That Time When I Crossed The Malaysian landborder

Hitchhiking is fun until you realize that you might not come back alive!


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As an unreliable translator/note taker for Aural Archipelago, I'm always excited to go to a new place to search for new sound and new music in Indonesia.  Most of the journeys I've had with Palmer have been wonderful, and some interesting stories, maybe, are worth to share.  This is a memorable one when we went to Kalimantan.

It was July 2014 and Palmer had set up a plan to go to Kalimantan.  The itinerary was poorly planned, but who cares.  We just wanted to throw ourselves into the middle of Kalimantan jungle and in our perfect world (which of course doesn't exist) we hoped to quickly find a sape player.

We flew to Pontianak first and we didn't waste our time: we wanted to cross the border to Kuching.  It was an ok journey; although it took us one night to go from Pontianak to the border.  Surprisingly, we saw not only buses to go to Kuching, but also to Brunei Darussalam.  I saw some Malay people were there; and with the accent unfamiliar to my ears, I felt like I was in another country already.

The journey to go to the Malay side of the border was quite easy.  What I notice the most though, is that the road in Indonesian side sucked.  Sucked ass.  It was so bad but nobody seemed to care enough to fix it.  It was more irritating when we managed to cross the border to the Malaysian side and suddenly that bumpy road turned into a smooth-ass road.  The F???!!!

Our excursion to Kuching was so nice.  We couchsurfed at a young doctor's apartment and he took us for sightseeing.  This city reminded me of Singapore a bit.  Because it's clean.

ANYWAY

Our three day-two nights trip to Kuching was over and we had to commence our initial goal: to record sape music in Putussibau.  I mean, how hard is it, right?

After some talk with our host, we decided to take a bus to Badau; the closest border point from where we live.  When I said the closest it was like....a five-hour journey.  So that's it.  We hopped on this bus and we told the driver that we wanted to get off in Badau.

"This bus won't stop at Badau, but we can stop somewhere near the border.  We'll tell you later".

Oh, bless you, young guy.  What would we do without your help.

We waited and waited for hours and nobody said anything.  I looked out the window, and our surrounding turned yellow and dry.  At times I'd see the deserted palm oil plantations, burned and abandoned.

Suddenly THAT guy walked to our seats.  "Why didn't you drop off before? we passed Badau point a while ago."

What the f dude! you said that you would've told us before!

So there we were.  Stranded in the middle of nowhere.  I was thirsty, I was hungry.  I missed my annoying sister.  I missed sambal terasi.  I missed everything about Indonesia.....Luckily Palmer always had the spirit although I was freaking grumpy.

"We have to stop a car here!"   So we both stuck our thumbs out.  We hadn't seen any cars passing by.  Our chance was slim.

After 10 minutes, we saw a car from afar.  When he came closer, we had our hope back.  Bless you, kind sir.  We told the driver that we're from Indonesia and that we wanted to cross the border.  Unfortunately, the border point that we were supposed to go to was two hours away

I was hopeless.  It was getting dark and I was so tired, but Palmer and I couldn't just give up. We had to hitchhike one more time.  This time, the chance was getting slimmer.  Although Malaysians cross the border to Indonesia all the time, Badau point was not popular.  How long would we have to wait for a car to pass by?

We waited for an hour and nothing happened.  People who were hanging out at a small kiosk nearby offered some help in return for $60.  We politely declined.

We waited and waited, and finally, we saw a white minivan turn right, to the Badau direction!  We waved our hands, and it stopped.  Palmer walked closer and told the driver our situation, and he agreed to take us to the border!

Two hours is a long journey, so we had to have a chit-chat with the driver and his "wife".  That guy is from Malaysia and the lady is from Kalimantan.  We barely understood that guy's Malay dialect.  It was a mix of English, Malay, and Hokkien.  His wife, on the other hand, spoke Indonesian, but in a heavy Malay accent.

They told us that they own a palm oil and a rubber plantation.  When we asked about the purpose of their journey that day, the wife suspiciously replied, "To give that small bicycle to someone".
We didn't dare to ask why they had to drive all the way from Kuching to Badau just to send a bicycle.  Couldn't they just mail it?

Anyway, that guy was quite chatty; so he boasted a lot about his business, unaware of how environmentally damaging it is for Kalimantan.  From what his wife was wearing that day, I could imagine how much money he makes.  Although his wife is from Indonesia, he's not interested enough to go here.  "Nah" he said.

His gold necklace screamed something sketchy about himself.  When we stopped to get some lunch, some people quietly moved away from him.  What is happening here?!!
Palmer and I sent some eyes signals.  There's something fishy about him! My heart beat so fast, every minute was a torture.  I just wanted to go home, for god's sake.

After two hours, we finally arrived at Badau border point.  Mind you, Jokowi had not fixed the border at that time, so it was a really humble border.  It was just a small building with only two people working on that day.  One of them was very young and inexperienced.  I saw a computer there, but nothing was done digitally; we still had to write our names on a book.   I didn't think he had seen a white guy crossing that border before since he was confused to see Palmer's KITAS.

We said goodbye to that guy and his wife.  I didn't care if he has committed a crime or not.  He has helped us to get into my homeland and that's quite memorable for me.

This story doesn't end here because the next part is that we had to search for a sape player in the middle of Kalimantan jungle.  But it's a story for another time.

Note: 
1. To listen to sape music that we recorded you can go to the Aural Archipelago website here
2. Some silly pictures of our Kalimantan adventure can be found here and here