A Glimpse of The Borneo

We live in a century while millennials are trying so hard to show who they really are. In a century when microblogs, or better known as social medias, are taking over the way we live and how we interact with one another. Social media is now becoming a place where millennials build their identity, showing what they want others to think about them with making such a lot of life-goal-looking posts.

I’m a student of Universitas Indonesia, majoring communication and taking advertising as my concentration. In advertising, I learned how to use microblogs for the digital marketing. After learning about that and trying to connect it with the habits of millennials while using the microblogs, I think in this digital era we can do the digital marketing not only for business, but also for ourselves, too (in a good way, of course).

One kind of posts that millennials usually share on their social medias is about their vacation. As you can see, most of their vacation-goal-posts were taken in some popular places across the world. Here in Indonesia, the places where millennials often go, and take some pictures, and then share it on their social medias, are Bali, Jogja, Bandung, or the other places that already have some popular tourist destinations which make them easier to reach. Well, I don’t see it wrong, but I think going to the places that already popular then sharing the stories about it is a kind of mainstream.

Now, as a part of millennials, I want to do a kind of different thing. I want to take you to another touristy sides of Indonesia and show you about what makes them worth to visit and explore for, and as millennials often do, to share for. And here we go.

Before that, what do you think when you heard about ‘Borneo’? I bet the first thing that pop ups to most of your mind is a place in Indonesia that is full of forests and far from modernity, a place where there’s only trees and another wild creature. Well, that’s not completely wrong, but all I can say is, it is way more modern that you thought.

I went to East Borneo last August. When I was there, I mostly stayed in Balikpapan at my uncle’s house. Balikpapan itself is not really different from Jakarta or the other big cities. It has malls, restaurants, pubs, office buildings, real estates, and so on. The huge difference among Balikpapan from the other big cities, especially from Jakarta, is it has less population and also you won’t see any traffic jam there. The city is so quiet, even at my uncle’s housing I didn’t meet any of his neighbors. All I saw were only the securities and lots of empty houses (actually they’re owned but only as inventories).

During the stay there, instead of visiting the mall, I preferred to go to the other side of the city. Yes, the village-looked ones. It was interesting because less than a mile from the city lights, you can find beaches, river with the traditional markets on it, traditional houses, and so on. I visited two beaches there, Lamaru Beach and Manggar Beach. The beaches are not as beautiful as in Bali or Jogja, they have no white sands and the water is not crystal clear, but they are really, really, really quiet. It felt like you went to a private beach. For me, I liked it! I like when all I can heard was the sound of waves and wind, it was really relaxing.

Lamaru Beach, Balikpapan

Not only the beaches, I also went to Teritip Crocodile Breeding. It was my first time to meet the crocodiles, to be honest. There are a lot of crocodiles there, and they are super huge! You can feed them with fresh chicken if you want to. You only have to pay around Rp20.000 or more to feed them and the handler will give you the fresh chicken to be given to the crocodiles. If you want to buy some souvenirs, you can go to a traditional market called “Kebun Sayur”, unlike the real meaning of its name, it doesn’t sell any vegetables at all, but the handicrafts. There are hundreds of stalls that sell the typical handicrafts of Borneo, such as jewelries made of precious stones like ruby, emerald, or diamond (some of them are imitation, of course, but they surely pretty!), bags and purses made of beads, and also clothes with traditional Borneo patterns on it. If you want to buy any traditional snacks of East Borneo, you can find the stores along the road in Balikpapan. The famous ones are Amplang (chips made of fish meat) and Bingka cake.

Teritip Crocodile Breeding, Balikpapan

Not only Balikpapan, I also went to Batu Kajang and Tanah Grogot. They’re still in East Borneo, but I had to cross the river that separate them with Balikpapan by ship, from Semayang Harbor to Penajam Harbor. It took around an hour long on the ship, but that’s not all, I still had to take around four to five hours long, without any traffic, on the road by car. The way from Penajam Harbor to Batu Kajang was so different from Balikpapan. I couldn’t see any skyscrapers there, all I saw were forests and some traditional houses. There’s no traffic light at all.  Among the forests, I could see a lot of palm tree plantations and almost all of the people’s yards have at least one palm tree on it. I went there by midnight so the road was really dark and the only light was from my car, even I could see lots of stars in the sky there! As I got to Batu Kajang, I went to Mount Rambutan, just to see the view of Batu Kajang from the top, actually. But it was awesome! I could see the famous colliery there.

Mount Rambutan, Batu Kajang

Tanah Grogot is another different city, it is not as modern as Balikpapan, but better than Batu Kajang. The unique thing about the city is all the buildings have the same paint color on it, depends on the law made by the governor on duty. The previous governor wanted all the city buildings painted with purple, but the new one wanted them to be painted with green, and so they changed it (kinda strange, but it’s true). I did the journey in East Borneo only for a week, but it was really fun and exciting to explore the other side of Indonesia. I hope that my writing can inspire all of you that have read this to share another great stories to help popularize every single exotic sides of Indonesia. Let’s be different, millennials!