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Yes, it had been a bit of a bitch to get to Derawan. The one GOOD thing about this is that your average tourist wasn’t going to attempt the trip. After all, not many people want to spend their holiday (vacation) using up 2 or 3 days to argue with car or boat drivers and stay in dirty towns just to get to an island. That’s just fine by us! We had finally found what we were looking for…very few western faces, small village life, and absolutely incredible views of pristine water everywhere we looked. We would spend our nights at a place called Danakan, run by incredibly nice people who did everything they could to make our stay as pleasant as possible. Our first morning was spent waking up to donuts and coffee. Well, we use the term donuts very loosely here. If you’re gonna eat THESE donuts, you better get ready to have a very heavy, oily, butter coated breakfast. It’s quite possible that you will gain half a kilo for every 2 donuts you eat. Oh well, how can you complain when you get FREE food delivered to you as soon as you wake up by a sweet women with a big smile on her face, trying as hard to speak English as we are to speak Indonesian. If that’s not enough to put a smile on your face, how about being followed and bombarded by children as soon as you walk into the “street”, or dirt road winding around the island, who all want to know your name and tell you theirs. Just the smallest amount of your time and attention is enough to make them smile from ear to ear and run away laughing because the white people talked back to them.

As soon as we woke up in the morning and got one look at the water outside of our room, we could not wait to get in and go snorkeling. Finding snorkel gear is one of the easiest things you can do on the island. Just about everyone has gear for rent. It took us a whole 10 minutes to rent some gear and jump in the water. After being spoiled in the Perhentians, we weren’t sure if we were going to be as impressed or not. But, within the first 20 minutes, we were already seeing schools of amazing fish, some huge turtles you couldn’t even come close to fitting your arms around, and one fish that Nate especially had been dying to see…lionfish! Sure you don’t want to get to close to these guys, but how awesome was it that we were swimming just a couple meters above them. We thought we’d never want to get out of the water! Although, that quickly changed as well. As we were snorkeling, Nate heard Jessie scream underwater and rushed over to her. “Baby what’s wrong?” Jessie, “I just got stung by a jellyfish. I need to get our right now!” We quickly swam back to the jetty and got out. As Jessie took her mask off, her face was burning immediately. You couldn’t see it as clearly as some of the ones you see on TV, but we could both definitely tell she had been stung by looking at some of the purple dots on her lip that combined to form a small line. Nate, “Well, you know what I have to do don’t you?” He stood up and started to untie his suit. Jessie laughed for just a split second, “Yeah right!” Nate, “I’m just kidding.” Obviously he was. For those of you who have never heard what you’re supposed to do when stung by a jellyfish, one thing people say you should do is pee on the sting to help relieve some of the pain. Leave it to Nate to think of that! “What kind of jellyfish was it? Did you see it?” Jessie, “I think it was one of those tampon looking ones.” Well, that may not have been the scientific name for it, be he knew what she was talking about and they were hard as hell to see until it was too late. Poor Jessie was NOT exactly up to snorkeling any more for the day.

Instead, we went for a walk around the island, which took a whole 45 minutes, stopping to say hello to many of the locals who greeted us at every chance. At one point, we were walking past a small group of young girls who kept staring at her and smiling. One of them very shyly asked, “Photo?” Jessie smiled back, “Yeah it’s ok.” Before she knew it, she was mauled by about 10 different girls who were all fighting over who got to stand with their arm around her for the photo while a bunch of random people suddenly appeared from nowhere to all snap pictures of the group. You’d think these girls were just given permission to take a picture with Justin Beiber, or some other douche bag teen idol that young girls go crazy for. Jessie, “So, is this what a celebrity feels like?” After seeing how excited they all got just to take a picture with her, how could she not say yes to something like that? Nate, “You know damn well you’re about to be like 20 people’s wallpaper on their cell phones! Haha!” Guaranteed, she was. The other thing we noticed in the afternoon, was at low tide, the island was almost magical. It seemed like sand bars appeared from everywhere, including one that stretched out a good kilometer from the beach that literally made it possible to walk right out into the middle of the ocean. Granted, you probably wouldn’t want to make the mistake of being stuck trying to get back at high tide and take the chance of being on a National Geographic show about being lost at sea, but it was absolutely amazing! We were awe struck each day that we spent looking at the amazingly beautiful water and never ending white sand bars…it was the type of place that no picture can ever do it justice.

We will say that the one thing we really didn’t enjoy very much on Derawan, was the food. Some of the fish looked pretty good and we’re sure it was, but for the most part, you could order rice…or noodles (Nasi Goreng or Mie Goreng). Let’s just say there were many days where we may or may not have been tearing up a pack of peanut butter cookies from one of the local little shops. Although, even though some of the food we ate wasn’t the greatest, some of our best interaction with kids came at dinner. One night we were sitting down at one of the few tables that were outside instead of in the house, when we noticed a little boy and a little girl eyeballing us from across the road. They couldn’t have been more than about 3 years old, and they cautiously started to creep closer and closer to us as we were waiting for our food. As soon as they saw us smile at them, it was all over. That was like the green light they had been waiting for. They ran over to us as fast as they could, said hello, and ran across the street just as fast as before. The next time they ran over, Jessie got the little girl to slap her “five” before running away. Oh boy, now it was a new game. For the next half hour we would be taking regular breaks from our dinner for Jessie to give the little girl five, and Nate to give the little boy five. If we weren’t paying attention, they would be standing there, just waiting for us to turn around keep the game going. Some might be a little annoyed with this, but we say, how can you be? They were too damn cute NOT to laugh and play with, even if we WERE having dinner. Now, watching male cats take turns pinning down the female cats and humping in the middle of the street was something maybe you could do without, but whatever. Haha. The sight of a man pushing a wheelbarrow down the road with a container of ice cream and a little radio to attract attention was more than enough to make us laugh as well. Hey, it’s the ice cream truck…er…wheelbarrow.

