Paddling with Tupperware (Gunung Palung, 2010)

Excerpts from an email I sent home after learning rather suddenly I had to leave Indonesia early on my current research visa, rather than extending my stay a final 6 months (for long, exhausting reasons that aren’t worth blogging about having to do with impossible amounts of red tape):

Greetings for one last time from Ketapang…I have no reasonable choice but to agree to leave Indonesia before April 5, so I will be allowed back in the country in the future. So I am heading back to the states next week…Hard to believe since this time I was only allowed two weeks in the forest (after over a month of trying to get permits from our project base in Ketapang) and must now leave for good. At least my last orangutan follow was with my favorite flanged male Prabu, but it was very hard to leave the forest on Friday and say goodbye to everyone. I had a really nice, albeit very sad goodbye party with everyone at the main camp the night before I left. The assistants/staff sang one of my favorite Iwan Fals songs, "Kemesraan", in addition to some songs that they made up for me. It was very sweet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeqA_FrXJ9M

on last morning at Gunung Palung, saying final goodbyes

Our trip back to Ketapang was more eventful than usual, although I am happy to say that it did not involve a python falling on my head (this time). Around hour three of the longboat trip, the engine died. I’ve seen the the engine smoke and even catch on fire on previous trips, but this time it could not be revived. For the next few hours we had to paddle the boat using a plastic plate, Tupperware, and a stick. Although we had a phone signal at one point, we couldn’t arrange for any help, since it was a Friday afternoon, so everyone was at the mosques praying. And they were all many, many hours away…

paddling with tupperware after the engine died...

We finally arranged a plan to get picked up at a small village several hours down river, but we eventually discovered that the truck sent to pick us up broke down and wouldn’t be fixed for days. Eventually we came across a fisherman who offered his paddle and said we could pick up a second one at his camp another hour down river. So eventually we made it to Semangjak. We caught part of our crazy boat trip on VIDEO: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W8EceQhQUo


The motorbike at the house where we waited at Semangjak was missing a wheel, so we ended up having to carry all of our bags through the mud for another two kilometers. But we did eventually make it back to Ketapang via a random pickup truck, terribly sunburned but otherwise in tact. And in just enough time to fly to Pontianak the next day, give a final presentation at Universitas Tanjungpura (during which the electricity went out about 10 times), and fly to Jakarta and finally home before the visa expired (just barely in time and the process of applying for an exit permit on such short notice was also quite the experience...)