Monkey See, Monkey Do!

This past weekend was my favorite time spent since being here.

While in a place where I cannot drive (Indonesians drive on the left side of the road, and the insane traffic patterns with all the motorbikes means I would likely kill someone) and can’t easily walk anywhere, I’ve really started to appreciate the mobility of life back home. I took that for granted, always making excuses that Detroit was too far from Ann Arbor to visit for one night. But now, here, I realize how easy that drive really was. Mobility is such a privilege: it means freedom.

The other Americans on my campus are in a different program than me, and they had their midterm break this weekend. Three of them and myself traveled to Surabaya (the second largest city in Java) by train after class on Thursday. The trip took around two hours. We spent one night exploring Surabaya, but we didn’t like much of what we saw. The city is big and is known for having a lot of malls, and that isn’t really our forte. But we did have great Pakistani food in the Arab district there. Then, early Friday morning, we took a one hour plane ride to Kalimantan - the Indonesian side of the island Borneo. Our trip was made easy by planning one tour for the entire time, so we got picked up by our guides from the airport early Friday morning and brought to the port.

And then that was it - we made it to complete peace and serenity. From Friday morning through Sunday morning we were staying on a house boat traveling through the rivers of Tanjung Puting National Park - home of the wild orangutan (and other fun creatures!). At first it felt like a lot of effort to get there: a train and a plane for only two days. But feeling the complete peace of being in nature while there made me realize that making the effort is always worth it. Freedom to move around is priceless; I should always be utilizing my three day weekends. I have to learn how to drive a motor bike.

The trip is designed to show us as many primates living in the wild as possible as we make our trip down the river, but I felt lucky to just be on the boat before the sightings even started. The equator runs through Kalimantan, and it is ungodly hot and buggy there. We constantly had to douse ourselves in bug spray, and you can imagine the showers on the boat were less than ideal. But it was so nice to just be disgusting. To sweat while just sitting there, doing nothing, and still wear the same outfit for the entire weekend. To not feel fully clean after a shower and just go to bed not caring. I didn’t have service the entire weekend, and in my moments of boredom, I actually read my book. But then, when reading my book, I would find myself instead just sitting and staring at my surroundings instead. They were entertaining enough. Just like at the temples in Jogja, I felt shocked to realize I was sitting somewhere where most people will never visit.

But, let’s not kid ourselves, the primates were the best part. Within the first two hours, we had spotted many longtail macaque monkeys (playful little guys) and our first orangutan spotting was a male! The males are so large, they look like gorillas. Finding one is like finding the king of the jungle. After eating lunch on the boat, we took a short trek into the national park to watch the orangutans at one of their feeding times. I knew I was excited to see them, but nothing could compare to the true shock of seeing wildlife that close. The orangutans looked like humans wearing fur suits. It would be more believable that it was a prank being played on me than believing that these creatures just exist in the wild. Their feet and hands look the same, and watching them climb trees and eat bananas with their feet is honestly just jarring. They aren’t scared to get close to humans, and they’re nice as long as you don’t have food on you. Their favorite activity is to scratch themselves and then sniff their hand. Of course, watching the momma and baby orangutans interact was the most special part. One baby would steal the mom’s banana right out of her mouth after she went to collect food for them. Then, she had to go back and grab more food for them while he sat in the tree. After eating, he took some time to just let out all of that hyper energy that seemingly all children have - swinging back and forth on a vine upside down.

One of my friends on the trip loves Jane Goodall and has done a lot of research on the topic. She shared that apes that had recently fed as a group and didn’t have to worry about food for a little while were found sitting and enjoying a waterfall near them. Just like humans, they find peace in nature. When not worrying about basic survival instincts, they too recluse to a beautiful area. There is something intrinsic inside all of us that tells us to escape to nature.

After watching the orangutans and having a quick reset on the boat, we prepped to go out for another trek at night to see the nocturnal critters. For me, this meant tucking in my shirt, buttoning it up all the way, and wearing a rain jacket and an egregious amount of bug spray. I told our guide I was scared of snakes, and he made it his personal mission to make sure I was about as freaked out for this walk as I could be. On this walk, we saw glow in the dark mushrooms, a tarantula, bright yellow and blue and red nocturnal birds, poisonous tree frogs, and, lastly, the venomous viper snake. High and mighty, the killer sat calm in a tree above our heads while we looked above and observed, respected. If it decided to drop from the tree, its victim could be dead in minutes. With each scary creature I saw, I felt more confident in myself. I found myself searching for more cool critters rather than fearing them.

