What we saw in Indonesia

By alexhumpage On 30/06/2016

Coming here ranks as my most unusual arrival into a country in my life so far. The boat we'd taken from the Malaysian side arrived into Tarakan. A typical border town, with zero to recommend it. It berthed not against the pier but adjacent to another boat, with the only door on the side facing the open ocean. Fully laden with all our belongings we climbed around one slender hull, then delicately across a second before hauling ourselves up on to the rustiest, most derelict pier in southeast Asia. Welcome to Indonesia.

A long walk in high heat followed. This was thankfully over a more heavy duty concrete construction, with thousands of mudskippers flopping about underneath us. The walking fish bought to mind the Guinness evolution advert. That was as close as we got to a much needed beer as Tarakan was a dry town, so after holing up the grottiest sweatbox of a hotel for a single night we carried on South, through North Kalimantan.

Traversing an Indonesian state slightly over half the size of England, we were flying blind as the Lonely Planet could only offer a single paragraph on the whole place. Another boat ride, then two long car journeys followed, the first piloted by a chain smoking youth with questionable taste in very loud music. Two huge bunches of tiny bananas, purchased at a total cost of about 50p, kept the wolf from the door before getting on yet another boat headed directly out into the blue.

At this point the whole Indonesian bit of Borneo took a turn for the better. Arriving on Derawan island we found ourselves a little piece of tropical paradise. Although on closer inspection at least half of the beach surrounding the island was full of the glass, plastic, tin and frequently fish guts from the last meal the locals had prepared, the whole place was undeniably beautiful. We saw the same number of other tourists whilst we were there as we saw baby sea snakes swimming on the clean side of the island (1). We also had the increasingly obligatory celebrity moment when a horde of schoolchildren made us pose for countless selfies. At the time of writing there are literally hundreds of Asian children with hundreds of pictures of Céline and I on their phones.

The tempered beauty of Derawan was improved upon when we went further out into the ocean. Exploring the islands of Maratua, Kakaban and Sangalaki we finally found something I've always searched for. These islands, especially the latter, were the Platonic ideal of a 'paradise island'. Having set my expectations and hunted for such throughout the Philippines, I'd started to wonder if it really existed. But the white sands and blue seas of Sangalaki Island took my breath away. And Céline and I were the only people there. (Except for Dani, the chap driving our boat. And he just had a nap and chatted to me about football).

Leaving the archipelago behind we ping-ponged through Berau, Balikpapan, Makassar, Manado and Sorong. In contravention of one our main objectives, this was mostly by plane. But the planets loss was our gain as this route meant we ended up at place on the top tip of Papua, a place called Raja Ampat. Ninety percent of the people we've met on our journey haven't heard of Raja Ampat (good). The other ten percent speak of it with a hushed reverence (also good). On arrival it's easy to see why.

Time stopped for us here and we ended up staying for over ten days, by far the longest we've spent in the same spot. Words can't really do it justice but if you can go, you should. We stayed on Pulau Kri, with the best snorkelling I've ever seen on the house reef, metres from the hut we slept in. Hammocks over the water and 11 perfect sunsets. There's so few tourists you soon get to know most of the other people and animals on the island. Particularly noteworthy were Nique Bruce, our Canadian Scaffolder, Pop Star and Human Biologist, Lucija and Sean, a Slovenian-US wife and husband spending three weeks there at the end of their two year world tour, the school of metre-long pipe fish hanging out every day by our pier and the rat which ate through my mosquito net and woke me up by joining me under my bedsheets at 3am one night.

From all dreams one must wake up (preferably not via rodent intervention), and so it was as we came back to reality. Or close to it, as the first meal we had back in civilisation ended with a dessert of battered banana topped with grated cheese. Not terrible but not something I'll be recreating at any future Humpage Versavaud-Collet dinner parties.

Another series of airport hopping flights took us to Timor Leste, which is another country entirely and so not covered here. After ten days there we were back again spending a final five nights in a more mainstream bit of Indonesia, the surf haven of Lombok.

Being in Raja Ampat had very much changed up our travel pace; from the 'see it all' frantic skirmishing through The Philippines, Malaysian Borneo and Myanmar we had wound things down a little. As such in Lombok we spent a lot of time in holiday mode, with my marvellous chauffeur Céline scootering me to various beautiful beaches. If the notion of having a holiday from all the paradise island and beach nonsense above strikes you as absurd, that's great. Because if it didn't we wouldn't be doing this properly.

Unlike the other countries we've visited so far, our time in Indonesia only touched on a few pristine parts of what is a huge and fascinating country. We largely eschewed culture here for beaches and beauty. But oh, what beaches. And gosh. Such beauty.