Kailana

Vessel Name: Kailana
Vessel Make/Model: Nauticat 38
Hailing Port: Fremantle
Recent Blog Posts
06 November 2014

15. Singapore

Singapore is an amazing city. It is the city that never sleeps, always something going on with a plethora of places to eat, shop and drink. You can buy a cheap meal in a hawkers food stall for $3-5 (Beef Hor Fun quite a good choice) or you can go to a fine dining establishment and feel the need to either [...]

06 November 2014

14. Kumai to Singapore

From leaving Kumai (Borneo) we headed to Pulau Belitung. A distance of 330Nm, which we completed in 51 hours, hence 2x overnighters in a trot - not really our favourite. There was quite a bit of traffic to avoid at night, with both tankers and fishermen dotting our path north and not always on AIS, so [...]

26 October 2014

13. Kumai (Borneo)

We were quite surprised to hear that Sam, our Sail Indonesia agent, had made his way to Kumai. After going AWOL in Bali we basically wrote him off as being of any assistance with our visas, leaving it to a 'proxy' Agent named Ruth to organise the passports to be sent to Nongsa Point, our designated check-out [...]

22 October 2014

12. Java Sea Crossing

In the last blog we were happily sailing away from Bali, safe in the knowledge that our passports and visa extensions were speedily and professionally being processed before being sent ahead of us. Or were they? We had now dropped behind all the rally boats due to the immigration administration slow-boat [...]

07 October 2014

11. Gilli Air & Bali

The last you heard from us we were on our way to Lombok from Sumbawa. We are now back in the company of our other yachties. The crossing to Lombok was easy enough, only being able to sail about half the way. We stayed in a decent enough anchorage on the North East of Lombok, which proved to be a bit [...]

17 September 2014

10. Labuan Bajo to Sumbawa (via Komodo & Rinca Islands)

Indonesia really is a unique place. With a population of about 190 million, it has 300 different ethnic groups living within it, over 13,000 islands, with 580 languages and dialects spoken. That is diversity at its best. Not only does it have the largest population of Muslims, but it also has the [...]

