Borneo (Kalimatan) – Pankanlan Bun

More Travel – Next Island

We were rudely awoken early as the receptionist thought we would like an earlier transfer to the airport!! (I think they wanted to save themselves two trips).  We didn’t and had a bit of breakfast before getting a transfer at a more reasonable time.

Unfortunately there were no direct flights to where we needed to be in Borneo (Although the Indonesian’s call their side Kalimantan, the part that the Malasian’s nicked is called Borneo!) so we had to get a flight back to Semareng (Java) and get a connecting flight to Pankanlan Bun (Learned this should be pronounced boon not bun).

What an idiot whilst rearranging my bags (we always make a point of putting a change of clothes in our hand luggage in case our bags go missing in transit) I forgot to take my swiss army knife out of our utility kit in my hand luggage.  The security scanner picked this up and I thought we were going to lose our second knife (Shell got her’s confiscated at Heathrow if you remember!), but they just sent me to a desk where I gave my details and they put it in an envelope to send on the flight separately.

Whilst waiting in Semarang we found a little café where we had a milkshake and used the time to do some blogging and research, before catching our connection.

 

We finally arrived in Pankalan Bun in the late afternoon we found that my knife hadn’t turned up and was at Semareng airport (it had only taken the first flight!) but after a conversation we were told we could come back and pick it up the next day. So we then took a taxi to our hotel where we were getting met the next day to start our Orangutan trip.  When we got there we found it to be a seriously Muslim hotel and there was a firm no when we enquired about getting a beer and it also transpired that we wouldn’t be getting a beer in town either.

When we had unpacked and also found that a couple of Germans would be joining us on our trip (Don’t mention the war!!) we then headed out to see if we could find something to eat.  The only places we could find in this small town were little roadside stalls (Warung’s) and we didn’t fancy taking our chances as we had a four day boat trip the next day, so instead we went to a shop and bought some pot noodles (Shell had spotted hot water coffee facilities in the hallway of our hotel), biscuits and crisps and returned to the hotel.

For the rest of the evening we watched a bit of Soprano’s whilst consuming our ‘feast’ and had a fairly early night in anticipation of our jungle adventure the next day.