23 Sep - 26 Sep 2013 Sanggau

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."

  
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
 
Facing Kalimantan
© Konni & Matt

 
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For Amazon deals from the United States, please click here
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United Kingdom, please click here



Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United States:


For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United Kingdom, please click here


From the 2013 Moral Travel Compass for Our Grand Children's Journey of Life:
It’s bad to believe in technology;
It’s good to apply magic.
Keep your bearings!
Destination: ,

20 Sep - 23 Sep 2013 Bengkayang

Republic of Indonesia (CPI = 32/100 and BPI = 7.1/10.0) 
West Kalimantan aka Kalimantan Barat (KalBar)
Bengkayang
Jalan Perwira 2
Hotel Ridho +62562441546
Adequate double room (no. 20) with fan, private bathroom (bak mandi) and clean enough Asian squat loo for IDR 100,000.- or US$ 8.75 per night.
Friendly, young Dayak staff; reasonable English.
Beer: 330-ml cans of refrigerated Korean/Malaysian Dester Premium Pale Lager (c. 5.0 % alc./vol.) for only IDR 10,000.- or US$ 0.90 per can from any of the clever and smiling Hakka grocers in the town centre.


Click below for an interactive road map of the Hotel Ridho in Bengkayang and for directions:
N 00° 49.19' E 109° 28.95'










Matt: Walking around and exploring Bengkayang’s quirky town centre (i) with its busy Dayak morning market aka pasar pagi, (ii) the adjacent old and new Hakka shophouses with their multitude of grocery shops and (iii) the riverside slums along Sungai Sebalo, basically a natural sewer and probably a health hazard for rats, chatting with friendly urbanites and relieving the fatigue from my feet with the help of cheap Ankers and Desters over ice on the daily night market aka pasar malam (where I seemed to be the only pedestrian among at least hundreds of motorised two wheelers, in a country where probably each person above 14 years of age owns his or her personal scooter or motorcycle).



Matt: Agreeing with Henry Miller (“…one’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things…”) and establishing a simplified ethno-political model of West Kalimantan: (i) the Malay Indonesians, together with Muslim imports from Java, pray in their mosques to Allah, work mostly for the government and have the power to print money, (ii) the majority of Christian Dayak have neither much money nor much power but receive benefits and handouts from the government in exchange for loyalty, they take comfort in Catholic and Protestant churches and spend their money in the Chinese shops, (iii) the Chinese efficiently run their family businesses, generally keep a low profile and pay some tax to avoid anti-Chinese sentiment, burn plenty of fake money in their temples, invest their real money overseas and send their grown-up children to Australia, Canada and, for the time being, still to the United States.



Matt: Taking a weathered regional bus from Bengkayang’s bus terminal, located right in the town centre, to the nondescript one-horse-town of Anjungan (c. 90 km, 3 ½ hours, IDR 25,000.- or US$ 2.15 per person) and hereafter taking another dilapidated regional bus from Anjungan via Ngabang to the riverine town of Sanggau (c. 140 km, 3 hours, IDR 40,000.- or US$ 3.45 per person), thus seeing and smelling, for the first time on my trip, the murky waters of the mighty Kapuas River aka Sungai Kapuas, at 1,143 km the country’s longest river and a highway for cargo from Pontianak into Kalimantan’s heart of darkness.
Click below for a summary of this year's travels
2013 Map Konni & Matt



Facing Kalimantan
© Konni & Matt


 Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United Kingdom:
For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United States, please click here
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here
From the 2013 Moral Travel Compass for Our Grand Children's Journey of Life:
It’s bad to demand;
It’s good to do.
Keep your bearings!
Destination: ,

18 Sep - 20 Sep 2013 Sambas

Republic of Indonesia (CPI = 32/100 and BPI = 7.1/10.0) 
West Kalimantan aka Kalimantan Barat (KalBar)
Sambas
Jalan Akhmad Marzuki 8
Penginapan Sari II +62562392653
Basic but adequate twin room (no. 5) with fan, private bathroom (bak mandi) and clean enough Asian squat loo for IDR 90,000.- or US$ 7.90 per night.
Friendly and helpful Malay Indonesian staff; sufficient English.
Dry and beer-free town (unless you bring your own, or you have very good Hakka friends: “Can can, lah?” - “Can, lah!”) due to the strictly enforced prohibition laws in the paleoconservative, semi-autonomous Sultanate of Sambas which merged into the territory of the Indonesian Republic only less than 70 years ago.


