Our current life in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan (a/k/a Borneo)!
Tomorrow, Sam and I will be leaving Balikpapan, Indonesia, and I don’t think that fact has fully settled in. After living here for two years, I guess that is understandable. Packing up our things has made me think of our time spent in this “oil town” of approximately 700,000 souls, and the kind of questions…
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It is that time of year again: the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, where, among other things, observers abstain from eating or drinking during the day and participate in breaking the fast at sundown. And if the curtain-obscured restaurants, department store sales, night bazaars and lack of daytime street food stalls didn’t clue us into…
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Having lived in Balikpapan, Kalimantan for nearly two years now, Sam and I have racked up some interesting experiences as foreigners/corporate expats in Indonesia. This, despite the fact that, if I’m being totally honest, I don’t feel as if I can really say we’ve fully “lived” in Indonesia. Perhaps my perspective is due to the…
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Here’s what happened when I made a DIY Solar Camera Filter out of used X-Ray film to photograph a Total Solar Eclipse. Longing To See A Total Solar Eclipse Way back when, on May 30, 1984, there was a (nearly) Total Eclipse of the Sun visible in my neck of the woods (Stone County, Mississippi),…
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A few kilometers northeast of Balikpapan’s bustling Kebun Sayur market, in a tiny village called Kampung Somber, an old-school tofu factory churns out kilograms of freshly made tofu every day of the week. From outside, this place may not look like much. But once you step through those corrugated metal and wood frame doors, a…
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Indonesia has the world’s third largest tropical forest, after the Amazon and the Congo. And lucky us, we currently live in Kalimantan, a/k/a Borneo, where the rain forests cloister species still being discovered; currently our island — the third largest in the world — is home to a huge range of flora and fauna found nowhere…
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Indonesia air pollution is a major topic this year, especially for those of us living under the smoky clouds. Unlike countries such as China or the USA, where air pollution is caused largely from coal factories and automobile exhaust, here in Indonesia, the major air pollution culprit is slash and burn farming. Slash and burn…
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Stone jewelry sales have exploded in Indonesia; particularly for men, who love to wear enormous stone rings and/or stone pendants strung with gold or silver chains. Within the sixteen months we’ve been in Balikpapan (East Kalimantan Indonesia), we’ve noticed a marked increase in stores and little stalls selling various raw and polished stones within the local markets…
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Living in Balikpapan, Kalimantan, Indonesia is, for the most part, like living anywhere else … sort of. Even if you’re here as a dependent instead of the work visa spouse, you still have your chores and errands: shopping for groceries, house cleaning, laundry, exercise, cooking, and all the other day-to-day activities that are a part of being…
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Balikpapan’s Sun Bear Sanctuary lies in the Sungai Wain preservation area of East Kalimantan’s rain forest, off Kilometer 23 on the road to Samarinda. Here, seven sun bears rescued from poachers and other threats roam the 3.25 acre natural enclosure. Twice daily, the bears, whose Indonesian name “Beruang Madu” actually translates to honey bear, pad…
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