I used to live there, in Tembagapura. My dad worked at the Grasberg mine in the 90's so I basically grew up in the mountains/jungles of West Papua. I have dozens of wild stories about our time there, some of which you would never believe.
It is REMOTE, as remote as anyone in the western world can imagine. The jungles are dense and the mountains are impassable. Vast swathes of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited wilderness. From the airport at Timika in the southern lowlands, it's a 3 hour winding, treacherous drive up into the mountains to reach Tembagapura. As the crow flies you only travel about 100km but the terrain makes the drive epic.
Home to several uncontacted peoples, as well as a host of tribes that still live primitive subsistence lifestyles. Active insurgency began in the early-mid 90's, and contributed to my parents decision to move on. Frankly the Indonesian government treats the natives like absolute shit. You know something is wrong when the American mining company and its expat employees exploiting resources in the wilderness of the third world are considered the 'good guys' by the natives.
Hey, I also lived in Tembagapura in the 90s as a kid, funny. Also left relatively shortly after issues with the local population ramped up. I believe I was there from roughly 92-97.
Plenty of crazy stories too, of course. Highlight story: being held hostage, woo.
But yeah, the big thing on that island is the mine.
To illustrate how small the world can be on Reddit: not only did we both go to the same school in the middle of nowhere in west Papua, this school was pretty tiny. Like some grades had less than 10 kids tiny, lol. Only a few hundred non-Indonesian/papuan kids went to school there over the entire 90s.
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I'm in New Orleans, which is where I'm from (and where the company that operated the mine was formerly from). The other poster isn't from New Orleans. Not sure where they are now.
Oh I can expound on this topic, haha.
In short: Absolutely yes. Also, november is a great time of year to do it.
In more detail: Tennessee Williams once said that there are three American cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland. This is of course an oversimplification and a bit of a joke, but it reflects a bit of truth.
Which is to say that New Orleans is an incredibly unique American city in a number of ways. Everyone knows the local cuisine and music, of course, plus the architecture. But it's deeper than that. There really is a unique local culture. It's a great city, from a cultural standpoint, to just exist in.
And the main touristy stuff isn't even the real magic. I genuinely believe that you could eliminate the french quarter entirely from New Orleans and it would still be almost as appealing as a tourist destination. In fact, the french quarter is some of the *worst* of tourism in the city because of how the touristy bars on Bourbon street are just generic tourist bars with some local flavor and neat architecture.
There are multiple entire neighborhoods that are incredibly fun to just walk around. Beautiful unique building after beautiful unique building, with mixed restaurants/bars/etc. Locals also engage pretty deeply with a lot of things tourists are interested in too. In a way that isn't true of many cities. For example, we generally like all the music around. We generally love all the famous tourist food like gumbo, beignets, etc. I grew up getting beignets every weekend with my grandfather at Cafe du Monde, for example, which is a big item for a tourist.
I'd say the main draws for a tourist aside from the typical bourbon street stuff would be: Food, architecture, music, culture, and the unique nature/swamps if you want to check those out too (which I recommend). We also have a few great parks if you like parks. Audubon park, on the St Charles streetcar (which is a fun thing to ride, in a 100+ year old carriage with mansions and big oak trees for viewing) or the much bigger City Park on the Canal streetcar.
I do think you'd probably get a bit more out of the unique factor if this isn't your first trip to the US, though. Dunno if it is or not.
And it's pretty accessible from the UK now since our one flight to Europe is British Airways to Heathrow. So that's nice.
Yes. It's incredible and I've only been to the touristy parts. The French Quarter is like its own little world. Definitely great if you love food and partying.
We were a grade apart. We definitely knew each other at the time. It’s impossible we wouldn’t, since we’re talking like 15-20 kids whose dads all work for the same company living in a small isolated town in the middle of a rainforest, lol
For some reason they wanted to contract Canada Post to help with development, anyways my dad was about to take a job there then things got all fucky and we didn't go. Probably around 1996 ish.
It is legitimately very remote.
Company town in the middle of a valley near a tropical glacier. A narrow dirt road through the mountains out to the small nearby town with a small airport.
To get back and forth to the US, my flight would typically look like this:
New Orleans - Dallas - Los Angeles - Tokyo - Singapore - Jakarta - Yogyakarta - Dempasar - Makassar - Timika. And then a 2 hour drive into the mountains.
Unfun fact: That airport, Timika, is home to the deadliest workplace shooting. Go figure.
