From Tarakan to Berau

27.05.2010 Berau

Our trip continued this morning from Tarakan. Again, do not trust LP. After finding out the previous night that the maps are totally shit and apparently the writers have never been to Indonesian Borneo, we were “German” enough to get out boat tickets on the previous day. We signed in a hotel ( Hotel Taufiq, shared double 50 000 Rp) on the main road quite near the harbor where the local boats leaves.

Wake up at six, to the boat at 07.00. The taxi took us the long way to the pier and tried to get 30 000rp instead of the 6000 plus entry fee 2000 to area. Boat Tarakan- Tanjung Selor took about 1 ½ hours.

At Tanjung Selor we were told that there was no frequent bus service anymore to Berau (after 2008) and all we could do was to get a kijang- shared car with multiple seats to our next destination. It was 70 000Rp per person and that included our “foreign bonus”, locals paid 50 0000Rp. The ride was nice through the curvy jungle road and one eating stop in between. During the stop we got offers to be photographed again, and some even took photos of us without our promision. I took the liberty to get angry, because the locals do not do that to anyone else...I should think about saying that Finnish culture or religion forbids to take photos of people. The ride took us 3 ½ hours approximately.

In Berau we tried to get to a nice hotel by the river bank, but it was closed and on construction. After the lunch I ran around for a place to sleep and found one posh hotel (read, expensive) Hotel Berau Plaza...but, air condition and A REAL SHOWER ( very refreshing) made me sleep a 5 hour nap after 2 very sleepless and very very sweaty nights. Tonight we walked to a local eatery and had nice dishes of Gado-Gado, a plate filled with vedgies, boiled egg, chips, tofu, rice cake and topped with spicy peanut sauce. A good evening dish, nothing too heavy and I have to say that the evening is cool and the people are much friendlier than in the previous towns, AND we are forced to learn Bahasa Indonesia.

Tarakan

26.05.2010 Tarakan, Indonesia

I promised to write about the trip information to the Indonesian side.
DO NOT TRUST LONELY PLANET BORNEO.

In Tawau Indonesian Embassy I met my new travel friend Simone. A nice German girl and we kinda run into each other many times and I decided to go with her straight to Tarakan and skip Nunukan all together. It was tough indeed to get the info about the boat to Tarakan. THE book (Lonely Planet obviously) told one thing and the people other. We went to harbor at 09.00, and there we were told that the boat does not leave until noon. It did not, so, both LP and internet info was wrong again. We went through the immigration and waited the rest of the time. Half past eleven we were loaded in the boat. It was the boat called Indomaya Tiga and the cost of the trip was 130 Ringgits. The trip took about 4 hours, a bit less.


Today we went to a park really in the middle of the city. 9 hectares mangrove forest with shady benches and wooden walks. At first we were upset to see one monkey in a cage and then another, probosics monkey, in the cage...but then, we saw some real things. THE MUD CRAWLER! A bit later I confronted some monkeys that were really nasty. One jumped to hang from my backpack and tried to bite me, but let go when it ripped a small towel pouch out. We were almost done with the forets when ge encountered the ones we were there for; the famous Dutchmen (the locals call probosics monkey the Dutchman because of the appearance) with their pot bellies and big noses, right after we had thought they only said there to be ones, just to get people coming to the park. I was super happy!

I am getting annoyed by the men in in here. It seems again that everyone wants money from you or to take a photo of you without even asking your name or telling theirs first. “Hello mister” is the normal greeting in here for us both, Simone and me.

Top five ways to start a conversation with a Westerner female.
1.“Hello Mister!”
2.“I love you”
3.“Where you go?”
4.“Which country?”
5.“ a photo?”


We also got our brand new Indonesian Idol phone cards.

Tawau

23.05.2010 Tawau / Blog entry on my computer

Finally alone. Finally on the road again.

I am happy about my decision to leave Semporna. All on all it was not my place, and definitely not my place to go through Dive Master training. Sweden has not paid me anything yet, and I am sort of money. The rest of the trip will go with strict budget.