At first, I felt like seeing the orangutans during their feeding time was sort of cheating, like we were watching them in a zoo rather than observing them in nature. Then, on our second day when nearly no orangutans came out for the feeding time, I knew that we were not given a show on our first day. We were just merely lucky. The camp volunteers yelled out “ayo, makan” which means “let’s eat” in Indoneisan, and some orangutans came to grab bananas and then went further into the jungle. But, during one feeding, we got to see a gibbon monkey act sassy and playful, swinging on the trees while the orangutans sat and ate stagnantly. Back on the boat, we also got to see the proboscis monkey - an endangered species - bounce around from tree to tree. They would swing the whole tree top back and forth to help slingshot them across the gap, and you could easily spot where a monkey would soon be jumping from as they shook the entire tree line before seeing their body flail across the sky.

The real star of the second night was in the trees, not the darkness above. A certain species of fireflies live in this national park, and they can be a bit tricky to find. They are cannibals, so they live in small and close spaces to keep reproducing and feeding on each other. Amongst an entire river lined with trees, we found them living in one tree. They light up much more often than those I’ve seen in the states, and the males and females light up at different rates so they can tell themselves apart. I truly think it might have been one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. We laid on the front of the boat and watched them for an hour, my friend and I staying up past others’ bedtime for a little extra peace with the bugs. In the hot tropical air, the bugs reminded me of the cold but cozy seasons starting at home and the extra magic in the air with Christmas lights everywhere. One tree with lots of bugs was better than any neighborhood full of Christmas lights I’ve ever seen, but the feeling they gave me was nostalgic and familiar. The feelings of playing outside as a young kid chasing lightning bugs to put in a jar perfectly coexisted with the feelings of family time during the end of the year holidays.

Our tour ended on Sunday morning, and our guide brought us to the airport for our flight to Surabaya. We had to take a rental car back from Surabaya as there were no trains running for the day after the 4am train. Albeit more expensive and less straight forward to book, we were still able to get home by Sunday afternoon - everyone I talked to was so shocked to hear what we had fit into our weekend.

I struggle here trying to find a balance with conforming to local customs and giving myself the comforts I need in order to feel safe and happy. Although I should really settle in and live life like a local would, escaping for the weekend brought me a lot of my sanity back. I want to adapt so I don’t constantly feel this culture shock, but my city life in Malang can oftentimes feel suffocating. Though my city is surrounded by mountains, they’re not easy to access.

I had a good conversation with my friend in the Peace Corps here last week. I told him I feel I understand a lot of the culture around me, but sometimes, I just don’t like it. Where I live, there are a lot of university students. They’re obsessed with social media, and they love to sit at cafes and just take pictures, smoke cigarettes, and sit on their phones in front of each other. Most of the food that they serve at cafes is fried or a sweet treat. He told me he has seen the university student culture and understands why I wouldn’t like it, he validated that by sharing Indonesia is the country with the highest phone usage. I thought I would come here and unplug, focusing on myself and my health. I find that hard with the lack of nature access and walking and the excess of unhealthy foods that leave me constantly fatigued trying to figure out my next meal. He challenged me to resist thinking I know the culture just because I know that of the young students - I should get out to more places, meet older generations, and search for more traditional places that serve healthier options than the ones found at cafes.

We talked about me wanting a struggle when I came here, yet I didn’t expect to feel unhappy while struggling. He told me that that is the struggle. High intensity activities aren’t a struggle if I like them. This moment - culture shock - is the struggle. It’s just a different one than I wanted, and that’s what I have the opportunity to work through. So, I have to keep living the culture around me (besides taking some exciting side quests like this one that really keep me going) - constantly replicating my life at home will just leave me more disappointed. Monkey see, monkey do!

Videos are posted to my notes section on my profile.

Thank you for reading my words. As always, feel free to chat me in the Substack app, email me in response to this, or WhatsApp me as I won’t be getting iMessages here. Sending handshakes from Indonesia (they don’t hug here :/). Pictures below!

View from the boat

Viper in the tree

Fireflies <3

Our sleeping set up on the boat deck