The madam enjoying her breakfast outside our room
Derawan's fleet, ready to sail for the night
Evening soccer game played in Derawan's only street
Dude fixing boat above some very clear water
Fish: the only thing we know how to order. Served with home made sambal.I read in a travel article once that you could determine the life stage of a beach town by its dogs. A few sickly flea-bitten mutts meant a town was not yet touristed, villagers and canines alike living their undisturbed existences. A robust and healthy population of well-fed strays meant that the beach town was at its peak, enough visitors to promote enough restaurants to produce enough scraps so that the dogs would thrive, but not so many as to push the town into its last stage: No dogs. No dogs means of course that the locals have seen the economic opportunity tourism presents and have decided to clean up their act. At this point, the town is lost.
Derawan had a few dogs skulking about, its prime condition was displayed primarily by its cats, a small committee of which had attached itself to every losmen (homestay hostel) and warung (informal restaurant) on the islands square mile or so of territory. A particularly assertive tomcat appears every morning at the door of my room, having walked down the long pier to get to my ocean front terrace where at 6am sharp a tray of sweet tea and Indonesian pastries is placed by the shirtless, goateed owner.
Derawan is a speck of sound off the coast of Borneo, about half a day’s flight, taxi trip, and boat ride from the major cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, close to the regional hub of Berau. The region, as I’ve written, is rich in lush jungle, black gold, and legend. It’s where Joseph Conrad got his start (his first two books, Almayer’s Folley and An Outcast in the Islands are set in the coastal settlements at the mouths of the many rivers), and also where Royal Dutch drew its first sips. Today its many mines and oil derricks given an unusual patina of prosperity to what would otherwise be a backwater quite removed from Java and its big cities. The mining companies supply fleets of glistening white Toyota Hilux double-cab pickups to ply the good road between the airport and the coal mine, where massive coal-bearing dump-trucks trundle from an unseen pit to a prominent crushing tower and barge port. As in all of the few mining towns I’ve been, the locals seem quite unmoved by the environmental degradation that must be taking place, complaining only that the mine doesn’t provide enough jobs, and what jobs it does are too often handed to more mercantile Javanese. You get the sense that if they could will into existence 10 more giant mines, they would.
We haven’t done much here on Derawan, mostly as there’s not much to do. The tiny island has a single street, along one of its beaches, off which sprout about a dozen long piers, each of which is a sort of warren of retail shops at the front facing the street, houses and tackle sheds in the back over the water, and in a few cases, guest rooms built in a row extending about a hundred yards out. Power runs from a municipal diesel generator from dusk to dawn, and during the day the only untoward noise is a small engine that powers the islands two (!) cellular towers. A few residents have inexplicably imported scooters, but since there is literally nowhere to go on them, the noise pollution is minimal. The tableau is one of lapping waves and mothers shouting after smiling children, all at a cadence set only five times a day by the mournful call to prayer from the island’s only masjid.
Not a single local speaks a single word of English, as far as we can tell, so we’ve been mostly in unmolested peace. Our diet has suffered somewhat, since the only food-word we know is Ikan (fish), something that the townsfolk can provide in abundance, given that most of the able-bodied men earn their keep with rods and nets. A peek underwater with even a humble snorkel mask reveals why – the water teems with fish of all kinds – yesterday during a single dip in the still, crystal clear water we saw two stunning manta rays and more than a dozen sting rays. We couldn’t even be bothered to charter a boat to go out to the other islands where the really good snorkeling is supposed to be.
Despite all this, the visitors to the isolated island are almost exclusively locals or oil workers off for the weekend to relax, with a smattering of long-distance backpackers stopping over on their way to or from Malaysian Borneo (the only way to cross Borneo’s two halves legally is by sea, at a point not far from us). This means, as I explained to Vivian, “that the standards are a little different” from what we would normally expect on a honeymoon.
The isolation and its resulting standards also mean, however, that Derawan’s canine and feline population will be secure for years to come, keeping the island trapped at its peak for bold and leisurely travelers to discover.
Derawan had a few dogs skulking about, its prime condition was displayed primarily by its cats, a small committee of which had attached itself to every losmen (homestay hostel) and warung (informal restaurant) on the islands square mile or so of territory. A particularly assertive tomcat appears every morning at the door of my room, having walked down the long pier to get to my ocean front terrace where at 6am sharp a tray of sweet tea and Indonesian pastries is placed by the shirtless, goateed owner.
Derawan is a speck of sound off the coast of Borneo, about half a day’s flight, taxi trip, and boat ride from the major cities of Balikpapan and Samarinda, close to the regional hub of Berau. The region, as I’ve written, is rich in lush jungle, black gold, and legend. It’s where Joseph Conrad got his start (his first two books, Almayer’s Folley and An Outcast in the Islands are set in the coastal settlements at the mouths of the many rivers), and also where Royal Dutch drew its first sips. Today its many mines and oil derricks given an unusual patina of prosperity to what would otherwise be a backwater quite removed from Java and its big cities. The mining companies supply fleets of glistening white Toyota Hilux double-cab pickups to ply the good road between the airport and the coal mine, where massive coal-bearing dump-trucks trundle from an unseen pit to a prominent crushing tower and barge port. As in all of the few mining towns I’ve been, the locals seem quite unmoved by the environmental degradation that must be taking place, complaining only that the mine doesn’t provide enough jobs, and what jobs it does are too often handed to more mercantile Javanese. You get the sense that if they could will into existence 10 more giant mines, they would.
We haven’t done much here on Derawan, mostly as there’s not much to do. The tiny island has a single street, along one of its beaches, off which sprout about a dozen long piers, each of which is a sort of warren of retail shops at the front facing the street, houses and tackle sheds in the back over the water, and in a few cases, guest rooms built in a row extending about a hundred yards out. Power runs from a municipal diesel generator from dusk to dawn, and during the day the only untoward noise is a small engine that powers the islands two (!) cellular towers. A few residents have inexplicably imported scooters, but since there is literally nowhere to go on them, the noise pollution is minimal. The tableau is one of lapping waves and mothers shouting after smiling children, all at a cadence set only five times a day by the mournful call to prayer from the island’s only masjid.
Not a single local speaks a single word of English, as far as we can tell, so we’ve been mostly in unmolested peace. Our diet has suffered somewhat, since the only food-word we know is Ikan (fish), something that the townsfolk can provide in abundance, given that most of the able-bodied men earn their keep with rods and nets. A peek underwater with even a humble snorkel mask reveals why – the water teems with fish of all kinds – yesterday during a single dip in the still, crystal clear water we saw two stunning manta rays and more than a dozen sting rays. We couldn’t even be bothered to charter a boat to go out to the other islands where the really good snorkeling is supposed to be.
Despite all this, the visitors to the isolated island are almost exclusively locals or oil workers off for the weekend to relax, with a smattering of long-distance backpackers stopping over on their way to or from Malaysian Borneo (the only way to cross Borneo’s two halves legally is by sea, at a point not far from us). This means, as I explained to Vivian, “that the standards are a little different” from what we would normally expect on a honeymoon.
The isolation and its resulting standards also mean, however, that Derawan’s canine and feline population will be secure for years to come, keeping the island trapped at its peak for bold and leisurely travelers to discover.
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