Week 2: Southern Borneo

The mosque inside Emmy's school in South Kalimantan

After a week of being super-tourists in Java, we flew to South Kalimantan (Borneo) to visit Emmy's Indonesian home. For the past year, Emmy has ben living and teaching in a pesantren, a conservative Muslim boarding school for girls. How conservative? Emmy snuck Amos inside the 12-foot cement walls one night at 10pm to find out. In a community in which dating-- even between adults-- is prohibited, the two of us were greeted by hundreds of running, shrieking, veiled high-schoolers. Although Amos couldn't touch any of the girls, even to shake their hands, he took more photos with the girls than during the whole rest of the trip.

Ms. Emmy with her favorite class

Sunday morning "jog" around the pesantren's walled compound -- it's the only time the girls get to leave.

Doesn't Emmy look good in a jilbab?

Doesn't Amos look good in a skirt? (It's called a sarong.) The girls are wearing white veils because they are walking up the steps of the mosque to pray.

The next day we went to visit Emmy's weekend getaway home in the nearby city of Banjarmasin-- and it was certainly a getaway from the pesantren. Yetty, Emmy's good friend in Banjarmasin, took us to the pride and joy of this conservative Muslim province: Duta Mall. After visiting Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, we went to see Susuk Pocong-- three of the five movies showing were about the same "Pocong" ghost. The films was awful but by the fifth naked bathtub scene, we almost forgot we were in a strict, conservative Muslim city.

Emmy saw Nenek, Yetty's grandmother, almost on a weekly basis, but they could only communicate through hugs, slaps, and grunts. Like many older Indonesians, she only speaks her local dialect, Bahasa Banjar.

Since the movie contained very little information about the magioc itself, we asked Emmy's roommate's family about Susuk, gold magic twigs. Not only did they tell us that we could find Susuk in the sprawling markets of Martapura, but they also told us about other Indonesian superstitions. In their hometown in Java, 33 virgin maidens were snatched from the streets, decapitated, and buried under the foundation of a new bridge to guarantee its structural integrity. If only the Tacoma Narrows engineers had known this secret!

Esthi, Emmy's roommate and best friend in Indonesia, stands outside her parents' one-room home with her daughter and mother.

After Amos heard that Susuk twigs could make him more beautiful, he dragged Emmy to the traditional markets in Martapura. We did not find Susuk, but we did find other market treasures: fish flapping in an inch of putrid water, chicken brains, traditional Kalimantan swords, and crocodile (thanks Steve!) skulls. We stuck to garlic and green beans, trying to supplement the local diet of dried fish and rice.

A typical aisle of the traditional market in Martapura: dried fish, chicken heads, not a lot of space.

As we strolled through the market, the vendors called out, "photo, photo, Mister!". This dried fish seller got especially lucky -- she made it onto our blog.

Amos wasn't allowed to have pets as a child. He wanted this to be his first.

Emmy suggested a pet crocodile head instead.

We made one last attempt to find Susuk with a four-hour drive into the jungles of the indigenous Dayak people. "Dayak" is a lump term for the hundreds of tribes in the interior of Borneo. "Mie" is a lump term for the many different types of Ramen Instant Noodles, the only food we found available there. Dayaks may be famous for their head-hunting traditions, but we just found a generous community that welcomed us into their 40-family bamboo longhouse for their annual all-night harvest festival. We loved the old-men chanting and stomping in a circle and the old women beating drums, but only until 1am. For the rest of the night, we slipped in and out of sleep thanks to the shouting, drumming, face-painted 60-year-olds. Amos didn't find his beautifying Susuk, and he didn't even get his beauty sleep.

Bamboo shoots near the Dayak village. It's no wonder that they can make a longhouse entirely out of this stuff.

Bob, the only other white person in attendance, sleeps like a rock despite the 5 am drums and hard bamboo floor of the Dayak longhouse.

While the elders chanted and drummed, the younger generation loaded grain and coconut into the harvest house in the center.