Advertisement
Published: March 21st 2013
Banjarmasin
Yasir's fathers, Ardimansyah's, houseI travel alone, at least, most of the time I do. It isn’t that I especially want to travel on my own, but it is just a fact that the vast majority of the people on this planet do not have the time or the money to do so. If they have the money, they don’t have the time, if they have the time, they don’t have the money. In the west, it is a different situation, there it, in the end, comes down to choice and most folks choose differently than I do. I chose to focus entirely on seeing as much of this great big world as possible, and with it eschewed the comfortable certainties of life: the job, the pension, the white picket fence with dog and family, the mortgage, the stress, the responsibilities.
But as I said, most decide to stay with what they know best and that is fair enough. It, however, does mean that whenever I go gallivanting, I do not have the luxury of the company of friends. They have families, they have nice jobs, they, in short, have other priorities and, I might add, they are quite happy with their lives. So,
Banjarmasin
My room in my temporary home if I want to explore all the fascinating countries and cultures that exist, I have to do it by myself, and that is, as anybody who reads my blogs knows, exactly what I have been doing and continue to do.
This might sound lonely to you, and, I admit, sometimes it is. Yes, there are times that I crave the company of others, where I am tired of being stared at because I am the only white person around, where I just want to meet another traveller and have a normal conversation. But, on the whole, when backpacking one is seldom really alone. If it isn’t another globetrotter, it will be the staring local who will start a conversation with you.
I have been in Kalimantan for over a month now, and I have met exactly ten other foreigners here, all of them on Derawan Island. This means that after the first week, I haven’t met or seen another ‘bule’ which is the Indonesian term for white person (it literarily means albino). Now I must confess, I was looking forward to coming here, exactly for that reason. I was slightly exhausted of being on the pancake trail. I
Banjarmasin
Yasir and I, for dinner at the best restaurant in town for local Banjar food have been on it for the last couple of years, because that is what mainland S.E. Asia is, for all sense and purposes. Sure you can get away from it for a while, but never for long, there are just too many of us traipsing around that part of Asia. It was fun while it lasted, but I was looking forward to, let’s say, something slightly more adventurous.
And it is adventurous and it is hard, and I am not meeting other foreigners, and nobody speaks English over here, so you would think I should be ecstatic about it all. This is, after all, what I wanted right? Ah, but here comes the schizophrenic part, when I told you I didn’t want to meet any other tourists, I didn’t mean nobody at all! What I was hoping for was a drop in the numbers, not to zero, but to maybe one or two a week or so. Just enough to meet somebody now and again to swap tales and perhaps share some information, or a meal, or even an adventure with. I guess one should always be careful what one wishes for.
I am making it sound rather
Banjarmasin
Floating market, food stall dismal, am I not? And that isn’t the case. While I might not have met any other backpackers, this has been amply compensated for by the generosity and hospitality of random Indonesians. And so I shall introduce you to Yasir and his immediate family. His wife Desi, his father Ardimansyah and mother Wahdah. There are more, his cousins, and uncles and aunts, and grandmothers and grandfathers, but I don’t have their names and even if I did, this blog would become rather Biblical if I would have to mention every last one of them. I did, however,
meet all of them on the bus from Balikpapan to Banjarmasin. They were returning home from a wedding, and the whole bus belonged to the same family. Before long, questions were being thrown at the sole ‘bule’ on the bus, ‘
Where are you from? What is your name? How old are you? Are you married? Why are you here? What is your job? Why are you travelling alone? How long have you been here? What do you think of our country?’ and many, many more inquiries.
This is where Yasir enters the picture, because he was the one who spoke English the
Banjarmasin
Buying and selling best and he was eager to have somebody to practice his language skills on. While I was able to answer all that they asked of me in their language, I was quite happy to have Yasir around and have him translate, because it was just so much easier. Therefore it was a mutual beneficial arrangement. Yasir got to practice his English, I could give my weary brain a rest.
Fast forward a bit and I found myself in Banjarmasin in the house of Yasir’s father. Somewhere along the line I was invited to stay with them. Now, when I say I was in his house, I mean, I had the whole house to myself. Ardimansyah is a property developer and has several houses, so he put me up in one of his. Well, actually he put me up in the best and the biggest one.