I am not having second thoughts anymore about Dive Master training. I am going to do it, some day, if not now. I have to admit that my expectations of my own stamina was wrong. I have to face the fact that almost 35 years old may not recover 15 kilos weight loss that happened over 2 months, in a very short time. The exhausting weather did not help nor did the sun burns. I was also surprised how easy it was to make me upset during the Rescue Course. It has been said that it is the best course there is...but I could say that for me it was like living hell. Every morning getting to the boat to Mabul from Semporna just made me more upset and I had lost all my ability to enjoy diving as well as learning something new. It was a horrible experience, nothing more. Still I think I have some abilities that a good DM needs. I believe I am a people person. And my Rescue Diver burn marks are fading day after a day.

Nella and her mother joined me at breakfast. I suddenly felt too shy to speak German, but I tried my best at that moment. I need a bit more time to be fluent. However, I was capable to communicate in some way, still I was not satisfied.

When I went to pick up my bags from hostel Ebu said that she is sorry that I was leaving. Both she and Lady Gaga (one of the reception young ladies) hugged me and hoped to see me again. For them, I could go back. It seems that I have been the one of the guests to be talking with them the most. One guy opened up one evening and told about some of his bad experiences, some others as well. I did not see Linda or Helen to say good bye to them.

Seems that the Semporna hostels small ants have been hiding in my backpack and now they cover my bed again. It feels strange to have my own toilet and shower, not to have a bar downstairs and not to have a wireless internet connection. I enjoy it. I enjoy the soda water I was able to find in a supermarket. I enjoyed the Pizza Hut triple cheese pizza with no regrets. Three weeks without cheese, and now that I am sailing to south, no one knows when I am able to get cheese again. Yes, I am fairly easy to please.

Peeling and leaving

It is time to say good bye to Semporna. Pay all my bills and hit the road again to south, to Indonesian state Kalimantan. All my friends are about to leave as well, so, I decided also to move on.

Unfortunately not with Nella. She got her symptoms back and flew her mother on an adventure of a lifetime. Her mom has arrived today and I am hoping to meet her as well.

I also found out that my sunburns are the second stage burns and they need 2 to 3 weeks to heal. Not very nice. At least not when it is combined with mosquito bites. After the water bubbles on my skin; I am now peeling off and look totally disgusting. I have been trying to hide myself under long sleeves both outside and in the water.

Today I made some unfortunate money transfers that did not get through. I was able to pay my hostel, but the diving is now waiting. Hopefully the transactions will show tomorrow, and I am able to go. I did succeed with the money transaction with some other money though. Nella gave me a huge bunch of bills in an envelope and told me to hand them over to some Belgian guys that would arrive by boat from Mabul resort. The Belgians had given Nella almost 1000€ worth of money to be exchanged by the time they arrived and she asked me to deliver the amount. Now it is out of my hands, the guys got their money and everything is ok. I have been really thinking that while travelling the people tend to help more with that kind of things and REALLY trust. I have been loaning my stuff all over and today I need to get them back together again for packing, but it does not bother me too much, because, me too, I trust. And besides, why not, if I have a book that can help someone, if I have a laptop that someone can use in a cafe to read the news and emails, why not?

Crossing borders to Indonesian side seems to be made quite hard. No information anywhere...at the moment I am going to get there to see it myself, how to get from Tawau to Tarakan and then later on further. When I find that out, I will put all the information online to help someone else who is making the same trip!


So, making the long story short, I will continue with diving stuff. I made through the Rescue Diver Course. And the first aid. Then I needed some time to think over what I was about to do. I decided to take a few days of fun diving and see, if I got back to myself in the water. I did. I did not make it ll the way to Sipadan, but I dot not regret it. There was a lot of talk about the experience in there; some said it is totally over estimated, some said it was the best dives if their lives. For me, I think everything after my night dive will be less interesting.

