Hi good people!
I'm going to talk about my last trip to Derawan Islands, July 2018. Derawan Islands are located in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It has a lot of islands, but people usually only go to 3-5 islands. It was pretty amazing, but I didn't have enough time to enjoy all those beauty islands, because I stayed there only for one night. This wasn't a good example - most of people go to Derawan Islands and stay there for at least 3 days and 2 nights. I went there with only my mom, but there were two men accompanied us. This was all spontaneous, we booked our flights one day before we went. This also wasn't a good example, because when you book a flight too late, it'll cost more expensive.
Let's talk about the itinerary. First thing first, we stayed in Berau Island. We prepared going to Derawan Islands start from 3:00 AM (well, we only had more or less 24 hours!). First, we had to go to Tanjung Batu Port to use speed boat from the port to Derawan Island. The trip from Berau to Tanjung Batu took 2 hours by car. Then, we used speed boat to Derawan Island. For your information, Derawan Island is only one island, while Derawan Islands is the associations of islands, so there's a lot of them. The waves were crazy that day, I got really dizzy all the way from the port to Derawan Island.
We stayed in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage in Derawan Island. It has range cost from IDR 500,000 - IDR 2,000,000 per night, plus breakfast. We chose the wing room, it's the room that's actually above the water and it was nice. We could see oceans clearly and it's very near to snorkeling area, I recommend you all to choose the wing room if you someday stayed in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage. So I put my things first, then straightly went to Maratua Island. My mom couldn't join me because she couldn't handle herself from the waves. So I went with my father's friends (the two men that I was talking about earlier).
These are photos taken in Derawan Island.
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| This was one of the cottages (wing room) in Derawan Beach Cafe & Cottage. |
When I arrived in Maratua Island, there's a man called Mas Fahrul who works as a policeman and guided us (my father's friends and me). We ate first in the early afternoon. I had a fried fish and it was so good because I think that fish products in sea areas are all fresh and new. After eating, we went to Maratua airport (it's crazy it has an airport already!). We were just seeing the front face of the airport, then we went to Goa Haji Mangku. It was a cave under the water. I remember the view's almost the same with Goa Hawang in Southeast Maluku, the one that I visited from Tanimbar Kei's expedition last year (such a good memory). I met people from Jakarta in Goa Haji Mangku, they were on holiday.
Maratua Island, local people said, is the biggest island from all islands in Derawan Islands. It consists of four villages and a site for an airport. Honestly, it's better than Derawan Island - I mean it's neater and cleaner from where I saw.
These are photos taken in Maratuta Island.
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| I ate lunch with fish menu here, Pasagidan. |
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| I always adore God's creation. Look at those sea colors! |
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| They were Mas Gatot, Mas Fahrul, and Om Jek. I liked all of them, they're super nice and informative! |
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| This is Goa Haji Mangku |
After strolling around Maratua Island, we went to Kakaban Island, where I saw a lot of jellyfish!! This was sooo exciting, we swam with those cute-brownish jellyfish. Kakaban Island is like a ring, and we had to walk around five minutes to go to sort of a lake (in the middle of Kakaban Island) that has jellyfish in it. I didn't have a chance to take them with analog, because I don't have underwater camera tools, but Thank God I DID take them with my phone. I'll let you see my video about Derawan Islands in the last part.
These are photos taken in Kakaban Island.
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| This was a speed boat we used to go around Derawan Islands. |
Kakaban Island was my last destination before going back to Derawan Island. I didn't have time to go to Sangalaki Island, but you guys should go to Sangalaki Island because people said it's really beautiful and you can see sea turtles! How cute, right?
So I went back to Derawan Island, but I didn't stop snorkeling, ha ha. I continued to snorkel under my room. It was late, at about 4-5 PM. The fish and coral reefs are still good and there's a lot of them, I was glad! Most of famous beaches which have snorkeling program usually don't have coral reefs that are alive and there's only a few of clown fish - but this was different and nice actually. I met my mom in the room cottage, and we spent the rest of the night eating seafood and talk about Kalimantan news with my father's friends who knew a lot about it, he he.
The next day in the morning, we went back to Tanjung Batu Port and Berau to take a flight back to Balikpapan (a city in East Kalimantan), then went back to Bandung. This trip was amazingly great, all those spontaneous destinations were making me proud to reach them, ha ha. But honestly, it's a shame we didn't go to Sangalaki and the weather was not so nice, you know, there was a lot of cloudy moments. There was a moment when we went to Maratua, we could have seen a leopard shark on the way from the speed boat. But, because of the bad weather and the waves were not so good, that leopard shark didn't show up. It's fine, I still can see it in another time, this is also included the sea turtles.
This was a video I made from my phone. I edited so quickly, also from my phone. Sorry for the low quality and bad sound arrangement.
In conclusion, I like Derawan Islands a lot. I'm sure I would to go back there and stay more days than just only one night!
All photos were taken by Yashica fx super 2000 and film Portra 160 and Fuji Industrial 100.
Videos were recorded by iPhone 6s and edited by Splice.
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