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| Nabucco Island |
We left Kutai completely elated at the sightings of the
Orangutans but also completely filthy from 4 days in the very humid jungle. We
got a shared taxi back to Balikpapan and caught a flight to Berau where we were
met from the plane by the driver of our next destination. We had decided that
for a (very early) birthday present/treat for me we would go to one of the
‘paradise’ island resorts off the east coast of Borneo in the Palau Derawan
Archipeligo. The driver took us to the jetty where we then got a 3 hour speed
boat to the Island of Nabucco. It all felt very VIP especially after 4 months
of backpacking and having freshly emerged from the jungle! When we arrived
there was a welcoming party to greet us and we were given cold flannels before
being shown to the bar where a fresh coconut was waiting for each of us. The
island itself was tiny and about as close to a Robinson Crusoe type island as
you can imagine, you could walk around the whole island in 10 minutes and it
was surrounded by turquoise clear water and white sand. We stayed in 1 of about
8 wooden chalets, all with direct sea access so in the morning you could
literally go snorkeling from your front steps – pretty amazing! As you can
probably tell we have nothing but praise for Nabucco and following along the same
trend… the food was amazing too! We had half board and each evening enjoyed a 5
course gourmet meal in the restaurant overlooking the sea. A mixture of
Indonesian and European cuisine, the food was very original and delicious!
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| View from the restaurant |
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| View from the other side of the restaurant.... |
We stayed for four days, spending 2 days diving and 2 days
just enjoying the island – reading, sun bathing, playing board games and
snorkeling. Mike also spent a lot of time harassing the resident coconut crab
who every time anyone came close would crawl back into his hole. Unrelenting
though Mike sat patiently outside the hole every night in the dark waiting for
it to come creeping out so that he could shine his torch at it and have yet
another good lookJ
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| Baby coconut crabs |
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| The adult coconut crab was huge! |
The diving was really good, the visibility was the best
we’ve had and we saw lots of turtles and a huge school of barracuda amongst
many other things.
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| Banded angel fish |
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| Huge conch 30cm long |
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| Giant school of barracuda in the background |
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| There were turtles everywhere! |
All in all a brilliant four days… the only embarrassing
thing was that not only were we the only backpackers obviously not used to the
luxury…the only people to enquire about discounts… the only people on half
board who skipped lunch to save money but we were also the only people who when
it came to paying our bill couldn’t because our online banking wouldn’t do
international transfers!!!Luckily after numerous telephone calls (on their
mobile because ours wouldn’t work!) we managed to get everything sorted but it
was a slightly awkward ending to say the least!!
The next couple of days were spent making our way from
Kalamantan to Malaysian Borneo and the journey once again took a lot longer
than we had anticipated. Our transfer back to the mainland from Nabucco dropped
us in Berau, a small port town with nothing really to do other than move on.
Arriving too late on the Friday to get the morning busses out however, we
stayed one night and booked a flight for the next day to Nunukan. We had been
advised that the quickest route to the Malaysian port of Tawau was via Nunukan,
which sits on the border of Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo. Apparently if we
got the morning flight and headed straight to the port we would be just in time
for the ferry. Actually we arrived to find out that we had missed the ferry by
about 5 hours and that as the ferries didn’t run on a Sunday we would have to
wait until Monday morning! We had thought Berau was small and didn’t have much to
offer…Nunukan was much, much smaller and had nothing to offer! We stayed in a
very dark and dingy little room, with a window that looked onto an alley.
Although probably being the shabbiest place we’ve stayed yet, it was very, very
cheap and the little old lady who owned it was quite a character! Despite these
two pros however, we were both thoroughly fed up that we were going to have to
waste a whole day there…and to make matters worse just as we were thinking at
least there’s a TV to watch, someone came into our room and removed it!
Our despair was short lived however when the same man returned with a much
bigger TV for us and we turned it on to find that the newly started London
Olympics was on!! We couldn’t believe it and spent the next 48hrs in our dark room
watching highlights of the opening ceremony as well as various sporting events
– feeling somewhat nostalgic about London! Unfortunately just as we were
getting into the mens cycling where team GB were favourites to win, someone
changed the satellite channel and we had to watch Indonesia playing badminton
but it was the Olympics all the same.
When Monday came round we emerged from our dark cave and
caught the ferry to Tawau. Waiting in queue to get our visa we realised we had
no money at all to pay for it…luckily not only were we ushered to the front of
a ‘foreigners’ queue but also our visa was free anyway so we needn’t have
worried – we were already beginning to really like Malaysia J A helpful guy pointed
us in the right direction and we were soon on a local bus on the way to Lahad
Datu, our first stop. One thing that was noticeably different between Indonesia
and Malaysia as soon as we arrived was that everyone spoke English, which made
it so easy to travel around. From Lahad Datu we got a transfer to the
Kinabatangan River – our first tourist destination, which completed a total of
over 4 days travelling from Nabucco!
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| Sunset over Nabucco |
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| Sunset again over Nabucco |