13. Kumai (Borneo)

26 October 2014
We were quite surprised to hear that Sam, our Sail Indonesia agent, had made his way to Kumai. After going AWOL in Bali we basically wrote him off as being of any assistance with our visas, leaving it to a 'proxy' Agent named Ruth to organise the passports to be sent to Nongsa Point, our designated check-out point of Indonesia. However, on meeting Sam in Kumai, he advised us that he had our passports, which lifted our spirits, but then proceeded to tell us that there were some issues. At this point we were at Day 18 from the time that we had handed our passports to Sam, so to hear that the visas hadn't actually been processed and that we had now been classified as 'over-stayers' came as somewhat of a surprise. To put this in context, some of the other rally boats, who had chosen to organise their visa extensions themselves, had their passports back in only 3 days! Moral of story = don't ever hand your passport over to someone else!
We were now finally back with the Sail Indonesia rally schedule. To quickly recap, the rally organisers changed the rally route at the last minute, with only a handful of rally boats choosing to keep to the original route. This meant we missed out on a lot of the rally events, however to be honest this is no great loss, there are only so many speeches in Indonesian by government officials that anybody should have to drag themselves through in their lifetime. All the events tend to be more about little men with shiny badges, fluffing their authorities feathers than about the rally members. Anyway, after a night of comatosed sleep we joined all the other yachties, were given bright green T-shirts and loaded onto an air-conditioned bus. Mmmm, air-conditioning, such a lovely, lovely invention. But with a police escort in front and behind the bus, we sped off like royalty to our lunch date at the 'Long House'. Quite the spread was laid on, with singing and dancing and food and speeches, all enjoyed in 35 degC and 100% humidity. After lunch we were taken to a traditional river village...quite interesting to walk the river boardwalk and peer into the all the houses on stilts that line the river. Lastly we stopped in at the palace for a look where we were fed and watered again before returning back to home-base.
While we were on the coach trip, Sam travelled 5 hours by car to Sampit (actual town name) to visit the immigration department there on our behalves. The immigration department at Kumai apparently don't have the ability to process visa extensions.
The day following the coach trip was a day of relaxation awaiting the outcome of Sam's meeting. A frustrating day trying to get a hold of Sam to find out what was actually going on, however we used the time productively to lay around on the foredeck of Sagata, drinking coffee and eating pancakes. Finally Sam told us what the situation was and the news was not good.
The following day we took the car journey to Sampit to visit the Immigration office to finalise our visa extensions. The process included getting our photographs and fingerprints taken. The thing is, Sampit is a long way away. So far away that the 2 cars required to take the 8 of us were booked for 4am the following morning! So, there we were at 3:30am climbing down from Kailana into Phil & Lesley's dinghy for the trip ashore to meet the waiting cars. No doubt you can start to get a feeling for any bad moods that might have arisen. Pitch dark with thick smoke haze, we raced off along the heavily potholed road in the direction of Sampit. Stopping for the odd break we arrived at the Immigration office at 8:45am, almost 5 hours in the saddle.
The immigration officials were clearly waiting for us and the news wasn't good. In the eyes of the rules, we had overstayed our visas and with that there is a fine to be paid for every day overrun. If we did not pay these fines, our visas would not get extended, and passports would not be returned! In a nutshell the reason we ended up in this situation went a little like this, however what actually happened is something we will never get to understand.
Our passports and visa applications were lodged at Denpassar Immigration Department shortly after we provided them to Sam. We were promised them back between 3-5 working days, however there was a backlog of applications at this office. On the 1st of October, apparently, the rules were changed such that photographs and fingerprinting were now required for visa extensions. On this same day we met with Agent Ruth, who was unaware of this new rule, assured us that the passports would be processed in due course and sent ahead of us. We had not heard from Sam for about 3 days at this point. After our meeting with Agent Ruth we dropped the lines and sailed out of Bali. Somewhere between Bali and Kumai, on discovering that we had left Bali, Sam cancelled our visa extension applications and we were back to square one. Essentially with no original application in place, in the eyes of the rules, we had overstayed our visas by 12 days!
The immigration office in Sampit is the usual Indonesian government office building all filled with officials dressed in highly starched shirts with shiny badges. They made no real attempt to pretend that nothing happens quickly here. If they weren't pushed right back on their chair, playing with their mobile phones and chain smoking, they were eating. We were gathered together for a briefing where they explained the process, asking if we understood what we had done, just like..... we had actually DONE something! The first part of the process involved answering some basic questions, an interesting read so we have included a photograph of these questions in this website photo gallery. Our answers to these questions would then be translated into Indonesian and provided to HQ Immigration in Jakarta for accessing before a visa extension could be granted. Question 15, asks if we had any comments... our only real chance to get a few things off our chests. Most of us used words like 'incompetent, disorganised, etc'. The answer sheets were gathered up and shuffled away behind closed doors. It was now about 11am, even though there was around 11 of them 'working' on our application. By 1pm they came back to tell us that our answers were not actually suitable, in fact 'question 15' was not really for comments, where the correct answer to the question, 'do you have any comments', is actually 'no'. We were told that our visas would not be granted unless the answer to question 15 was simply 'no'! On this we re-wrote all our answers, simply with 'yes' or 'no'. We had no fight left in us, we simply just wanted to pay our fine and get our passports back.
