Borneo – Indonesia

After an overnight stay at Anara Hotel in Jakarta’s International Airport, we flew from the domestic terminal to Pangkalan Bun.
We were met by Arif, the founder and owner of Orangutan Applause, a boutique tour boat company. His smile and welcome were as wide and memorable as the sky washed in sunshine.
It’s a twenty-five-minute drive to his riverboat along pot-holed narrow roads, past colorful village houses set against a backdrop of vivid green foliage.
As we turned down a tiny lane leading to the river, we were greeted by two wiry, strong, smiling men engaged in building a ‘klotok,’ one of the traditional wooden riverboats that ply the narrow waterways.

Klotoks drifting down the river.

We spent three full days and two nights on Arif’s expertly restored teak-wood klotok, gliding along a maze of waterways flanked by the jungle, populated by exotic birds, long-tailed Macaque monkeys, endangered White-bearded Gibbon monkeys, and the unique Silver-Leaf Langur monkeys who have heart-shaped faces and piercing eyes encased in a mass of metal-grey spikey hair. Their babies have bright orange fur. The contrast in color of a baby clinging to its mother is stunning. Then, there is the Proboscis monkey that boasts a large, hooked nose, copper-colored fur, and a long tail.

Our teak-wood klotok

Silver Leaf Langur Monkey

The Proboscis monkey.

In the afternoons, we hiked through the jungle in search of Orangutans. Each day delivered a different experience. We headed for the feeding sites where food is set out for those Orangutans that were captured and held in zoos or kept as pets and have been reintroduced into their natural habitat. Progress has been made to the point where many of these Orangutans can now fend for themselves, with the result that, on some days, none of them show up at the feeding sites.

We observed them feeding on corn or sweet potatoes, youngsters playing and wrestling, babies clinging to their mothers, a massive old guy lumbering along the jungle floor, a mother carrying her baby on her back, while teenagers swung like acrobats from tree-top to tree-top.

I highly recommend reading the book Reflections of Eden by Burité Galdikas before visiting Borneo. Burité Galdikas conducted a forty-year field study of Orangutans in Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park. She lived in the jungle and studied them day and night. She named many of them and watched them courting, mating, babies being born, and growing into teenagers, then adults. In 1971, she established Camp Leakey, named after her mentor Louis Leaky, a world-famous paleoanthropologist.

We were fortunate to have Arif as a guide. He is a biologist who studied birds at Samara State University in Central Java. In 2009, he visited Borneo to spend some time in the pristine forest observing its exotic birds. This ultimately led him to study Orangutans in their natural environment.
In 2022, he delivered a Tour Guide Training course on topics he has mastered and shares generously with others.
In 2023, Arif was chosen as a speaker on Biodiversity Research to Support Sustainable Tourism in Tanjung Puting National Park. He is a highly respected, humble man with a peaceful aura and a sunshine personality. He has a remarkable eye for spotting birds and monkeys and can identify the Orangutans by name.

Arif ready to hike in the jungle.

Our time spent on the klotok was beyond our expectations. The cook prepared three wholesome, delicious meals a day. Each meal consisted of a variety of dishes, beautifully presented. Coffee, tea, and purified water were available all day.

Lunch on the boat.

Dinner on the boat

We had a small private shower and toilet and a shared washbasin.

We slept outdoors on a raised deck on a comfortable mattress dressed in colorful sheets.
While we enjoyed our dinner, the crew silently set to work enclosing our mattress in an impenetrable mosquito net.

Two of our wonderful crew members.

We would fall asleep to the lullaby of the sounds of the forest and awake at the break of dawn. Cicadas, birds, and monkeys were our wake-up choir. The river flowed past our ‘windows’ so high that we could touch the water.
We awoke to a paradise. A veritable Garden of Eden.

It’s evident why Professor Burité Galidikas titled her book Reflections Of Eden. One can see Eden reflected in the waterways.