Konni & Matt - Perpetual Travellers: 23 Sep

Southeast Asia

Republic of Indonesia (CPI = 32/100 and BPI = 7.1/10.0)
West Kalimantan aka Kalimantan Barat (KalBar)

Sanggau

Jalan Ahmad Yani 128

Hotel Sanggau Permai +6256421918

Comfortable and clean a/c twin room (no. 202) with private Western bathroom and wifi for IDR 155,000.- or US$ 13.50 per night. Zero English.

Beer: 620-ml bottles of chilled Anker Beer (4.9 % alc./vol.) for IDR 25,000.- or US$ 2.15 per large bottle from the rather unhappy Happy Supermarket, located diagonally opposite the hotel.

Click below for an interactive road map of the Hotel Sanggau Permai in Sanggau, which we would recommend, and for directions:
N 00° 07.35' E 110° 36.16'

Matt: Getting lost in the maze of stilt shacks and warung on the northern bank of the lower Kapuas River aka Sungai Kapuas, watching people use the river (e.g. brushing their teeth with river water and defecating, sometimes only a few meters upriver, from their floating outhouses straight into the river) and misuse the river (e.g. discarding used oil filters and throwing plastic bags with non-biodegradable garbage “over the side”) and realising that the mighty river and the local folks of Sanggau are just a metaphor for our whole planet where the biodegradable human race, brainy as individuals but not capable of learning as a species, is systematically destroying its own habitat, dumber than any supposedly less intelligent ape.

Matt: Roaming the smelly local wet market, spending some time with two interesting types of “stink beans”, which were in season right now, thus learning from the cheerful vendors and housewifes about the distinctive health benefits of nutricious petai and jengkol/jering, buying, among other fixings, interesting and lesser-known leaf vegetables for my daily veggie/tofu salads (e.g. kangkong, spinach, genjer, melinjo and cassava leaves), thus taking the calculated risk that, when eaten raw, these plants may transmit intestinal fluke parasites of humans and pigs (causing fasciolopsiasis), and washing down any undesirable thoughts with a few shots of medicinal cap cuan.

Matt: Being shanghaied by two charming young English teachers and giving two morning classes of basic communication skills (How to ask outcome-oriented questions: “What, precisely, do you want?” - “What, specifically, are you doing in order to get it?” - “How, exactly, will you know that you have it?”) and basic neuro-linguistic programming skills (How to replace the “blame frame” by the “outcome frame”) at Madrasah Aliyah Negeri Sanggau (senior high school level) and Sekolah Menengah Pertama Negeri II Sanggau (junior high school level); many thanks, Ramlah and Lety, for allowing me to bypass your students’ conscious minds…

"Life is a journey.

Time is a river.

The door is ajar."

(Jim Butcher)

Matt: Flagging down a regional bus from Sanggau to Sintang’s out-of-town Sungai Ukoi bus terminal (c. 130 km, 3 ¾ hours on a road like a Seffrican tank-training area, IDR 50,000.- or US$ 4.30 per person) and hereafter taking a local minibus aka opelet from the useless terminal Sungai Ukoi to Sintang’s busy inner-city Sungai Durian terminal (c. 12 km, ½ hour, IDR 15,000.- or US$ 1.30 per person.

Click below for more blog posts about interesting Asian riverside towns
11 Jul - 01 Sep 2013 Kuching
01 Dec - 07 Dec 2012 Xingping
25 Oct - 08 Nov 2012 Hanoi
12 Jan - 18 Jan 2012 Yangon
12 May - 18 May 2011 Hampi

Click below for a summary of this year's travels

2013 Map Konni & Matt