@pfooti · 2025-08-02 · travel

July 25th-27th: On a Boat

Sorry for the delays getting these last posts up. We were on a boat, with no real internet or any way for me to set up my workstation (for the record, I'd brought my Steam Deck, and had an external keyboard and a little travel 15” screen panel for it; kind of ridiculous really, but I could play games on the plane and also use the thing for writing, kind of like a laptop but not something that works on a lap). This segment of the trip took place on Borneo, in the Tanjung Puting national park (as I mentioned previously). It was the linchpin that held together our entire trip; we were pretty lucky to get a boat reservation (they fill up sometimes a year in advance, but someone canceled so we got off the waiting list).

Let’s get this part out of the way: yes, we saw orangutans. A whole lot, actually, but the first one we saw was a big load off, kind of like when you see the first aurora on a trip to Alaska for spotting auroras. That’s checked off the list, now I can just relax and look for more orangutans and other charismatic fauna.

So the whole trip was mostly two full days. We got to Kalimantan pretty dingdang early (as I mentioned, we got up at butt oclock in the morning to fly from Jakarta to Kalimantan, and “butt” in this case was 3:30 am). This got us to the boat by something like 9am, and we saw our first orangutans right after lunch.

We saw one crocodile directly (it was small, and I didn’t get a photo before it startled) but did see evidence of crocs in the very muddy water (at least, the guide pointed at some bubbles and said “croc down there”).

It’s honestly amazing how quickly I came to rely on having a local guide and porter to help me at airports. At 4am, on a hot and crowded hotel shuttle (there were about a dozen people from the hotel all going to the airport at the same early hour) we got off at the wrong terminal because the shuttle driver waaay at the front mumbled something about the airline, and we thought we were departing from T1, but we weren’t. Luckily, just as I was about to try and figure out an airtrain or just start walking, a bus pulled up, marked as “Free Terminal Shuttle” so we hopped on. Could have been a Free Candy van, and we’d never be heard from again- 4am is not when I’m at my best. Anyway, it worked out fine, the airport terminal shuttle had better AC and was less crowded and took us where we needed to be, which was Terminal 2. There, in line for checking in, we saw most of the rest of the hotel people who had not gotten off the original shuttle and ridden it to the correct destination. That should have been a hint really- we were all going to the same place. Stay with the crowd, dude.

Gonna do a single meal photo, everything was pretty amazing. The fruits on the right are Snake Skin fruits, which grow on palm trees. There’s a couple of varieties (like apples or pears), some I liked more than others, but at their best they taste like the white flesh part of a strawberry. They must not travel well, because I’ve never seen them in the US and would totally buy them if there were some here.

Our boat had four crew, a captain (Madin), two mates (Hatman and Jeman), and a cook (Tuti), plus there was a guide (Bagus) who rotated through all the boats. Our boat was pretty awesome, Madin was a pretty good captain- he was good at passing other (slower) boats on the same river, and Tuti was a virtuoso of the deep fryer. During our time on the boat, we had deep fried:

Cassava
Tempeh
Eggplant
Chicken
Mackerel
Banana
Potato

I mean, if you can make me enjoy an eggplant or Chrissy a banana, you’ve got real skill.

When the boat is moving, there’s a breeze. When it isn’t, there isn’t. It was in the mid-high 80s and about a jillion percent humidity the whole time.

We had the option to sleep on deck, which I took the first night. Not the second. The thought of listening to the jungle animals and whatnot all night was compelling, but also: it was hot, and the mosquito netting attenuated the breeze, so yeah, hot and stuffy. And also? I was asleep most of the time (exhausted, since I’d gotten up so early), so I didn’t really hear much jungle noise. The cabins had some A/C (not a ton, but enough to help us poor westerners sleep), so I opted for the cabin the second night.

The way this all works is: in the national park, they release rescued and rehabilitated orangutans, and there are also wild orangutans as well. There’s probably not enough natural fruit to support the density of orangutans in the park, so the park rangers do supplemental feedings. There are these feeding platforms with a bleacher section and the rangers dump a big pile of bananas and yams, and in come the orangutans. Therefore, most of the ones we saw were at these feedings.

Many of the females had children that would cling to them the whole time. The orangutans took turns - they’d grab a bunch of fruit, shove it into their mouths, hold a handful of bananas, and then climb up into a tree to finish everything off. The big males didn’t do this- they’d just sit on top of a fruit pile like it was a throne.

There were actually quite a few boats on the river. We’d all head back from the feeding to the dock, where there was a whole mass of boats, and then get back on our boat and head to the next feeding spot.