Time ticks past. Our saving grace in the immigration office was a TV on the wall, showing some non dubbed English movies and the internationally recognised language of Tom & Jerry. Without this we would surely have gone insane. By about 3pm our answers had been translated into Indonesian and the printed answer sheets were ready for us to sign. With Sam translating back to English, we each were called in turn into a closed office to sign these statements, taking complete blame for our overstay. Most disturbing, was question 16, added to the printed Indonesian version and already answered for us! Question 16 asks if we had been pressured and cohersed in any of the answers we provided, where they had kindly answered 'no' for us! Caught between a rock and a hard place, we had no choice, we had to sign these statements. A very interesting insight into the Indonesian government....kind of like what we imagine it to have felt like during communist China under the rule of Mao Tse Tung.
At around 3:30pm we were told that Jakarta had approved the issuing of a visa extension and they could move onto the next part of the process, photographing, fingerprinting and putting a little stamp in our passports. Perhaps we are underestimating how difficult this is, perhaps the immigration officers were all on double time after 4pm, or they were deliberately trying to piss us off, either way this process took 45 minutes, per person. There were 8 of us! There were 11 of them! The real sting in the tail is the fine. Each boat had to pay the grand sum of $520, cash, for their mistake! $520!!!!!!! How painful an experience is that? Also, let's not forget the $75 per couple taxi ride to get us there.....
At 8:45pm, exactly 12-hours after arriving at the office, our passports were returned to us and we were free to go, albeit with lighter wallets, like convicts being released on bail. Five hours later, with eyes hanging out, we returned back to Kumai, only a 22 hour round trip that has understandably left a very sour taste in everyone's mouths. An experience we are all not rushing back to repeat. Within the rally boats we are all getting called 'The Benoa 8'! What a bloody fiasco.
With our passports in our back pocket, we were now free to go about our business and that business was going to see the Orangutans. Kumai does very well out of tourists wanting to visit the Tanjung Puting National Park adjacent to Kumai and the only way to get their is via a houseboat called a 'Klotok'. All the Klotoks are basically the same shape, just bigger or smaller depending on the number of passengers. The boats are basic, consisting of an upper and lower deck, the upper deck for the passengers. During the day the upper deck is set up for eating and relaxing while cruising up the rivers through the jungle. As night-time comes the upper deck is transformed into your sleeping quarters, with mattresses laid out protected by a fly screen net. Some of our fellow yachties off 5 other boats (10 people in total) had organised to go in a big Klotok... but, no matter how big the boat is, it would feel pretty small with 12 people so we chose to go small and get our own one. A little bit more money, but we had the place to ourselves.
After everything we had been through the previous day, leaving it all behind and slowly gliding through the jungle, while all sorts of refreshments brought to the side of our super comfy lounge chairs, was just what we needed. Part of the deal is that somebody stayed on Kailana in case anything was to go amiss. This guy is not allowed access to the boat, only sits outside under some shade and keeps an eye out for whatever. He was also instructed to start our little generator once a day to keep the batteries topped up and the fridges happy.
We were picked up at our boat, quickly met the four crew (Yade as captain, Iju as tour guide, Pooa as cook and Tongos as first mate). We were then placed in our padded seats up front (aka thrones) and given a nice cup of Bali coffee. It really felt like something out of the 'African Queen' movie, the one with Catherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. With the gentle 'put put' of the motor as it sauntered up the river, going deeper and deeper into the jungle...we quickly forgot about our previous few days of stress. Before we knew it, we were sat at the table where a spread of sautéed prawns, cabbage salad, rice, tofu, fresh sambal and watermelon was waiting for us. You've got to be happy with that. We felt like royalty. Not long into our trip we spotted a few Macaques & Proboscis monkeys. Proboscis monkeys are amazing looking with their big noses, the male having the largest nose. Apparently they use their noses like snorkels when they swim across the river.
The Klotok was to take us to three feeding stations in the national park, which is essentially a 'rehabilitation centre' for the orang-utans. We stopped at feeding station 1, where there was an interesting little museum which provided some interesting facts about our furry friends prior to us hiking the 20 min trail to see them in the flesh. Thought it would be interesting to list a few of these facts to set the scene for how special it is to go and see these beautiful creatures in the wild....something you may not always have the priviledge to do in the future.
Orang-utans can only be found in Sumatra and Borneo with males weighing sometimes in excess of 100kg, twice that of females. They are 8x stronger than humans and their life span (in the wild) is up to 50 years old. As most people know, they are one of our closest relative (some closer than others...every noticed how hairy Kevin is?....).