The night dive was amazing. I was diving with Flem, and his 2 Advanced course students Luke&Kate who were taking their night dive specialty. It was great to somehow take part in the course, to remember what are the important things and just listen. When we descended, Flem asked us to sit on the sandy bottom, to turn off out torches by pointing them closely to our bodies and then play with the water. The water was full of curious shrimps. And when you waved your hand in the water, they flashed as if they were fireflies. Beautiful. When we started our very slow dive, we discovered the incredible amount of crap that people throw to the water. Millions of plastic bags hovering in the water among the jellyfish that were size of a bucket, diameter something like 50cm. Ouch! We saw huge boxing-shrimps, crabs of all kinds, sleeping fish etc.

After a while Flem pointed out a flamboyant cuttlefish and we took our time to follow it with our torches. What happened was, that it lead us to some seahorses and stopped something like half a meter from them. At first it was tough decision to decide which animal to look at, but when the seahorse started giving birth to some little seahorses, it was an easy choice. A very very very rare sight!! This will be hard to beat at any dive. Maybe a manatee would be the next one to be wait.

Rescue Diver!

Now I finally reached the test of a Rescue Diver! Last night I was very tired but happy. I got another Dive Instructor, Flem from Denmark to guide me through the day. He did not quite understand why I was put through another day...and after all, his positive guidance totally helped me to do everything nearly perfect. I good positive comments about my calmness and my excellent buoyancy! He said that I can be happy about that. Also, I figured out a way to count my rescue breaths (a Finnish stupid poem) and completed the rescue safely on the Jetty. The 2 "hell dives" were not near the hell we went through during the previous days. Flem said it should be just in a proportion of sanity. I feel more confident now, but I still have to do some thinking.

This morning I had a short chat with Ric (one of the owners) and decided to get myself on some fun dives for the next 3 days just to relax. Leanne (instructor) said I should give a go on the DM. However, now, checking my bank account balance I am not sure if I have the money to to that, and I have only 6 weeks to complete if I started. It might not be enough taking in consideration my skills in learning...well, still a few days to think about it.

I got suddenly another offer. Yesterday at Mabul (the place where we did our courses, one of the resort islands) I sat on a table with a Swiss lady. She confronted a very unpleasant surprise on her 30th birthday; a decompression Illness on Sipadan on her first dive. Great. She spent her birthday in decompression chamber in Semporna hospital. What a great way to spend a special day. Memorable indeed. Then, she was told that she is allowed to fly in 2 weeks, but later it became 6 weeks. No risks, and she is kinda now stuck in around here. She is not advised to go KK, because of the altitude the bus takes on the road next to mountains. We had a nice chat during lunch and she asked if I wanted to go with her by boat to the Indonesian side.

I have been doing some searching now, and found an island of Derawan, where there´s good diving and great beaches, and a very slow way of living. On the way I could see Raflesias, probosics monkeys and other stuff...And the best part would be that I have a buddy to travel with. Don´t know how well we could get along, but then we could go separated.

A very tempting idea. Road less travelled.

Oh, my.

Yes. I feel like a huge failure. And I know I should just think about not to demand this much of myself...but still. I cannot remember a time in my life when I have felt like I am not able to do anything right. No excuses, I suck.

It was overwhelming. I was grilled much more than other students. I did not pass the course. I have to do one day more. My stress reaction kicked in big time, paralyzed when I had to do something, and apparently, when I did react, it was always something wrong. I try to remember what Sari wrote me about her Dive Master course. That she was almost tortured, but she survived it. And I, I keep thinking about my first days when I was learning to be a lighting technician...my help then was to have a very supportive teacher. I should stop comparing myself with other to this extend.

It does not help if I am painfully honest about stuff. Well, on the other hand it does help because I can talk about my problems and there has been a lot of help offered. I have also allies; Swedish Linda and American Helen are just adorable. With Linda we discussed a lot about atmospheres in here (weid for a new comer) and about the whole Scandinavian behavior. It seems that in general we ARE slower to to react and act on things. In Finland the way is almost to neglect when something is happening, maybe as a survival mechanism. Then again, facing fears should be a moment of self growth. Also, all my readers who have met me while travelling cannot say that I was lacking care for people or that I was unfriendly...but apparently these skills I failed to show on my course. Weird isn´t it?

