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As I write this I’m sitting on our jungle riverboat (klotok) wondering how to begin to write this blog. Once again DawnO booked us one hell of an adventure. For the last 4 days and 3 nights of our Indonesian holiday we have lived on our klotok with a crew of 4. We have a guide, the riverboat captain, a cook and a mechanic. We have been boating along Borneo’s Sekonyer River which winds its way through a national park that is home to some pretty amazing creatures. The crown jewel of this jungle is the orangutans. We’ve pretty much filled our memory card with some unbelievable pictures so I guess the only way to write this thing is to just get to it.

Each day we have had the absolute treat of watching orangutan feeding time. In the national park there are three camps that house park rangers and conservationists that care for “semi-wild” orangutans. Part of this care is providing one meal a day of bananas to the inhabitants while the rest of the time the animals forage for themselves. Every day at the same time, the orangutans descend on the feeding platform and feast on their favourite fruit provided by the park rangers.

There is a hierarchy that the orangutans follow which starts with the alpha male, who has fought his way to the top. He doesn’t always show up for feeding time, but when he does, he gets the privilege of dining first. The females will sometimes join, but the other males hang back until they feel it’s safe to approach (always when the alpha male has left). During our first day’s feeding, the alpha male, Roger, made quite an entrance. Typically the orangutans will swing in from the tree tops and make their way down along the outskirts of the feeding platform keeping somewhat clear of the tourists who have a designated area where they can sit and take pictures. Roger decided to make his entrance from behind the crowd of people. When we all turned to look we found him in a tree, his feet on the main trunk, and each hand holding a branch where the tree had split into a “Y” shape. At this point he effortlessly ripped the tree in two as if he was Hulk Hogan and the tree was his shirt. When he came down to the ground he first walked towards DawnO, who quickly moved out of his path. He then walked towards me and made eye contact, at which point I bowed my head and tried to look as respectful as I could. He brushed past me and made his way to the feeding platform. All eyes were on King Roger.

Every time we’ve encountered orangutans there has always been a mother with either 1 or 2 of their young near by. The younger ones always stuck pretty close to their mothers who didn’t seem to mind us taking photos.

Orangutans were not the only animals we got close to. Each day we have been very fortunate to pull up to the river edge for an up-close encounter with proboscis monkeys, macaques, and stork-billed kingfishers. We even got to see a saltwater crocodile, though we didn’t get a picture. We also saw the Malaysian false glacial which is an endangered crocodile looking creature with a very skinny snout.

On the first evening we had a “night-time nature trek” which consisted of a ranger taking the lead, DawnO and I next, and our guide, Arya, bringing up the rear. Our ranger started the hike into the tropical rainforest with a flashlight in his hand and flip flops on his feet and every 30 steps or so he’d shine his light on some creature of the night. One of the more peculiar sights were the various sleeping birds who appeared to sleep with their eyes open. We saw fireflies, which was a first for DawnO, and one of the creepiest things we saw was a tarantula which attacked a long blade of grass the ranger used to trick him out of his nest in the ground.

About halfway through the night trek we heard one of the scariest sounds you’ll hear in the jungle, day or night. That sound was our guide saying one word… “Run.” All of a sudden the ranger in front of us started moving fast with DawnO and I on his tail. I could hear our guide stomping his feet loudly but he didn’t seem to be running towards us. We got about 20 feet away and our ranger stopped. Our guide finally jogged up to where we were and said, “Fire ants. One bite is like a bee sting.” I had never been happier that I was wearing shoes.

Some of you may already be familiar with my disdain for mischievous monkeys. It’s not all monkeys, just the little a-holes that like to cause mischief by stealing things and creating havoc wherever they go. Macaques are this breed of monkey. Today we were docked next to this tree that had about 6 or 7 macaques in it. They kept getting closer and closer to our boat, looking like they were flirting with boarding. They acted like they were interested in eating the leaves that were in that particular tree. I’m no fool, so I made sure everything that we had that was small and lightweight was securely stowed where a monkey couldn’t get at it. After about an hour of living in harmony, we heard this loud bang on the roof of our boat. It sounded like someone stomped really loudly from above us. I didn’t think a crew member had gone up there so I did the brave thing and told DawnO to take a peek. She saw a macaque who immediately took off running when they made eye contact. He jumped into the palm leaves growing on the other side of the boat, away from his accomplices. He was now trapped on the other side with no easy escape route. He eventually made his way to the rope that was used to tie our boat to the shore. He shimmied across it to the bow of our boat. That’s when DawnO decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. She lunged at him and he panicked! He took a flying leap towards his monkey friends and came up short. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a wet monkey, but it was one of the best things I’ve seen on this entire trip. I was so proud of my wife today.

Tomorrow we start our long plane ride home. Our next blog will be coming at you in May!

We escaped the big city of Jakarta to an island in the Flores Sea. Once again DawnO did a masterful job at picking our “Hilltop” accommodations as our home base.

After getting our bearings we started booking our various excursions including the boat trip to Komodo National Park. First, we had a day to kill so we decided to find our way to a small village where we could book a private boat to one of the smallest islands in Indonesia, and a very cool spot called the Rangko Cave. That’s when we met a hot little firecracker named “Scoopy”.

