An Extraordinary Story from Derawan

8/22/2019 An Extraordinary Story from Derawan

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An extraordinary story from Derawan ;-)

There are so many good memories arising from my last 4-day holiday that I want to

capture my impression in this mini journal and to share with you, esp with those who

have passion to explore the nature in this part of the world and those who like to make

new friends wherever you go on holiday. So, I decide to write this on an iPad when a

staff from an airliner announces that my flight from Berau to Balikpapan will be delayed

for 2 hours. To be frank, I should do it while my memory is still fresh and vivid, and

definitely before I go back to the office tomorrow where there will be a lot of things

lying on my office desk for me to read or to take action. More importantly, these days Itended to forget things easily. Maybe that's the sign of aging? :-P

Where the story began...

It wasn't until early Friday evening (last week) that I had some thought that having to

spend 4 days off work in Jakarta could bore me to death. So I decided to search for

exotic destinations in Indonesia. What else would be better than google. There, I found

quite a number of places that I wanted to visit, apart from those i already had in my

mind. However, all the places showed up didn't fit with my schedule. Most of them would

require one or two weeks holiday at the minimum. Then, I sought help from a last resort,

my local staff at the office, and she told me to go to Pulau (island) Derawan in the

eastern part of Kalimantan, aka Borneo. That was the first time I heard of this place. I

went on google image for a bit and found some nice photos. At some point, my heart was

already set for this destination in spite of my almost zero knowledge of the place. First

thing, I went on booking a return ticket from Jakarta to Berau, which was the closest

town to Derawan. At the time when I completed the ticket booking, it's already almost

midnight. Then I proceeded on the next step to book the accomm. This time I consulted

with my 2010 Lonely Planet edition and Trip Advisor since, i thought, they were quite


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reliable. I found a few places that I would want to stay with and suited with my budget

as a sole traveler. But calling them to enquire for room availability at that very time was

probably not a good idea, considering that Kalimantan was one hour ahead of Jakarta. I

was left with no choice but to walk in and ask for the availability. After packing all

necessary stuff, I had only an hour of sleep cos my flight was at 6 am.

Day 1: Arriving in Derawan..

With 2 flight connections plus transit, road and boat transfers, it took me just over 9

hours to arrive at Derawan. I arrived around 3.30 pm and went straight to the resort

that i wanted to stay, Derawan Dive Lodge - it's probably the most up market place to

stay on this island. However, upon arrival, i was told that the rooms were fully booked.

ErrrghFair enough, they only had 10. Well...then i moved on to Losmen (lodge) Danakan,

a place recommended by Lonely Planet. Luckily. (may be?), they had a room for me, but

it wasn't so immaculate compared to other places that I used to stay before when on

holidays. Anyway, I couldn't afford to be so picky cos I was so tired from lack of sleep

and not eating enough food on my course of journey there. The room was very basic and

so was the shower/toilet. I just liked the fact that the place was run by a family and

they had jetty with bungalows sticking out from the beach to the sea, so I could stay as

close to the sea as I wanted.

That day, I didn't do much, just went to explore the local village and ate nasi goreng

ayam (chicken fried rice) for dinner and came back to the resort to rest, finally! Though

my body was already in bed, my mind wasn't. I was thinking to myself why troubling

myself like this, coming a long way to this Muslim/sea gypsies village to sleep with

mosquitoes and some other weird creatures sucking my blood off my legs and arms, alsowith just cold water running from a tap to a bucket for a shower. Suddenly, there was a

thought coming to my mind that I should go back to Jakarta the very next day, so I

would still have 2 full days to rest easily at my apartment with hot shower and endless


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channels of cable tv, though could be quite boringly. Anyway, I didnt make a decision

that night cos I fell asleep before then.

Oh.. Forget to mention that the local village on Derawan had the charm of itself. It

made me feel like going back to some mid twentieth century, before I was born, ofcourse :-) And if you happened to crave for pizza, pasta, french fries, or even an

Internet cafe, then forget it! Only sign of modern day living was satellite dishes that

every house seemed to have.

Day 2: Heaven on earth and under the water...

I got up so early, as early as 7 am, that's unusual for me when on a holiday; it must be

because I slept so early and so long in the night before. In the morning I was greeted

by the owner of the Losmen. He kindly drew my attention to the sea floor under my

bungalow. There, there were two big sea turtles grazing sea grass. Now I felt a little

more encouraged to stay on.. Worst case scenario, i thought, I could just jump into thesea and watch these sea turtles doing their activities for the next 2 days. When asking

for things to do here, the owner recommended me to go on a boat trip to other 2

islands, Kakaban and Sangalaki respectively. About fifteen minutes later, he got me a

speedboat with a boatman, called Yusuf. We agreed on the price and there we went to

the islands.

