. There are unaccompanied kids as young
as four or five playing, generally with older kids around, but not always. None
of them would win any medals for style, but they’re confident swimmers. (Photo: Boys will be boys - Loksado, Southern Kalimantan)
Yet again the river is used as a garbage dump, for human and
domestic waste. With the waters low rubbish becomes entangled in the limbs of
driftwood, it clings to partly submerged boulders, swirls in eddies. At regular
intervals scores of waste bags float past. Garbage bags are thrown from
windows, to bob along, inevitably carried down to the ocean. Do the locals have
a choice? Some have the forethought to burn their rubbish, not many, and is
burning itself not as bad? With no garbage collection they are the choices, at
least in the local’s minds. Would rubbish dumps be a better answer? Not in
areas that are likely to become flooded, it would only disperse it across the
surrounding land. Surely there must be some solution! Personally I’d rather see
it burnt, at least it’s out the way. Yet I know the toxins will then be put
straight into the atmosphere. Have we gone wrong somewhere? Of course we have,
non-degradable packaging has no place in our world, why do we allow it to be
produced? But enough harping on… (Photo: Ant with a captive slave, they're no better than humans - Loksado, Southern Kalimantan)
Whilst there is no evidence of using the rafts to transport
goods along the river, there were an awful lot of them when I arrived. They’re
for tourists, and at 250,000 rupiah per half hour are a good earner, or would
be if there were enough tourists. As it happened there was some type of local
festival the following day, attended by a lot of city folk. Hence the abundance
of rafts, a healthy trade was expected so a good supply had been prepared. It
takes the boatmen about half an hour to lash them together, adding a simple
raised seat of bamboo big enough for three people. At the end of the ride the
lashing is cut off and the bamboo poles brought back to the village by
motorbike, each bike brings more than a dozen poles of about four metres each.
So it was a bumper day for boatmen, normally they’re lucky if more than one
raft goes out per day. You couldn’t accuse Loksado of being busy, but it’s one
of the only places I’ve had to share my accommodation with other foreigners. 
Village life is slow and simple, amenities are scarce but it
does have mains electric. Fuel for bikes is brought in from Kandangan, in
twenty-five litre containers, up to six on each bike. Domestic homes use either
gas or wood for cooking, transport costs make gas very expensive, but unlike
many areas the tell tale signs of wood smoke are not an overly common sight.
Combined with the state of housing here, it leads me to believe the village is
fairly affluent. At the top end of the market are some very plush homes, even
by western standards. Run down hovels are uncommon, of course there are a few,
isn’t there always, wherever you go? But the people aren’t dressed in rags,
there’s no shortage of motorbikes, in fact few signs of poverty at all. It’s
hard to tell just how the locals earn money, it’s not from fishing, or apparent
agriculture, even the multitude of shops see barely a trickle of customers
during. 
Interestingly the Dayak villagers seem a lot more
productive. Referred to as, ‘the people of the forest,’ they still appear to
rely on produce from the forest, not only for their own sustenance, but for an
income too. Fruit grows in abundance within the its confines. I recognised jack
fruit, durian, rambutan and a big version of lychee, with multiple seed pods.
There were more, many more, of which I hadn’t a clue what they might be. The
Dayak are still largely hunter-gatherers, probably not so much hunters though,
as wildlife is pretty scarce. They do grow food, it’s not uncommon to find
clearings close to their villages where they cultivate rice, bananas, papaya, a
little maize and cassava. Overall, I’d say they spend most their effort within
the forest itself. Naturally growing rubber trees are tapped, providing a
sellable commodity. They probably harvest very little compared to the large
corporate plantations, they do however earn some income for their efforts. They
also harvest cinnamon, cutting branches and removing the bark. After scraping
off the outer skin it’s laid out to dry, then bundled up and brought into Loksado
for shipping out. In one Dayak village I visited it seemed as though every
available bit of groundspace was used to dry curling strips of cinnamon. 
Seeing the bundles of cinnamon stacked in Loksado led me to
wonder whether the wealth here might be earned from the efforts of the Dayak.
They are a fairly reclusive people, largely keeping themselves to themselves.
Their communities are further afield than Loksado, none can be reached by four
wheeled vehicles, it would only be natural for the more modern settlement to
act as a middleman for the goods produced by the far flung Dayak villages.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Dayak are still living in a by gone age.