With DawnO navigating from the back seat, we began our scooter trek. We took the way that our navigation app told us to take which meant we had to plough our way through some muddy sections. All-in-all Scoopy proved up to the challenge and got us to the Rangko village.

We hired a pair of brothers to take us to our destinations. When we reached the smallest Island in Indonesia, it was only visible when the waves weren’t crashing over it. This was the only picture we took:

At this point our boat had bottomed out at the “island”. As our team of brothers worked our boat free, we nearly capsized. However, I escaped without getting too wet, DawnO was on the wet side of the boat. As we floated away, our guides told us the island is way more spacious during low tide.

Next stop was the Rangko Cave. The cave has a pool you can swim in but the light only enters for about 1.5 hours in the day.

After we returned to Scoopy we elected to take a 100% paved route back to our hotel.

Next on the excursion list was an all day excursion to 3 islands including Komodo National Park. The fourth destination was the possibility, not the promise, that we could snorkel with Manta Rays. When we booked we had the option to pay a little more and book a fast boat, which included 2 more stops, but we decided on the slow boat option because we knew there would be less people on board. I could be wrong, but I estimate that for our 13 hours total time, 9.5 of those hours were spent on board the slow boat.

9.5

Hours

First stop, Padar Island, where you can climb 900+ stairs to get a view of 3 different coloured sand beaches: white, grey, and pink.

Our second stop was the main event! It was time to see some Komodo Dragons!

It was cool to see the dragons. The smaller ones moved around while the bigger ones mostly parked in the shade. The park itself was a little underwhelming but it could have been that the massive cruise boat that supplied thousands of people to the island may have scared off a lot of critters. Our nature walk around the park didn’t provide anything but exercise which was needed after logging 5 hours on the slow boat.

Next stop, pink beach time! We didn’t take a lot of pictures here so I’ve added a bunch of photos we took from our boat:

The last stop on our excursion was Manta Point. Now this was the point where the boat crew keep their eyes peeled for Manta Rays and when they see one, a boatload of frantic snorkel-sucking passengers jump into the sea to catch a glimpse and say they got to swim with manta rays. I would be lying if I said it’s not on our bucket list to swim with a manta ray in the wild. I also must remind our readers that my ability to spot animals in the wild is quite abysmal. Here are 2 versions of our story.

DawnO, who chose to wear a life jacket, was one of only 2 boat passengers to spot the 3 manta rays from the boat. She is also debatably the only one in the water to “swim with them”. Once the rays had swam out of view she effortlessly made her way back to the boat to go again. The boat motored up current to look for more majestic sea creatures. She told the others that watching them swim was like watching large blankets gliding along the sea floor.

Manta rays-Check!

When I heard the battle cry to jump in the sea, I believed I tripped over the side and immediately discovered that I could only see through one eye as the other was fogged up so bad I had to pause a moment to spit in it and clean it out. That’s when the current took hold. I didn’t quite notice as I was now trying to look for manta rays. After about 30 seconds of that I looked up and noticed the boat was not down current, as promised by a crew member, but was up current loading the rest of the passengers. I was getting pretty tired and remembered that I flunked out of the Maroon level in swimming so I should probably stop fooling myself and start kicking my diabetic ass to the back of the boat, which up until now was one of the slowest moving motorized water vehicles on the planet. I kicked and kicked and kicked but every time I checked my progress, I seemed further away than when I started. Panic set in and now I pulled my snorkel out of my mouth to try and yell for help. Unfortunately I was breathing so hard I managed to pull in a breath of salt water. After coughing that out I put in one final effort and swam as close as I could to the boat. That’s when they threw me a rope.

Manta rays-Maybe next time.

Stay tuned for one more blog before we leave Indonesia. Next up, a river boat adventure in Borneo with orangutans!

Back in August I was itching to book some travel. I asked RobO if I could pull the trigger on the next cheap deal that lit me up and hoped it would be somewhere in Asia. The very next day a seat sale to Indonesia came up and I pounced.

Having travelled as much as we have, we have strong preferences on the types and timings of the flights that we book, so I was less than enthusiastic when United made some major changes to our booking. We ended up with an overnight layover in Houston, which is a great excuse to visit our cousin Byron and hit up our favourite Tex-Mex place, Manny’s. This time we also got to meet one of Byron’s friends Troy, who travels a lot for work. As luck would have it, Troy had expiring United points and upgraded our first flight to business class. Total game changer.

Our schedule change also gave us a couple of days in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta. I wasn’t all that jazzed about time in a sprawling Asian capital city and it delivered as anticipated.
We stayed in Glodok, which is the Chinatown area. The sights and smells were like any Chinatown market we’ve visited around the world.

We reacquainted ourselves with the terrifying act of crossing a busy street. The key is to start walking and without changing pace as the drivers accommodate. To me every time feels like it will be my last street crossing and I have to strongly resist the urge to sprint to safety.

We visited the Old Town area which has Dutch colonial architecture. I could imagine how beautiful it would have been in it’s prime.

We were struck by the genuine helpfulness of some Indonesian people including:

• a bus driver who drove us to another place, got out of the bus to show us how to buy tickets and where to catch the correct bus.
• a guy who came sprinting across the subway station with bills to change our money to the ones that would go in the ticket machines.
• many smiling and welcoming faces.

After 2 days in the city we were thrilled to fly to paradise. Here’s a sneak peak.