Written by Zoe

September, 2012

We had been in Kumai, Borneo for 3 days before we took the dingy in to town. We had arrived from a 3 night passage on the ocean and the next day hopped on to a little river boat that took us up the river to see Orangutans.

It was the day after we arrived back on our boat that we, as a family, went in to town. I remember what the city looked like from the water; many shacks built out on stilts that hid people walking down the street from the beautiful view of the jungle across the river. Farther inland, unique to the area, were huge grey buildings, that we learned later, housed birds. This town's main industry was to house special birds and collect their nests. These nests are made from the birds' saliva. They are then sold to the Chinese for bird's nest soup. The overall view of these cement buildings and run down homes did not make it the most attractive water front we had ever seen.

All five of us piled in to the dingy and motored to shore. I remember preparing myself for being stared at, approached only by people who wanted to sell stuff to us and the possibility of being laughed at. For we had just come from Bali, where people only wanted to talk to you to sell you stuff. We walked down the street and people would yell from across the street "Taxi?!! Taxi?!!, Tour? Please come into my shop! Special price for you!!" The feeling is quite unpleasant when you know that people only look at you as a 'bag of money' that they hope to ensnare in their overpriced game of "how much will this idiot tourist pay?"

So, in Kumai, when we started down the street is was amazing! People walking by or riding by on scooters or bicycles would say hi to us and then just keep riding or walking. Sometimes, someone from the other side of the street would call across and say "Hello Sir!" to my Dad. But, besides for these people everyone else just left us alone. Nobody was pestering us or anything. We just did our thing and they did theirs. We later stopped for lunch just outside a market at a little warung (restaurant) and these three little boys approached us laughing and talking in Indonesian. I remember saying hi to them and they giggled and ran away. When they returned they asked, still giggling:"Foto? Foto?". I complied and pulled out our little camera, they all crowded around this little stool, arms around each other with the most adorable smiles on their faces. I took the picture and showed it to them. As they crowded around and I asked "bagus?" (good?)and they, still giggling and running about, asked for "Satu Lagi"(one more). They all crowded around the stool again and with huge smiles once again on their faces, I took one more picture. We all sat down at the little table in the warung and ordered nasi champur, which is mixed rice.

Once we were done we started walking through the market and I recall remarking how clean it was compared to most of the ones we had visited in past cities. There were no piles of garbage along the street, in fact it was swept clean. The women standing or sitting behind their piles of green beans, tomatoes and many other vegetables and fruits, would call out a friendly hello and maybe point to their piles of papayas and mangoes inviting us to have a look. We bought some potatoes and cinnamon sticks from this one laughing older lady, who tried to touch my parents with a green eggplant as they cowered in mock fear. We all were laughing by the time our money reached her hands and then we continued walking. The difference between here and other places is, we were laughing and talking (or attempting to despite the language barrier) with people whereas before they would only talk amongst themselves. We felt welcome and this made our one day visit very enjoyable and we were sad we couldn't stay longer.

I feel that in this story I have made Bali out to be a horrible place and I would just like to say that it is not. I loved it there and if I return to Indonesia one day I would definitely return, but sometimes it did get annoying being pestered all the time. Also, although Kumai was amazing too, there were still people who stared. My experience there was amazing and I wanted to share it.