Their houses are of modern design, as much as they are in Loksado, even if many
are more run down. In this area there are no more quaint longhouses, but
villages do tend to have them as community centres. The ones I saw are
windowless and of plain wooden planking with tin roofs, there is no traditional
carving of sentinels, no ornately carved verandas, they are certainly not
showcase longhouses. The people are a bit more reserved, but who can blame
them. Most the tourists who venture by are led by a guide, their cameras do
their talking, which are busily prying into every aspect of village life. 
It can be misleading to refer to the wooded areas as forest,
many of you will assume it’s Rain Forest, an area inundated with tropical
behemoths. Giants who soar into the heavens, spreading thick canopies that
block out the sun, a land inhabited by weird and wonderful exotic creatures.
Unfortunately it’s mainly secondary growth, too immature to support much
wildlife. It doesn’t make ideal habitat for extensive biodiversity. What there
is left of rain forest in this area is restricted to the far hills, a couple of
days walk away. I was too lazy to hike that far, so I only experienced what the
locality had to offer. For insects and fungi it was OK, I saw virtually noting else
though. There were a few rustlings from the undergrowth, which sounded like
lizards to me. And in the far distance, a blurred silhouette in the only decent
tree around, was a langur as far as I could tell. It had a long tail, so it
wasn’t a gibbon, but it was that sort of shape.
If you want to see any animals you’re best off checking out
the Dayak villages. There you might find some poor beasty crammed into an
unbelievably small cage. A palm civet bared its teeth as it backed into the
corner of its bamboo prison, getting more aggressive the closer one approached.
From another a macaque reached out, making a grab for anyone who got close
enough, trying to pull their hand in to bite it. Both animals were aggressive,
the civet looked terrified it couldn’t flee so it intended to fight as its only means
of defense. The macaque was incensed, determined on extracting revenge for its loss of freedom, it wasn't going to take captivity in its stride. The last animal I encountered in captivity was a poor baby gibbon, the cutest
creature imaginable. I don’t want to think what happened to its mother, all too
often they’re killed to capture their young. From experience gibbons are more
amenable to captivity, they haven’t the aggression of macaques, who do tend to
be unreliable, often vicious. The gibbon wasn’t caged, it looked lost, unsure
of its environment. It sat looking confused, letting people pet it, not quite knowing
what to do. It broke my heart to see, heaven knows what life it can expect. I wanted to pick it up and take it with me, not to have a cute pet, in an attempt to save it. So
often I detest the stupid, ignorant actions of humans. (Photo: Baby gibbon, adorable but pitiful - Dayak village, Nr Loksado, Southern Kalimantan)
But let’s not linger on the negative aspects of life, my
natural cynicism gets the better of me. There’s a big beautiful world out there
with a lot of weird and wonderful things to enchant us all. Like the mist
shrouded mountain slopes, lacy tendrils creeping between the darkened canopy.
Or the darting silhouettes of swifts overhead, seemingly hundreds of them,
gathering to feast on the cornucopia of insects in the gathering light of dawn.
I can enjoy the thrill of the tightly twisting road to Loksado, imagine the
delight of hammering round those beautiful bends on a motorbike. An old Dayak
lady offered me a jackfruit, insisted I take it all, a beaming smile on her
face. There are too many amazing aspects of life to get hung up over the crud.
Access to one of the Dayak villages was over a bamboo and wood bridge,
constructed of nothing but natural locally sourced materials. The planking was
of bamboo, lashed together and to struts of hardwood. Most interestingly, the
branches supporting the struts were hung from trees above. Not lashed or
otherwise secured, just hooked over, as they were cut just below forks original
tree. Of course they were lashed to the struts below, but the whole design and
execution was ingenious, so simple and yet so easily renewable too. 
Compared to the complexity of a modern built bridge of man made materials it could be said to be need renewable more regularly, which is true. But what a Herculean task it is to replace substantial bridge made of metal girders and concrete footings
Borneo is proving to be well worthy of my attention. It is
sad to see the way it’s treated, by both government and local population. But
that only taints the experience, it can’t negate how wonderful the place is. My
only persistent regret is not having transport of my own, which leads me to
ponder my next two-wheeled exploit, because this surely is how my next journey
must be undertaken.
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