For the next couple of days I got the royal treatment. Yasir took me around in either his car or on his motorcycle, he took me out for dinner, lunch, breakfast, to the museum, to the floating market, to the city, really just everywhere. Not to be outdone, his father took me for
Banjarmasin
Early morning lunch as well and on a little sightseeing trip of his own. I was prohibited from paying for anything, I was their guest and any attempt I made was discarded. And we talked, and we talked, and I get to know his family and they were so nice and always smiling and laughing and feeding me (I must have looked like I was starving).
These were good days, and while I was there I wasn’t alone. And I thought to myself, ‘
Would this have happened if I wasn’t travelling on my own?’ I can’t answer that question of course, but I think, on the whole, there is a much bigger chance of something like this occurring when you are by yourself. People are more prone to inviting a solo traveller, on top of that you tend to be more open when it is just you.
That was Banjarmasin, and that was an example of the advantages of travelling alone. But after that it was back to reality. And the reality was… that I was on my own again. To Palanka Raya, to the stares and the non-existent English. Back to having to cope in Indonesian with getting to
destinations which have so little information in my guidebook that it renders it near to useless. Trying to figure it out on my own, is there even public transport going that way, and if so, from where? Do the people in my hotel in Palanka Raya know? And that is one of the great disadvantages of being by oneself, there is nobody else to consult with or to help out. I have to rely on my own wits, and my own wits somehow get me there most of the time.
So, once again I get to where I want to get, to Tewah and Tumbang Malahoi, up the Kahayan River. According to the little piece of unusable information the Lonely Planet gives on this, it is a journey on which ‘
even confirmed independent travelers may want professional help.’ That is a load of crap, it isn’t hard to get to these places, whoever wrote it up clearly never tried. I know this for sure, because the one line on Tewah is completely wrong, there is supposed to be a beautifully carved longhouse there. Tewah doesn’t have a longhouse! Luckily Tumbang Malahoi does, however I discovered that there was a
Banjarmasin
Fruit and veggies cheaper, shorter, more comfortable and easier way to get there than via Tewah, which is the second thing Lonely Planet got wrong. Tumbang Malahoi is not up the river from Tewah, in fact it is not even on the same river, unlike their map indicates and their vague description implies.
I would never have gone to Tewah had I known this beforehand, but that is what you get when you go beyond guidebooks and need to figure it out by yourself in a language you only half grasp. Part and parcel of the adventure.
The positive bit is that I had an interesting motorcycle journey on a muddy logging road through the jungle to get from Tewah to Tumbang Malahoi, so maybe I should thank Lonely Planet for misdirecting me. Getting back to Palanka Raya from Tumbang Malahoi also was interesting, with the shared taxi getting stuck in knee deep sludge at one point.
And while I was out there, on these dismal dirt roads in the jungle I felt like this was it. This was why I travelled, for exactly that experience. To get out there, to get dirty and gritty, to explore, to get to
places that are not easy to get to, where nobody speaks my language and white folks are far and few between.
For too long now have I been on the well-trodden path, and it left me with a vaguely unsatisfying feeling which I couldn’t place until now. I have discovered I am an off-road vehicle kind of guy. Put me on the tarmac and I feel under-utilized, but get me into the wild and I feel alive.
However my time is up here, my finances drained, the engine slightly overheated and the petrol gauge is in the red. I need to go home to patch myself up, fill up the tank, and while I am at it, get some more money.
I would like to end this here blog with a big thank you to Yasir and his family for taking a weary stranger into their house and making him feel at home. But now it is time to go where the heart lies…
Advertisement
Tot: 0.109s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 14; qc: 39; dbt: 0.0513s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Linn
non-member comment
Lucky you are a man
Hi Ralfie, I agree that if you travel on your own it can be lonely but like you say the upside is you meet more people, as you are more approachable on your own and more open to it as well. I do have to say that as a woman as much as I would have liked to accept invitations by locals I never really did, I was always scared of what could happen being on my own. I do think that as a man you don't have to be as cautious but then again maybe I overdid it. When I read about all the nice locals you met and the interesting conversations you had with them, I feel that I missed out on a integral part of the whole travelling experience. Lots of love, Linn