Kakaban

Kakaban was probably one of the two places on earth where there existed stingless jellyfish. Yes, stingless!! The other place that I heard of was (the Republic of) Palau, in

Micronesia, and I remembered watching it from a documentary, maybe Nat Geo or


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Discovery Channel. There, there were 4 species of jellyfish; all of them were

STINGLESS (emphasis added ;-) ).

Geography wise, Kakaban was once under the sea, and with the sea floor uplift, it caused

the circumference of the island become a high wall, thereby made the middle of the

island become a vast salt-water lagoon / lake. The jelly fish and some other sea

creatures, including fish and flat worm, were trapped there since then. They said the

jelly fish lost their sting because in that particular environment there was no threat or

harm to them, so there was no need for them to equip with a weapon. After climbing upand down of the wall of thick forest, I arrived at a jetty of the lagoon and found

nobody, which was a good sign. Yusuf told me that for the past 3 years, this was his

second time that he came to this place empty; usually there would be a lot of ppl, be

both locals and Europeans. I was told that visitors were not allowed to bring hard

equipment, even fins, to the lagoon cos this would damage the creatures. Wasting no

time, I took a bit of photos of jelly fish and the lagoon from the jetty, then put on a

goggle and jumped into the water. Feeling weird of course! At first, I didn't dare to

touch them for fearing being stung despite of the fact that they didn't have sting! Haha ha. Silly me. But yes, I finally touched and played jelly fish alive for the first time.

Yusuf was also excited about this place too even though he's local and went there with

other tourists countless times. He put on mask and took underwater camera with him.

We spent an hour there. After the lagoon, we came back to the jetty where there was a

little hut selling coconuts, Yusuf asked if I wanted to have one. So i went for coconut

water and offered Yusuf if he wanted one as well. He told me to go ahead cos he's on

fasting. It's a Ramadan month.


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Off from the jetty, we went on snorkeling around Kakaban. The world under water here

was so intriguing, just off from the beach was a vast and pristine underwater forest of

both soft and hard coral in shallow water. Then about 50/60 meters away, it was a

sharp drop, like a cliff in deep blue sea. We were lucky that the day was so sunny, so we

had clear sighting of the underworld. Among other things, we saw 4 turtles swimming

along the edge of the sea cliff and also the usual suspect, Nemo :-) Mind you, the

turtles were very fast when we approached them. Back on the boat, I told Yusuf that

this was the best snorkeling experience so far, water was so clear and coral and sea

creatures were amazing. In reply, he told me that he was happy to see the nature as if

it were never touched by a human before. He went on further that in the next 5 years

or even 10 years, he hoped the place would remain the same.

Sangerlaki

This one is way smaller than Kakaban but as equally as abundant in terms of biodiversity.

People came here specifically to see manta rays. We were roaming the boat around the

island for almost 2 hours, sadly with no sign of mantas. Yusuf told me that yesterday a

group of tourists was lucky to see two of them, after being disappeared for 4 months

for unknown reason. He was a bit disappointed that he failed to show me mantas; but

for me it's not a big deal, swimming with stingless jelly fish was already made the trip

worth the effort and money. So I told Yusuf that maybe the mantas were on holidays as


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well; but he didn't seem to get my joke :-P He then took me on the island to visit

turtles conservation project and walked around the island. There, people who worked

for the project showed me baby turtles just hatched the night before, probably from

the same batch. I felt so privileged to touch these babies. They were super cute. The

baby turtles were kept in a bucket and would be released on the beach into the seawhen they were strong enough to survive, likely on the next evening.

Mantas returned home

Done with the baby turtles, Yusuf steered the boat from the shore heading to the

manta point again with his little hope that the manta might return; now i started tothink that maybe he should have paid me for this boat trip to accompany him to see

mantas. He parked the boat in the middle of the sea; Yusuf asked if I wanted to join in

to check out mantas. I said I had enough, you could go ahead and I would be happy

waiting on a boat while you were swimming about. This time, his efforts were well paid

off. He found mantas and at called me at once to put on goggle and fins and to dive into

the water quickly before they would disappear. Yeah, I finally swam with mantas, there

were 4 of them. Very big too, I think from left to right of its spanning wings would be

about 2 meters wide at least. They were fast and swam in a direction against strong

current. That was difficult for me to keep up. I spent about 7-8 mins with them, which

to me was very awesome. Then, Yusuf swam back to the boat to pick me up where I was

with the mantas.


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Just on the way back to Derawan, Yusuf was asking which room I was staying at TheLosmen. As a matter of precaution, I was a bit reluctant to tell him and also I honestly

didn't know what room number I was staying. I then discreetly asked him as to the

reason of his query. He told me that he wanted to take me to the beach at night to

watch turtles laying eggs. Ahhh... That seemed justified enough so I told him the

direction where my room was.

