When I was a little kid, I have a dream to see black orchid in Kersik Luway National Park, East Borneo. I knew about Kersik Luway National Park and black orchid as the endemic flower from a travel magazine I read. You know what, on that time I didn’t know where East Borneo is. I just want to know how beautiful is Kersik Luway National Park. I dreamed about the black orchid and the white sand path for couple of days.
Then on june 2011, I have an opportunity to go there with my boyfriend. First of all, my boyfriend didn’t say that we will travel to Kersik Luway. He just said travelling to Melak, and of course I didn’t know where it is. Melak is about 8 hours by motorcycle from Samarinda so we started at 6 am. Because we didn’t have breakfast yet so we stopped at Kota Bangun Sp3 and bought coffee, tea and snacks. Took a rest at warung and saw people wearing safety shoes and safety helmet driving around us. I guess they are coal-mining workers or palm oil plantation workers. East Borneo rich of coal and oil, woods and hectares of palm oil plantation.
After finished our breakfast at warung then we continued this trip. Along the way I saw the Borneo tropical forest. I thought there are no more forest again because of mining exploration and palm oil plantation, but maybe I was wrong. I saw big trees as part of tropical rainforest. Thanks God, I saw Your gift to my country. This rainforest will save the world, give the fresh air as oxygen turnover. Yes it will, only if people never destroy the rainforest more. We need to save our tropical rainforest. I saw not only rainforest but also huge palm oil plantation. Palm oil plantation workers lives far away from big city.
For lunch we decided to stop at Muara Lawa. We found “warung arema” then we order sayur asem, tempe goreng, pecel lele, and 2 glasses of ice tea. The taste not pretty good, but we starved. I paid Rp.60.000,- for those meals, oh my God I felt like robbed! But my boyfriend said “it’s fair price, Muara Lawa far from everywhere so everything is expensive here”. Ok, I understood.
We continued to Melak, riding through forest, palm oil plantation, coal mining and stoned road. We arrived in Melak at 3pm. Finally I knew Melak is one of kecamatan in kabupaten Kutai Barat. And the capital city of Kabupaten Kutai Barat is Sendawar. And I knew my boyfriend will bring me to the national park. We tried to find the way to the National Park but there is no sign board. Then I asked to someone we met, she said “it is too late to go to the National Park. There is no light, it is still forest and getting dark without sun. and it is far from here, it’s about an hour to go”. So we decided to find hotel for a night.
On the next morning we leave hotel at 8 am and straight to the national park. We asked everyone we met about the route of national park, definitely to prevent the wrong way. I thought the weather very nice, most cloudy and not too hot like usually. In my mind just one sentence “my dream come true”. I can not hide my smiles, Kersik Luway here I come. We through dayak settlement, we saw “Lamin” Dayak’s traditional house.
I’m so glad when we arrived in the national park. But too bad there are nobody in the information office. So we took picture in front of the office and walked into the national park. Kersik Luway national park has a unique thing, white sand. Yes it’s soft white sand just like in a beach. Kersik Luway means “silent sand” it comes from Dayak Benuaq language. I touched this white sand, handful of white sand, this is my dream. My dream that my boyfriend reach out for me.
We walked around an hour without guide I thought we walk in wrong way hahaha. We saw many kinds of orchid but not the black orchid, we saw tropical pitcher plants also. We found tower, and we were in and climb to upstair. We saw white sand everywhere, trees, shrubs, orchid, tropical pitcher plant, birds, and butterfly. It’s one of romantic moment with my boyfriend, just two of us in tower with birds sound surrounding us and butterfly flight. Even We didn’t see the black orchid, but I was happy. One of my dream destination was reach out. I will always remember this trip. It called love and dream trip.
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