February Travel Notes (Part 2)

Because of my limited memories about the exact date of my last journey in February so I decided to continue my travel notes without date (thought about date made me postpone to publish this post for one week), but I can guarantee you that date isn't everything, the most important thing is the story itself. 


The Floating 'jamban' Bathroom

The one that made me fell

It is common for village over the river to have floating bathroom. Floating bathroom made from wooden board and tied with rope to prevent from drifting. Usually the floating bathroom also connected to fish cages and also used for dock. In my case, the fish cage were filled with giant mudfish, the carnivorous fish, so watch out your finger from the cage or you might lost your finger.
For people especially female who never take shower in this kind of bathroom, experiencing it for the first time may become unforgettable moment. The first thing that you must have is balance, and second is sarong. The biggest problem occur when the river flow is slow (imagine what happen with your 'garbage' in that situation). 


Beauty and Cold Powder

Woman and her way to be beauty

If you and I used sunblock to protect our skin from sunburn. Most of village ladies used cold powder at daylight to prevent them from sunburn. Cold powder looks like traditional make up mask. Usually we use mask in our home or salon but I found out that village women can go everywhere used this powder. 


Eagle and tv series
Okay, it happen everywhere...most of Indonesian people like this genre of tv series...eagle, snake, and sexy ladies. Because not every villager have their own tv, so you can see in every grocery store all of villager that gathered there watching popular tv series 'tutur tinular'. 


Giant mudfish

Medium size of Giant mudfish

Little information about Giant Mudfish (Source: Wikipedia)

Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Actinopterygii, Order: Perciformes, Family: Channidae, Genus: Channa, Species: Chana micropeltes.

Distribution: Snakehead fish can be found in western part of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, India. Feeding behavior : Giant mudfish is classified into predatory fish that prey other fish and other animal such as insect and frog.

Can you see my teeth?

During my fieldtrip for 14 days in Katingan river area, most of my days were filled with Giant mudfish. This fish not only appeared on my meals three times a day but also became my companion when I took a shower or washed clothes.

Children explosion 

I saw children everywhere

There was one village which has many children. Everywhere, I saw children everywhere. I found six children in Village head house and when I went to elementary school, suddenly Our team surrounded by bunch of children. I heard that the village midwife ever got exhausted and got hospitalized because in one day she took care of more than 10 birth. We tried to connected this children explosion with early marriage and their main livelihood as gold miner that rarely stay in the village. 

Sunset, Coffee, and Signal

One of my sunset view

How to enjoy the evening is one of big question that appear everyday during the trip. The way we spent our evening at the beginning, middle,and the end of our trip were different. 

It coffee time

We spent our evening with fishing and playing soccer at the beginning and changed into fishing, playing soccer, and hangout in the middle, and finally we spent our evening caught signal phone and drunk coffee in last week of our trip. My phone was the one that fastest to got signal but I was the one who rarely made phone call or sent text message.

We want signal now!