Click below for an interactive road map of the Losmen Sari II in Sambas and for directions:
N 01° 21.63' E 109° 18.65'










Matt: Pretending to be a good tourist and visiting the run-down and neglected Sultan’s Palace aka istana alwatizkhoebillah, rather nondescript but in a prime location at the scenic junction of three rivers (Sungai Sambas Kecil, Sungai Teberau, Sungai Subah), constructed entirely from ironwood with flaking yellow as its dominant architectural colour and originally built by Sultan Muhammad Tajuddin I who reigned Sambas from 1668 - 1708 CE.



Matt: Meeting the talented photographer Fizar +628125685574 bubar_29@yahoo.co.id, one of the creative local shutterbugs, who was papping with his Nikon D3100 near the historical wooden bridge over the Sungai Sambas Kecil, talking (photo-)shop about both snapping a shot and editing the image on the computer and ending our impromptu workshop with a bowl of the town's vegetarian signature dish, the delicious bubur pedas (IDR 8,000.- or US$ 0.70 per helping).



Matt: Following the rotten and ramshackle plank walks along the northern and southern banks of the Little Sambas River aka Sungai Sambas Kecil, getting lost in a maze of wooden mosques, shacks and sheds on stilts, having many encounters with the friendly subjects of His Highness Sri Paduka al-Sultan Tuanku Muhammad Tarhan who try to find their inward peace with the help of a rather traditional form of Islam, learning that in Indonesia each person has to choose one out of six religions (an indoctrinating multiple-choice dilemma where atheism and agnosticism do not count) and wondering which one has less long-term side-effects for body, mind and soul - religion, hooch or ... photography?



 Matt: Partying, without loosing my head, with a boozy bunch of skull-friendly Dayak winos in one of Sambas’ safe shebeens, obscured by Eric Schmidt’s clouds, singing together one-world drinking songs, coming to the conclusion that the responsible consumption of home-distilled, tax-free arak putih aka cap cuan (est. 40 % alc./vol.) is more sustainable than knocking back highly-taxed Bintangs, and raising our glasses to the no-commenting of the AA's semantic trap: “If you admit that you're an alcoholic, then you're an alcoholic; if you don’t admit that you're an alcoholic, then you're in denial, which means you're an even worse alcoholic; cheers!”



Matt: Getting a ride in the non-a/c cabin of a worn Mitsubishi cargo truck from Sambas to the Bakati Dayak village of Subah (c. 55 km through neat but orangutan-free oil-palm plantations, 2 hours, IDR 20,000.- or US$ 1.75 for the ride), thereafter taking a regional bus from Subah to the Bakati Dayak village of Ledo (c. 35 km with many slash-and-burn land clearance fires on each road side, ¾ hour, IDR 20,000.- or US$ 1.75 per person), another third-world village where flatscreens probably outnumber Western and Eastern toilet bowls, and, lastly, an ojek ride from Ledo to the rugged, predominantly Chinese country town of Bengkayang (40 km, 1 hour, IDR 50,000.- or US$ 4.40 for the dusk ride through patches of secondary forest, small rubber and larger palm-oil plantations, sailing past many run-down residential shacks with brand-new satellite dishes).

“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set,
then there'd be peace.” 
2013 Map Konni & Matt


Recommended books - click below for your Amazon order from the United States:
For Amazon schnaeppchens from Germany, please click here
For Amazon deals from Canada, please click here
For Amazon deals from the United Kingdom, please click here


From the 2013 Moral Travel Compass for Our Grand Children's Journey of Life:
It’s bad to know;
It’s good to learn.
Keep your bearings!
Destination: ,
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