All in all the last 2 days of the course was fun (except the fact that I burned myself badly of course, and decided to take this day off to cure my skin, think stuff over and take my day 4 of Rescue Diver tomorrow). We played scenarios in real time. The moment we four students stepped out of the boat in Mabul, there were about 10 victims already in the water and we needed to rush to rescue them. At first, like I normally do, I just stood there thinking "are you kidding me"! The second scenario was in water on a "fun dive". Ash, Ben and Big-Ben shot down in a second and started acting like fools, and fools that were totally drunk. They stole each others fins, took their weight belts off, started opening our tank belts so our tanks were not secured anymore and then took of all in different directions. Big-Ben even tried to put a stone fish in his pocket and other Ben assisted himself out of his BCD took the octopus in his mouth and rode on his tank as if it was a horse.


After lunch we had zero time to get to water and save both of the 2 Bens who had been seen on the right side of the Jetty but now were missing. A drowning victim will get a brain damage in 10 minutes, we had to find them in that timeline. The last dive was also a fun dive and the DMT´s and Ash were only mentioned to play around for a few minutes, but decided that it was cool to play along a bit longer..and it was 30 min. During that time and a bit after we saw five huge turtles from close,a ghost pipe fish and one fish that Ben claimed to be a star gazer.

The other Dive Master Trainees had completed their course and they had a "final snorkel test" last night. A bucket of booze through a snorkel until they puke. Not really my idea of having fun though, but the others were having hilarious time.

The beginning in Semporna

After the long period of stressing, carrying stuff, hailing a taxi, getting to bus I was finally sitting in a long distance bus from KK to my final destination Semporna, in the North East corner of Borneo island. During my ride I slept a lot getting rid of my jet lag but had the opportunity to observe the Mt. Kinabalu as we drove next to it and also the many many hectares of rain forest cut down from the places of new palm oil plantation and factories. Razor sharp edges and lines of emptiness on the same spots that used to be lush forest with diversity and undergrowth.

The first night was sleepless as I tried to get adjusted to heat by switching off the air condition...at the moment it works fine without!

My first course morning in here started with my beloved rain. I woke up too early and went for a walk. The night shift guys were asleep in the computer lounge, so I did not want to wake them up and decided to sneak out from the restaurant door where people were preparing for our breakfast. I took a walk down to the water, took pictures and enjoyed the fresh air. As usual, I was the only westerner awake at that time. I had a confrontation with the police; the guys scrolled down the car windows and said good morning. The morning market was busy, and the local good-transportation method used was wheel barrel.

On Monday morning I went to the dive shop as advised and got a boat ride to Mabul, a resort island where me and Freddy (young Brit) took our Emergency First Response course. The place was super, the instructor Ash was nice...but the mean frustration kicked in. I felt like I was very bad, it looked like I had never known any English in my life and I was totally confused with the masses of new words I had to learn, and as usual I did not give myself nothing but hard time. Yes, passed the test, but I was still feeling bad about all the confusion. Ash tried to cheer me up by finding me an extra place to Sipadan fro next morning and convincing me that I should take another day off. I decided to turn down the Sipadan offer (yes, it was tempting...the previous day 2 whale shark spotting, but as my contact lens solution was in my hostel room...the choice was made easier) and to study today. I of course did my first plunge into the water, went snorkeling and it was relaxing, also saw 2 white pipe fishes!

Getting back to village was indeed a good choice! I met some more people, some employees and some DMT´s (Dive Master Trainees) that gave me a peek to what it was going to be. The Swedish 'soon to be' DM, told me that she had felt the same as me for the first 3 weeks after her arrival. Keeping up with English language can be hard for a non native, and sometimes the natives just cannot see the struggle. I felt so much better after talking to her. Things will sort out, eventually. The next task will be the 3 days on a Rescue Course with bad diving scenarios.

