Month: February 2016
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Orang-Utans
Orang-Utans live only in the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. I came to Pangkalan Bun in the south of Borneo to see these great apes. I had rented a boat with a guide (and a captain, and a cook, and a guy for everything else) to take me up the Sekonyer river into Tanjung…
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River touring
The long-tail boat keeps going upriver, and the river is increasingly narrow. In one place it was blocked by a logjam big enough to build a house on, so we couldn’t just run over it at high speed. So the guide and Captain did what must be part of any respectable jungle trek: they got…
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Mahakam River
The Mahakam River in East Kalimantan is nearly a thousand kilometers long. Along its shores are primeval rain forests where one can spot some unusual animals like the long-nosed monkey and colorful kingfisher birds. I went up the river with a guide and a fast long-tail boat to see what nature has to offer, and…
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Borneo
To the south of the South Chinese Sea, complete wrapped by the other Indonesian islands, the Phillipines, Vietnam, and Malaysia there is a large white spot on my map: Borneo. Most of the island is part of Indonesia, called Kalimantan, and the main city is Balikpapan. From here I’ll start my explorations with a trip…