11. KNO-CGK-BPN (Medan-Jakarta-Balikpapan) October 10 Travel Day

     Over the course of 40 days of travel, I will take ~34 flights and mom will take over forty. Today we were on two flights – first from Medan to Jakarta and second from Jakarta to Balikpapan. As we neared the island of Java where Jakarta is located, small islands began to pop out of the water in groups. Most were uninhabited, although several had small settlements on them, making us wonder how they got their supplies and why anyone would choose to live in what appeared to us to very remote. The most recent survey by satellite established that Indonesia is made up of over 17,500 islands. There are probably several thousand more land masses that don’t make the cutoff for being an island because they completely disappear at high tide. In any case, I made sure to pull my binoculars out of my suitcase for our second flight.

     Coming into Jakarta, the land was dotted with buildings either covered solely by orange tile roofs or by solar panels. According to some reading that I did, Indonesia is lagging pretty far behind some of its regional neighbors such as Vietnam and Thailand. Nonetheless, its working hard to make up for lost time and it is definitely visible from the air.

     As we were boarding the flight from Jakarta to Baiikpapan, I remarked to mom, “Oh how Dad would hate this, let me count the ways.” Although the Jakarta airport main concourses are perfectly lovely, some elements of the design were neither comfortable nor accessible for some people. The airport is arranged in a hub and spoke configuration, with the concourses being the hubs and the waiting room for each gate being at the end of a spoke. First, to get into the part of the concourse with our gate, we had to undergo  security screening and passport checks again, even though it was a domestic flight. We walked down a glass-paneled hallway overlooking the nicely manicured landscaping to get to the small, connected building that served as the waiting room. This room had high ceilings with a geometric sculpture hanging in the middle, a snack bar, four charging stations, and bathrooms on the lower level. What this room did not have was seating for everyone or sufficient air conditioning. It was frustrating that no one seemed inclined to move their bags off neighboring seats so that they could be used for their primary purpose – letting travelers sit down. Whatever air conditioning was provided for by mini-split type units in a corner were not sufficient to overcome the combined heat of the outside 90-degree weather and the 120 people standing and sitting inside.

     The experiences only got worse as our tickets were scanned and we descended a ramp to reach the tarmac. Instead of seeing a plane, we saw busses. These busses would not be friendly to a person with balance issues like my dad, or anyone heat sensitive. We were packed into the hot bus and and then driven from the E concourse to the C concourse over the tarmac, a journey of ten minutes that ended with us standing out in the hot afternoon sun in a line to climb up the moveable staircase to the plane. There was no respite from the heat on the plane, since there was air on the plane and we were told it wouldn’t start until we were in the air and the seats were so close together that there was very air circulation, no matter how hard anyone of us fanned ourselves with the emergency awareness card. The entire back of my shirt was soaked through with sweat before we even left the ground, and I was a little worried about Mom’s bright pink face and what a head emergency would look like for her. Even though she is a health, motivated, and adaptable international travels, even she turned to me and said, How many more of these [regional flights] do we have to suffer through. It would our psyches no good to learn the answer to those questions, so we let it go and tried to survive the delayed departure and the steamy plane.

     I was feeling sorry for myself, but I was also feeling sorrier for the  30% of women on the plane who were wearing traditional islamic modest clothing (completely covering arms and legs)  and the hijab head scarf over a hair cover. The Spanish word, “desmallarse,” kept coming to mind, as did Memo’s mistranslation (“pass away” instead of “pass out”). At no point do I think that my dad ever really considered going.  He just likes to learn of our adventures and exclaim how glad he is that he isn’t with us. Not only would he hate it, but I’m also not sure he could physically be able. When were in the air, I asked Mom how many years she though she had before she would no longer be physically able to do it. She looked at me and said, “After this trip, I would not WANT to do a trip like this again. I’m done after this.”

     This makes me all the more glad that I get to be the one to accompany her, both to help organize things and also to be a part of this big adventure.

     We were met at the airport in Balikpapan by a driver sent from the lodge where we would be staying for the next three days. The new roads and advanced infrastructure of Balikpapan was a far cry from what we had experienced in Medan, and I came to understand that there is a lot of date palm, petroleum, and coal mining money flowing in and around Balikpapan. This wasn’t our final destination, though. We drove north for just over an hour before we reached the entry to the Samboja Lestari protected area, and another 10 minutes driving through a jungle to reach our destination, the Samboja Lodge and operational center of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS). But more on that in the next post.

PHOTOS

Date Palms Along Road to KNO Airport

Airport Photo Opps, including Industrial Sized Roomba

LionAir Invocation Card (prayers were needed to travel on this regional airline)

Just a Few of Indonesia's 17,508 Islands