With Jessie fairly traumatized from her recent fight with a jellyfish, we decided not to do much snorkeling the next day and just chill out on the beach instead. Besides, we were in need of some good beach time without doing too much. At low tide, we decided to take a little walk out onto one of the jettys. All of the sudden, we heard a gasping breath and looked over to see a huge turtle coming up for air…then another, and another…and another. They were literally everywhere around the end of this jetty! We’ve never seen so many sea turtles at one time. Then the wind started to pick up and we looked over just in time to see Jessie’s new pair of sunglasses go flying down about 10 feet and into the water. “Oh no! Those are my new ones!” Nate looked down into the water and then at the task he would have climbing down the Jetty (with no ladder or stairs) to get them…then to Jessie, “Babe is it worth the risk of climbing down that just for a cheap pair of sunglasses?” In Jessie’s mind, there was only one answer. “Yes.” Well then, that settled it. Nate very carefully started to make his way down the half falling apart jetty, hanging on and swinging down like a monkey through the wooden beams and supports while trying not to fall or cut his feet on the barnacles stuck to the wood. Of course, this was very amusing to a couple of local men who were walking on the jetty, stopping to watch Nate scale down the old wood. As soon as he had the shades and scaled his way back up to safety, the fun was over for them and the suspense was gone, so they could return to their walk. “Well, that was fun.”

Actually, the real fun came later that night, after eating yet ANOTHER plate of Nasi Goreng. We swear, we’ve eaten so much rice the past 6 months that our bodies probably won’t even be able to handle normal western food by the time we go home! We had heard about a ranger living on the island who was in charge of taking care of the turtle nests and that you could go see them lay eggs almost every night. We’ve already seen the largest turtles in the world, Bula, lay eggs when we were in Costa Rica, but we thought it might be cool to see anyways. We met up with the ranger just down the road and made our way to the end of the island. They started looking for nests right away, when one of the guys came over to us and said, “Here, here. Hurry.” He took us over to a place where about a dozen baby turtles were making their way across the sand and towards the water. We would quickly find the nest they came from and help gather up the babies as they hatched out of their shells and pushed their way up through the sand to the surface right in front of us. Not only did we get to see them coming out of the nest and help gather them, but we also go to release them in the ocean when we were done! How awesome is that? We did get to see a female laying eggs a little later, as well as the phosphorescent plankton getting washed up to shore, and the Milky Way up in the sky like we’ve never seen before in our lives. We probably could’ve stayed there and just looked up at the stars for a couple of hours. It had turned out to be a pretty incredible day, and no jellyfish stings is always a plus!

Derawan was pretty much everything we had hoped it would be. That was a good thing considering it had been such a pain in the ass to get to! No matter. We truly enjoyed our time here and were glad we made the trip. The family we stayed with was SO nice, and so were all of the people on this tiny little island. We can only hope we get to have more experiences like this while we’re in Indonesia.

Traveler Tips
Getting There (from Tarakan)
Tanjung Selor-You can take a ferry from a different jetty than what is listed in the LP guide. The 2 hour ferry ride costs… Once you arrive in Tanjung Selor, you don’t really have any option but to get a Kijang to Berau or all the way to Tanjung Batu. Kijang to Berau costs 50,000 IDR per person.
Tanjung Batu- Kijangs from Berau cost the same, 50,000 IDR per person. These are pretty set prices unless you decide to charter a vehicle. When you arrive in Tanjung Batu at the pier, the cost is a set 250,000 IDR per boat for up to 6 people.
Staying
Make sure you make it through Tanjung Selor, Berau, and Tanjung Batu if at all possible to avoid being stuck with few cheap options for accommodation, or not at all. On Derawan, there are plenty of nice places to stay at, most for about 125,000-150,000 IDR including breakfast. We stayed at Loseman Danikan and paid 125,000 IDR per night. The owners are very friendly and welcoming. We would definitely stay here again.
Eating
It’s highly recommended by us for you to try bringing some food with you to avoid eating rice or noodles every single day for every meal. We heard the seafood was pretty good, but if you’re on a tight budget, you won’t be ordering any. Most Nasi Goreng and Mie Goreng dishes will run you between 10,000-12,000 IDR on average. Don’t expect to eat at restaurants since your options are either eating at Warungs or in someone’s living room.
Transportation
You can walk around the entire island in one hour, but if you’d like to see the other islands, expect to pay somewhere around 1,000,000 IDR to charter a boat for the day. Return trips back to Tanjung Batu are the same price as getting to Derawan.

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