This was a big part of why I think our captain was a cut above. In these big jams, he’d be able to swoop in, pick us up, and then swoop out, bingo bango bongo. No problemo.

There is a particular kind of human being that just cannot stop talking. You could be in the most transcendentally beautiful cathedral, silently admiring the craftwork of centuries, and Some Dude will stand directly behind you and say “Wow! Such high ceilings!” Then he’ll start (loudly) talking to his travel companions about this One Time he was in a place with really high ceilings. He’s got to tell this story about this amazing hotel right now, as if this is the most important thing. I mean, he’s going to be talking no matter what, it’s really just a matter of what they talk about.

Big male orangutan. Notice the pensive female and juveniles in the trees, they’re waiting for their turn to eat. The monkey (long tailed macaque) would eventually invite his entire troop. The fact that the orangutan didn’t seem to care about the monkeys eating, but did care about other orangutans eating tells me that this behavior was about dominance over others of his species rather than preserving food (which was abundant). The existence of this kind of dominance behavior in the face of wild abundance is more or less the same as what humans do.

It is about a kilometer or so to each observation area from where we tie up. In order to get there, you have to pass several signs that ask you to be quiet, and once you’re there, there’s a big “silence please” sign. It’s just out of shot in the above photo, but it is impossible to miss. So naturally, the people behind me, starting in Loud German and transitioning to Loud English when another couple showed up, spent the time talking about:

How they really wanted iced cream (it was hot)
A snake they saw this morning (both couples were staying at the same lodge, and it was at the lodge after the Loud Germans left but the Loud Americans saw it).
The mating habits of African Lions and what they saw on their safari (two monkeys were doing it).

I did, at one point, turn and say “the sign says silence for the orangutans”, and then they transitioned from Loud Talking to just Talking. Which is not precisely silence.

This was a non-dominant male, who had to just sit there and think about whether he’d be eating that fruit. I am pretty sure that he is the younger male that tried to challenge for local supremacy, and lost. Regardless, I certainly wouldn’t want to fight that dude, he’s fierce.

Something I’ve tried to deal with my whole life is distractibility. It’s probably an Autism thing, but I have a really hard time tuning people out. If I’m in a noisy place and there are three conversations going on around me, I listen to all three. I can’t just listen to my friend or coworker or spouse, I’m listening to everything all the time. If this was a superpower, I’d be able to make sense of everything, but it is not a superpower. Instead, I just get overwhelmed and overloaded. All of this to say: I’m probably extra sensitive to Loud Americans and Loud Germans talking about how lions do it for just about five seconds at a time, but they do it twenty times over the course of four hours, with short naps between, but by the end of that discussion I was ready for the big male orangutan to come over and rip everyone’s arms off. It’s why I don’t like going to lunch with co-workers (I’ll do it anyway as a way to engage and be social, but it costs me a lot of spoons to do this).

Watch on YouTube ↗

So many things happened on the boat, right before I managed to get out my phone and zoom in and take a photo. I’m not really here to get super-amazing photos (although I did try my best, it’s still a phone with a pretty tiny lens and sensor, I’m honestly amazed that these things turned out as nicely as they did). In the above, we saw a commotion in the water- right before I started recording the water monitor managed to defeat (and kill) the python there, but immediately abandoned its kill because a crocodile was wandering over to see what was up (the croc was fully underwater though, you could just barely see the bubble trail). Pretty epic, even if my video was meh.

On the other hand, this monkey did not run away or cover up when I started shooting photos.

“Orangutan” comes from the Malay phrase “people of the forest”. Orang (people) hutan (of the forest). This sort of thing always tickles me when I think about people who actually speak lots of languages and what they must feel like. I heard a Spanish couple (not loudly, but still, you know, distractingly) talking about Peter Pan at one feeding, and I kept wondering, does that parse out in their head as Peter Bread? How do borrow words really work, semiotically? Dunno, but I do love thinking about it.

In addition to the people of the forest, we saw those long-tailed macaques, proboscis monkeys, that amazing squirrel, a storm stork, some kind of kingfisher, some really cool other birds, a tiny crocodile (like maybe two feet long?) sunning itself on a log, some great fireflies, the milky way, and the southern cross. It was amazing.

Us and the crew. That’s Chrissy, Eric, Tuti, then Jeman Bagus and Hatman, and Madin center bottom.

Once again butt oclock, we got back to the quay at something like 5am the morning of the 27th and get whisked off to the airport for our flight to Singapore. More on Singapore in the next post.

Conversation happens inside — sign in to Overstory to read and write comments.