Indonesia 2025. Day 2. Balikpapan

A travel day, so not much to report. Being a VIP I was taken to the airport by Fakhry, handed to a BMKG meteorologist at the airport who took me all the way to my departure gate, and received by the Head of Station at Balikpapan almost as soon as I stepped down the plane. Also there was the Head of the Meteorology team, Ibu Carolina, who has been tasked with keeping this crazy old man out of trouble. Her calvary started when I told her I wanted to rent a car for 10 days, and I suspect the poor thing will not be able to sleep until I am safely away from Borneo.

Borneo is a true paradise, with all sorts of fun things for a tourist to do: The beaches look fantastic, scuba diving is first class, and there are all sorts of nature preserves where you can get close to exotic wildlife. The orangutan reserve caught my attention, so I am going to try to convince Carolina to accompany me there tomorrow.

The problem of starting my visit with the five-stars Shangri-La is that from now on there is no way to go but down, and to avoid the sliding I just plunged down to the very bottom. Without Irvan and a car I cannot go hunting for a good mid-range hotel, so I ended in a very modest pension in downtown Balikpapan. The host is super friendly, however, and the place is surrounded by good places to eat, so the three nights I am spending here will not be so bad. I did have to make a trip to the local IndoMaret (Indonesia's version of Oxxo or 7-Eleven) for a bar of soap and a roll of toilet paper, but that gave me the opportunity to make friends with the young woman at the checkout, who not deterred by the language barrier made it very easy for me to complete the transaction.

For dinner I went to the eatery that is in front of the hotel, where they tried again the trick of bringing a dozen different dishes to the table. Politeness would have compelled me to try to eat them all, but in my previous visit I learnt that you only eat whatever dishes you want (say rice, a serving of veggies, and beef stew) and leave the others untouched. At the time of the bill the waiter looks over the table and from memory figures out what plates are empty and you pay accordingly. I am a slow learner but now I know I can do the Indonesia thing.