Balikpapan in Borneo, industrial but still interesting city

Jakarta, 28.07.2008

I have just come back from a 5 days 4 nights trip to Balikpapan. Balikpapan is a unique city, where people come from all over the country to do business primarily in oil or coal industry. It is really a rich small city with many cultural thing. This city historically exist because of the oil and coal and other supporting industries. So about 60 % the population is Javanese people, I also originated from Java island, about 30 to 40 % come from Sulawesi and Sumatra then less than 5% are come from Kalimantan itself. Frankly saying it has no original tribels in Balikpapan, while once again the city was there because of industry. If we go to Balikpapan we see also a lot of expatriates, from all over the world, USA; European countries; Japan; Korea; Philipines; and etc.
There is no special kind of food there, except for it's famous "Restauran Kepiting Kenari", canary crab, among Indonesians it is still the most favorite one, I am not sure whether it will also touch the taste of western people. The fact is when I was there, on the second night in Balikpapan, the Restaurant itself only full of Indonesians. And this crabs come from it source, Tarakan city, another part of Borneo, so it is also not original Balikpapan again. There also a very good place with a nice taste also "black pepper crab" in the beach restaurant of Hotel Le Grendeur, the place where I lived.

Although Balikpapan is not the capital city of East Borneo but it is the only city that has a "accomodable" airport terminal which also serves international flights, mostly go and come from singapore. In Indonesia Balikpapan airport is one of the good airports, I do think.

So beside seafood restaurant what else we could do in Balikpapan? There are also crocodile park or "penangkaran buaya", that also sell "crocodile satay" or "sate buaya", that's so interesting whether you like the taste or not. They also demonstrate the way they kill the crocodile before cook it. Other places are Tenggarong, a kind of historical place, frankly I did not go there, since my tight schedule.

If you are interested in"orang utan" there is orang utan park about 2 hours by car. You could rent a car with the driver to go there.