Stuck in a lift in Samarinda!

I was in Samarinda last June - attending a conference. It was a great (although tiring) trip. It was my very first trip to Kalimantan, despite the fact that I live in Borneo! An eye opening trip in many ways for me...

The journey itself was long and at times seemed like forever. Our flight took off from Kuching just after midnight and arrived in Jakarta at 2.00am. We had to spent the night at the airport coz our connecting flight to Balikpapan was at 6.00am...and from Balikpapan we had to take a cab to Samarinda - a 3 hour ride which costed us Rp250,000. The ride itself was scary - I am shocked at the way they drive -ignoring traffic lights, honking hons everywhere, and people crossing the roads without looking left or right...

The Conference itself was fun! Trying to catch what the presenters were saying was quite hard - they presented in Bahasa Indonesia...and some of the terms were really unknown to me...for example, i was reading a paper on "perencanaan wisata" and it turned out to be a paper on "tourism planning"! Meeting people and networking ...as one does in any conference kept me busy. But most of my free time were spent in the shopping complexes!

But the most memorable event for me was the fact that I was stuck in a lift during a blackout! I was in the lift for 15 minutes before they rescued me! But i have to say that the hotel staff was very nice and calm during the whole thing ...i was the one who nearly went berserk! but then again, so would you if you were in my place!!!

Will upload some of my photos in Samarinda in this blog later!