Peeping turtles laying eggs

Later that night Yusuf and his friend, Wadi, picked me up at the Losmen and we went toa beach on the quieter part of the island. We set off around 7.45 pm when the tide

started to go out. Just about 15 minutes walk, we arrived at the beach. I could see some

manmade structures and coconut tree remains lying there. Wadi told me that this part

of the island was suffered so much from sea erosion. i thought this would explain well

why the beach was deserted. We sat on a coconut tree trunk while waiting for mother

turtles to come ashore to lay their eggs. Turtles, I was told, liked to come to the beach

on a high tide to lay their eggs. Two hours had gone by and already a low tide, not a

sight of a single turtle; so we gave up. Yusuf told me that another chance was to come at

1 am when it was a high tide again. But 1 am would be too much for me after a long day

swimming in the sun. So i called it mission unaccomplished and I headed to bed.

Day 3: Turtle day

Today I decided not to go out in the sea cos the weather looked very cloudy. In fact,

the island was on a path of a heavy storm the night before; the sea was so rough that

my bungalow was shaking from the wave hitting the poles of my bungalow. Today was an

easy day for me, I went to swim just off the jetty of my bungalow; the water was

relatively shallow when the tide went out. Less than 3 minutes after plunging myself into


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the sea, I saw a huge turtle grazing sea grass in a gentle manner. Then to my right there

was another one doing the same and further ahead, there was another one, and more

and more. Then I stopped counting. I thought some of them must be over a hundred

years old to grow that big. From head to tail, and for the width of one turtles shell, my

guesstimation was that it was 1.5 meters long and 1.0 meter wide. That made it thebiggest turtle I ever saw in my life. These turtles here, unlike those at Kakanban, were

slow moving and not afraid of human. I could swim right behind or above them easily. I

guessed they were so old and saw a lot of people enough that they didn't feel shy

anymore. I observed one turtle and found that at about every ten minutes, he/she would

have to surface to get fresh air. I was swimming with the turtles for almost two hours

until some European travelers joined in. Some of them even touched the back of

turtles.. I wasn't sure if that's a good idea. I didn't think the turtles would bite back,

but it could be too invasive for them. After an early dinner that day, I came back to

rest at my bungalow.

About 6.45 pm. there was a knock knock sound on my door, followed by someone calling

my name. It was Yusuf again. He said he and Wadi would like to take me out for another

turtle experience and told me to standby at 7.15 pm. Tonight the guys took me to the

same beach. Yusuf said that tonight the local would release baby turtles to the sea.

After waiting on the beach for 20 minutes listening to Yusufs holiday with his family to

Bkk, a local man walked in our sight with a white bucket. In there, there were about 50-

60 baby turtles. And the release began.. All of the babies, by their instinct, rushed in

the same direction to the sea and swam very fast; mind you, that was the first time in

their life to swim!, and all disappeared in sea very quickly. I hoped all of them found

their new home and survived for over hundred years like those ones I saw in that

afternoon. After that we went back, just before I was about to dash off to the resort,

I told Yusuf and Wadi about my schedule of leaving early tomorrow. Then we said thank

you and good bye to each other. Yusuf said he might not be able to see me off in the

morning cos it's quite early, 7 am. and his house was about 20 mins away on foot. That's

perfectly understandable to me. Indeed, he didn't have to do all these things cos his


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job had already been done since he dropped me off at the bungalow from the island

hopping on my second day. I wish I could tell him in Bahasa Indonesia how much I

appreciated his efforts, hospitality and friendship, and bla bla bla... but sadly my Bahasa

was getting nowhere despite being in this country for over two years. Bad example!

Day 4: Time to go

I woke up at 6.30 am by the alarm that I set last night. Still felt drowsy, but managed

to make a cup of tea and had a last look of the sea view just in front of my room. I

settled the bill with the owner and he showed me the boat that would bring me to

Tanjung Batu. I went back in the room to do final packing and getting ready for thejourney back. I walked in the jetty towards the boat. To my surprise, i saw Yusuf sitting

on the stairs of the jetty down to the sea. He assisted me with the bag down to the

boat. He told me in Bahasa Indonesia to have a nice trip back to Jakarta and hope to see

me again. My reply to him was that I hoped to come back to Derawan again too, and to

see the nature at the stage where we just witnessed two days ago, and most importantly

to see you again, maybe taking me to some other islands around Derawan which I hadn't

been to. From the jetty, we waved good bye to each other.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope you dont find it too boring and you enjoy the

photos of my trip

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An Extraordinary Story from Derawan