Indonesia covers 1.3% of the world's land area but its forest contain 10% of the world's plants, 12% of its mammals, 17% of its reptiles / amphibians and 17% of its birds. Where we happened to be in the 'Tanjung Puting National Park' is one of the richest areas in all of Indonesia with many rare and endangered species. The park covers an area of 400,000 hectares of primary forest and about 70% of the population of Borneo's orang-utans are found here, but sadly, this is decreasing every year. Every year Borneo looses millions of hectares to deforestation, and the loss is on the increase. There is a huge amount of illegally logging (65% of total supply was illegal in 2000). Approximately 16 million hectares of natural forest has been approved for conversion to industrial timber or agriculture plantations in the future. Once deforested the areas are set on fire to clear the land. This is often also done illegally, as hunters rely on the new growth following the fires to attract wildlife for capture. A bit of sad story for the poor orang-utans.
Palm Oil plantations are very popular in Indonesia. Indonesia and Malaysia supply 90% of the world's supply of palm oil...! For those that may not be aware, palm oil is used in foods, soaps, cosmetics, lubricants, paints, etc. Once the land is cleared it is used for farming palm oil, with many millions of hectares used for the palm trees required. The total area in Indonesia occupied by palm oil plantations has doubled in the last 10 years, with Indonesia producing almost 16 million tonnes of the stuff in 2005 alone. The palm oil companies are ruthless, setting fires legally or not, to get the land they need. This of course, has a big impact on the wildlife, e.g. Orang-utans. Borneo's population of orang-utans has halved in the last 10 years alone. In 97/98 a huge fire was responsible for the death of a third of Borneo's orang-utan population, where around 20,000 died, quite a sad fact. The Tanjung Puting National Park is slowly being squeezed and it is taking the orang-utans with it. The smoke from the burning of palm oil plantations is epidemic in Borneo. At anchor in Kumai, you only see blue sky during a few months of the year, with a thick smoke haze blanketing the area. Without the orang-utans to visit, Kumai should not really be on anyone's bucket list.
Back to our Klotok trip now... We saw quite a few orang-utans at the first feeding station, especially a really big male called 'Tom' who almost sat on Fiona's lap (from Apa Lagi). You could see the panic in her face as 'Tom' walked past her to get to the feeding platform that had many bananas piled on top of it. We saw lots of females with their babies in tow. Babies don't leave their mothers for the first 7 years of so.. The teenage orang-utan males tend to hang out in packs. The big males tend to boss everyone around and are definitely to be feared. It was hilarious to watch them stuff the bananas into their mouths...at times getting more than 10 in to then crawl up a tree to devour them all. We were only about 6 metres away from them and you could see all their various facial expressions. The ranger also put out cow's milk for them which they seemed to love. Some monkey chose to stick their head into it, while others poured it all over themselves, lapping it up in the process! Seeing these apes swing down the vines with such grace was quite something. That evening we saw even more proboscis monkeys hanging out along the river, which is where they come to sleep. That night we tied onto some pandanas trees at the edge of the river and had a lovely tranquil night...we were pretty lucky to have a full moon for our trip. The crew were busy fishing down below while we read our books, tk in a couple of cold bintangs and watched the fireflies go by. The next day, we woke up in our mosquito netted nest and took in the early morning jungle noises. We were lucky enough to see kingfishers and horn billed birds that day. We sauntered up to Feeding Station 2 and saw some more orang-utans (not as many as our first stop). The humidity was quite unbelievable and the sweat just poured off us. Our last stop was at feeding station 3. This area is known as 'Camp Leakey'. Established in 1971 by Canadian, Dr. Birute Galdikas (encouraged by Dr. Louis Leakey - mentor of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey), it is the site of the longest continuous study of orang-utans in history. It was here that we ran into the other yachties and saw not only orang-utans, but gibbons too. The gibbon put on quite a show and behaved just like the one out of 'Jungle Book' funnily enough. We got very close to the orang-utans as they were quite at ease walking amongst the tourists. Back on board our Klotok, our guide 'Iju', a 28 year old 'boy' who lives at home with his mother and plays computer games all day long when he is not working, promptly served us up a couple of warm bintangs after our trek through the jungle. Warm bintangs? Yes, the crew had run out of ice, so there were no longer any cold drinks on board. We suspected at this stage that the crew had been taking their liberties as there were also no more soft drinks left, and we seemed to have gone onto 'food rations'. Yono, who organised our Klotok tour, was not our chosen person to go through, however we had struck a very busy time for renting a Klotok so we got what we got. We did make a few jokes to one another about the crew eating bacon and eggs down below while we were served up banana pancake after banana pancake....! The trip cost us $530 for 3 days and 2 nights...and was well worth it considering the amazing animals we were able to see....we even saw a crocodile! For those thinking about booking a trip up the river, make sure to go on a tour organised by 'Harry' It is a bit of a mixed bag on who to go to as there are many operators with different standards...but Harry is a safe bet.
The morning we left Kumai was a super smoky morning, visibility being about 50m only. We came very close to colliding with a tugboat pulling a huge barge in the river, only the tugboat's horn alerting us prior to disaster. With this we were very happy to break through the apparent wall of smoke and get back into clean air and the open sea.
Comments

About & Links