EFR course was an easy one, to my luck, but it is getting tougher from now on. I should focus more on having fun and not stressing out. And hopefully the Rescue course will be the BEST as everyone keeps telling me, and I certainly hope that the Videos are better than with first aid. Maybe the only thing I learned from that is that I should carry disposable plastic gloves, eye shield and ventilation barrier as well as a bio hazard waste bag at all times to prevent getting infected by HIV or Hepatitis B or C, if you get into a situation where I need to give first aid. Of course this is in America. Where else can you can get a law sue after helping someone? Well, on our course we learned the most valuable lesson and a sentence of all times; “ Hello, my name is ----, I am a emergency first responder. May I help you?” And when said no, you just walk away...

At all times, you should STOP, THINK and ACT. My name is Katja and I am a emergency first responder. 

Task done!

Testing the durian ice cream. 

KK and electricity

A quick decision to run after Ally, share a taxi with her, almost get crazy with the cab driver, but finally ending up to the right hostel. Now I have already (or unfortunately) had 2 contacts with Finns..last night at bar I saw a friend of a friend that I knew to be arriving here at the same time. The radar was excellent this time, I spotted the Finns easily and had a fun night.

Right now I also got a Finnish guy sitting next to me in our hostel lobby. And I helped out a French guy with his electricity adapter if there is anything you want to know about electricity abroad, maybe  the best page to find out is http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm


Yesterday, almost at my arrival I got a friendly shower from Mother Nature. When travelling, I usually like rain. It makes me feel that things are real. The life in here is real and not as if I was in a nice sunny postcard. One has to adjust to what Mom Nature has to offer. In here there are no big shopping malls to be lost in during the rain and no metro tunnels to hide from rain. It is just a human (nature) confronting the poring rain and flooding streets.

The picture is from my last (arrival night). Kota Kinabalu sunset and the local taxi boats leaving from the dock. Tomorrow I hope to reach my final destination. Today I got a friendly voice to talk to over the phone. At least there is someone who misses me enough to call me once in a while. Also, thanks for the comments as well as the FB comments. I like that, you know!

Singapore Sling

Singapore was fighting me back. I a way anyway. I lost my precious cap I had bought from Australia, and I forgot my shampoo at Jukkas place. All in all it was a nice experience, though I was paranoid I might do something illegal (such as littering) to receive a beating punishment from Singapore government. Even though the ultimate cleanliness and skyscrapers made an effect on me. One was able to go through all the city in shopping malls to avoid the sun beams. The town was quiet enough and people very helpful. The public transportation was like a clock, very good and efficient.




Gill Divers were very helpful and they sold me a nice new Suunto D4. I am proud and I do not take it off even to shower, well, it is a diving computer after all, with a clock and some nice other additions. We´ll see now how it will work in real business.

I can honestly say that I love Singapore Airport! If I was to spend a night at the airport, this would be my choice. One little nice detail was a Post On Wheels-- a small car rolling around the terminal area at times to collect mail and to sell envelopes and postcards for the late sending.

Ah, and yes. We did not find durian ice cream, so I still have to find a way to taste the fruit. But we did have a Chinese breakfast and sushi for early dinner. And the Singapore Sling was totally overpriced in Raffles Long Bar.

Singapore 1

Weather hot.
Was able to sleep in Jukkas beautiful condo for a few hours before the birds woke me up with some early construction men next door. After India this country seems so clean and quiet.

Sweaty already.

It was a pretty bumpy flight from Paris to Singapore, but that promised me a god night sleep also on the flight. I never find it easy when the ride is too smooth, feels like not moving at all. AND all my belongings arrived to Singapore as well as I did. So, not complications with that on.

I ate my first fruit right now- a banana. It was voted to be eaten and since it was available, I took advantage on it. But because I also scored durian, Anna promised to take me to eat some durian ice cream today. An easy way to start.

And now, the first stop bus stop, bus nr. 14 to Orchid Ion, breakfast. Second stop Botanical Garden. Third stop Scuba store. Then later on more stops, that are yet unknown. This morning seems to be a good one.