Looking forward to what Borneo had in the way of adventure we arrived into it's capital, Balikpapan, on the 8th of January. The flight we took with Batik Air was very smooth though you couldn't help having a bit of a nagging concern in the back of your head due to the recent AirAsia crash which took place over the same sea.

Upon arrival we took a massively overpriced airport taxi to 'Rina's Guesthouse' which we had pre-booked. There wasn't much in the way of cheap accommodation in Balikpapan so being the cheapest and most reasonable we could find (i.e. it has a western toilet), we arrived at Rina's with a little apprehension. We arrived late to find the front gate locked and had to shout loudly and bang on the gate to get the attention of Rina, who came out wearing her nightie and looking slightly confused. Luckily within a few minutes and a bit of explaining, the awkwardness over, we were pleasantly surprised with the standard of accommodation. It turned out to be one of the nicest places we had stayed yet; Rina's was homely and nicely decorated, we had a large flat screen TV, air con and the toilet even had one of those robotic bottom cleaning sprays built in that you usually see on japanese TV! We were also relieved, if not a little disappointed, to find out that we didn't have to show Rina the fake marriage certificate that we had spent hours forging the previous day (this is often a requirement in Muslim dominated Kalimantan when booking a double room).

We spent 2 nights at Rina's sorting out travel arrangements for the rest of our trip in Kalimantan. She was a great host, treating us to random breakfast combinations each morning such as bread, banana, spring rolls, donuts, squishy rice cakes, jam and tea. With Rina speaking great english we spent one evening chatting with her about travel, life back in England and her passion for baking, during which she gave us a very sickly banana and coconut milk cake which we both struggled to get through.

Balikpapan itself is fairly non-descript, like the other cities in Kalimantan it is merely a transit point for tourists visiting the real attraction of Kalimantan; its nature.

After 2 nights at Rina's with our our first plan to travel to Tanjung Puting finalised, she gave us a lift to the bus station on the back of 2 mopeds, Sophie having to wear her backpack and holding onto Rina as tightly as she could so as not to topple off while we whizzed at speed to the bus station.

Our first stop on the way west to Tanjung Puting was via the city of Banjarmasin; the bus journey there was one of our worst yet (OK we say this a lot but it really was). We spent 14+ hours on the bus with the AC on minus 10 degrees, the aircon dripping all over us, and the familiar sound of Indonesian pop blaring in the background throughout the whole night. The aircon was set so cold that from that point onwards all bus journeys in Kalimantan required trousers, warm socks and hoodies, and a hat, scarf and gloves would have been useful!

On arrival at Banjarmasin we checked into the 'Perdana Hotel', much like Fawlty Towers. The hotel was a mishmash of brightly (and badly) coloured rooms , all organised in some type of strange maze like layout. That said the staff were friendly and you felt like you could treat it like your own home. The mess and smell of Banjarmasin itself was more akin to a city in India than what we had become accustomed to in Indonesia. So much so that the government decided against redeveloping it as a regional capital in favour of building a brand new city a couple of hours away and starting from scratch. Therefore dinner that evening was at pizza hut at a nearby shopping mall!

At 5:15am the next morning we went on a tour to the nearby floating market accompanied by a guide who approached us the previous day outside the hotel. The local tourist industry tries to market Banjarmasin as the 'Venice of SE Asia'...we concur with the Lonely Planet that this is indeed a big exaggeration; the only similarity being that they both sit below sea level! The tour to the floating market passed many shack like houses along the river banks; while initially poor in appearance, a closer inspection revealed that they all had TV's and scooters inside, much akin to council houses in the UK with satellite dishes. The floating market consisted of about 20-30 boats milling around with women selling and swapping various fruits, cakes, curry and clothes...a good excuse for the women of the village to have a good gossip. We tried several different fruits, though most were so fiddly to eat for the small amount of flesh in them it hardly warranted the effort. That said it was interesting trying the large number of different types of fruit Indonesia has, most of which you will never see in a supermarket back home.

After visiting the market we disembarked and visited the local village which runs along the banks of the river. We looked around a local muslim school, the children shy but curious of the westerners, hanging out in separate boy/girl gangs similar to a school disco back home. Conversely on the other side of the river we were greeted by a big group of screaming school children as if we were some kind of celebrities! Next we walked through the village to see some of the local handicrafts going on, including women weaving wicker boxes for rice, men tie-dying clothes, and everyone wanting to say hello to us, or in the case of Indonesia 'Hello Mista' for both men and women.

After the tour was complete our guide then organised a lift for us to the airport so we could get our flight to Pangkalan Bun further east and closer to Tanjung Puting national park. While our guide was good our patience when tested when he persistently tried to get us to sign up with an Orangutan tour before we had left, for which we assumed he would get commission. Our flight to Pangkalan Bun was with KALstar on our smallest plane yet, of which Sophie apprehensively analysed the position of the wings being at the top and not in the normal position of the middle of the planes body...The journey was an hour long over what seemed extensive jungle with a quick stop in the middle at a very tiny airport. The alternative was an 18 hours bus journey which we predicted would have killed us with hypothermia had we taken it!

On arrival at Pangkalan Bun we got in another expensive tax after having quite a vocal disagreement about the price with the taxi office, and headed into town. We then spent about an hour trying to find any hotel with a western toilet and settled on the 'Tiara Hotel' where we stayed in a 'deluxe' room. By deluxe we mean that it had a western toilet, though no seat just the bowl and literally nothing else that would warrant the term 'deluxe'.

After making lots of phone calls that day and negotiating on price, we ended up booking a 3 day 2 night tour of the national park with the company 'Borneo Wisata'. That evening we had 'Martabak'; a popular Indonesian street dessert consisting of a 2 inch thick pancake filled with about half a pack of melted butter, half a tin of condensed milk, chocolate sprinkles and crushed nuts. We enjoyed this in our 'deluxe' room before slipping into a food coma..."it was so sickly but so good" (Sophie's words).