The Elements Unearthed

Borneo Day 1: Friday, July 21, 2017

Terminal 3 at the Soeharto Hatta International Airport, waiting for our flight to Banjarmasin.

Our flight to Borneo was about 9:20, so we had time to eat breakfast at the hotel and meet our taxi to the airport. Other teams had already left. Most were flying, one team was driving for eight hours, and one team was staying here in Jakarta but moving to a hotel closer to their school (MAN 4 Jakarta that we had visited on Tuesday).

Craig Hendrick waiting in the Soeharto Hatta airport.

The taxi delivered Craig and I to the Soeharta Hatta airport at the upper deck of Terminal 3 and we unloaded the trunk. I found a baggage cart and we rolled up to the front door to go through the first security check. Once inside, we walked to the Garuda Indonesia counter and waited in line. Once my two bags were weighed, I found that they were about ten kilograms over the allotted 20 kg total, so had to pay about $35 to check my second bag. They gave me a payment form to take to the service desk, then with the receipt I was able to get my boarding pass.

Preparing to board our airplane to Banjarmasin.

We passed through the final security check. With my two bags checked I only had my carry-on computer bag and camera, but it was still a long walk to our gate. We had over an hour to wait for our flight, so Craig found a place to plug in his phone while I wrote up blog posts.

A Garuda Indonesia airplane at the Jakarta airport.

We boarded the airport sat on row 21 on the right side behind the first bulkhead. We had to wait a few minutes, then taxied out to the runway and took off. We flew out of Jakarta over the ocean and headed northeast toward Borneo. I listened to the best of Bread on the music channels and dozed a bit.

View of Kalimantan from the air. You can see why this is called the land of a thousand rivers, all of which is the estuary of the Barito River, the largest river in Kalimantan.

As we descended toward the Banjarmasin airport, we crossed over the coast of Borneo. We could see yellow and green rice paddies below with frequent rivers winding and joining into larger rivers, lined with green trees. There were a few roads, lined with buildings, stretching through the countryside. I took some photos as we dropped toward the airport.

Rice fields as we approach Banjarmasin from the air. Notice how houses and businesses cluster around the roads, with the fields beyond.

We landed and deplaned, walking off a mobile stairway the way we used to before jetways and boarded a bus to the terminal. We walked into the terminal, grabbed a baggage cart, and waited for the bags to arrive from the airplane. A music group collected their instruments, and our bags came through.

Approaching the Banjarmasin airport.

As we walked out of the terminal, we were met by our host teacher, Muhammad Nazaruddin and his wife. I had seen his photograph from the e-mails he had sent, and of course, we were fairly obvious. He likes to be called Nazar, and was an ILEP alumnus at Kent State in 2010. He teaches English at SMAN 1 Mandastana, our host school, which is about ten miles north of Banjarmasin in a country area with rice fields.

We loaded our bags into the trunk of his car and drove out of the small parking lot onto a the road leading to the airport. After a short distance we turned around a traffic circle with an airplane on a stick and headed onto the main road to Banjarmasin.

Final approach to the airport near Banjarbaru.

The airport is located about 26 km from the city, nearer to Martapura and Banjarbaru, and the main road is called Jalan Ahmad Yani or the Trans Kalimantan Highway. As we drove toward the city, I looked at the businesses, houses, and mosques that lined the road. There was only one fairly tall building, the Aston Hotel, which at ten stories is the tallest in southern Kalimantan. That is because the ground here is swampy and won’t support tall buildings without extensive piles being driven into the ground. The Aston is on one of the more solid areas. I took some photos of the many Wong Solo places along the way, including a Wong Solo delivery truck, so that I could put them in the shared group folder because of the running joke we had the other day.

Welcome to Banjarmasin (selemat datang di Banjarmasin). Craig Hendrick about to enter the Banjarmasin airport terminal building.

Nazar wondered why I was taking these photos. His English is excellent, as he had gotten his masters degree in Australia and spent six months in the U.S. with ILEP at Kent State. His wife (he said her name but I didn’t quite catch it) is also a teacher at the same school, and they are both from families with parents who are teachers or college professors, so a well-educated family.

Wong Solo delivers. And he is guaranteed to be discrete, or at least halal.

Along the road I could see that houses and buildings have a different style of architecture than Java. Roofs are steep in the center with a high ridgeline, but then change slope and become more shallow at the bottom. The closest equivalent in America is the style of roofs for Pizza Hut restaurants. In fact, the Pizza Hut logo looks a lot like a Barjarese house. The corners of the roofs are adorned with symbolic wings that stretch up further.

A provincial school built in a traditional Banjarese style. The corners of the steep part of the roof often have crossing timbers decorated as wings.

Our first choices of hotels had been the Hotel Mercure Banjarmasin or the Golden Tulip Galaxy near the Duta Mall, but Mercure requires walking through the mall itself to get to the entrance, and the Golden Tulip didn’t have rooms for the nine days that we will be here, so we booked rooms at the Swiss Belhotel Banjarmasin instead. This wound up being an excellent choice, as it is located in a good position next to a bridge along the Martapura River in the heart of the city. It even has a dock onto the river and free trips to the Lok Baintan floating market.

Large yellow and green mosque on the road to Banjarmasin.

Nazar dropped us off at the hotel and we checked in at the main desk. They have us in adjoining rooms in the newer section of the hotel, where the air conditioning is better. The concierge put our bags on a standard hotel luggage cart and walked with us to our rooms, which are through a long hallway in the older section, around a corner and up a small ramp. I am in Room 243.

The room is set up so that one must insert the room key into an electronic receptacle in order to turn on the lights or air conditioning in the room. It will be tricky not to walk out without the key card. The room was muggy, so I cranked up the AC and turned down the thermostat as I laid out my bags. My room has a nice view down to the pool, but the drapes are a bit hard to open. Overall it is pretty nice, and one of the better hotels in the city. This will be my home for the next nine days.

I took off my shoes, socks, and the concealed leg holder for my passport and credit cards that my sister had loaned me. I laid down on the bed for awhile to rest.

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