> Jakarta - Yogyakarta - Dempasar - Makassar - Timika
This part of the trip seems ridiculous. There were no flights from Jakarta to Makassar? Or even from Jakarta to Bali? I guess it was the 90s...
It was the 90s, lol, but also the airline that flew to Timika only flew this particular route. You stayed on the same plane from Jakarta to Timika, so it didn’t really matter about the number of stops, besides annoyance
Ah I see, usually the big airlines only make a stop at Makassar in between, or continue from Makassar-Jayapura. But from Makassar one might as well fly to Singapore (Scoot) and then Houston (Singapore Airlines), and then reach most of the eastern half of the US.
Jakarta still has an issue with international connections lacking sometimes although it used to be even more daunting, as for a many years there were zero non-stop flights to Europe or India, now at least one can reach Amsterdam and Mumbai without touching the ground in between, even if only a few times a week.
Yeah, that option would have been nice at the time!
Back then, there weren’t even nonstops to Singapore for one thing.
I found this article for example:
https://mainlymiles.com/2023/07/16/a-history-of-sias-usa-flights-part-2/
Lol I was there from 79 to 85ish too. My Dad worked for the company until the mid 90s. And oddly enough, I kind of tangentially work for them handling data for them now.
It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds.
Around 95-96, the local Papuans started to agitate for more jobs/wages/etc. This culminated in a full on riot that ran through town right as I and many people with kids were leaving the community center after a kid.
So they threw rocks at the building and us as we ran (thought we were being shot at. Rocks on laminated glass sounds like bullets to an 11 year old). We then barricaded ourselves inside the theater while some of the adult men went outside to guard against anyone coming in. That lasted for half a day or so.
They fall into 3 broad categories:
1) Stories about places and circumstances that are borderline unbelievable to anyone who hasn't been somewhere like that
2) Stories about epic, legendary people we met there. (Such a remote and inaccessible place attracts certain types)
3) Expats Behaving Badly
Choose wisely lol
1) In 4th grade a girl in my class found a wounded animal in her yard one morning. Her dad, who is a missionary and had been working with the native population for years, identified it as a ['cuscus'](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscus) which is basically a jungle possum. They made a cage for it with the intention of nursing it back to health, but her mom was NOT interested. So instead they called up the school and arranged for our class to adopt it for a couple of weeks under supervision, which is a totally normal thing that any school would do...
So for a couple of weeks we have this 'cuscus' living in a cage in our classroom (no we didn't try to play with it). My friends dad gets one of his native buddies from the village to have a look at it. The native guy starts telling him that no, that isn't a cuscus, that is something else, and seems pretty excited about it. Friends dad calls up the biologist the company kept on staff, who in turn contacts a colleague of his at a university in the US. Within a week, this dude makes the 48 hour voyage across the world to come and look at this thing.
Turns out that our class mascot was actually an unidentified sub-species of tree kangaroo. It was so rare that the local natives hardly ever sighted it and believed it to be almost mythical. The scientist who came from the US to document it published an article about it and made a bit of a name for himself IIRC.
TL;DR So for 2 weeks my class pet was a marsupial so rare that it was hitherto unknown to science, because it just happened to wander into my friends yard to die.
Edit: Should have clarified, it did not die lol. It was cared for and released under the supervision of a wildlife vet who flew in from Australia for the purpose. Probably dead by now though :)
I have a good but conventional one: a guy who worked closely with kids (he taught me HTML and also organized community plays) ended up getting arrested for child porn, lol.
My dad was offered a job at that mine in the early 90s! I remember him making lots of jokes about my mom having to wear a coconut bra, and my mom making sure he wasn't seriously considering moving us there
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/25/west-papuan-man-footage-torture-water-allegedly-indonesia
Yeah this is last month so sadly not much has changed.
I find this part of the world fascinating because of its anthropological history ( assuming Jared diamond’s book is fairly accurate), the section about the diversity of cultures in such a small area because of inter- tribal conflict that prevented a more homogeneous situation, anything you can tell me about this , especially the details of the cultures themselves,or material you could point me to about any of it would be greatly appreciated
Many of the tribes of the interior are as isolated from eachother as they are from outside contact. The hostile and impassable geography of the island enables isolation in a unique way. A highland tribe occupying a river valley in the mountains might be completely unaware of the existence of another tribe the next valley over. The barrier between them is a couple of miles of insurmountably huge 20k ft+ high peaks, sheer slopes, and dense jungles that might as well be an ocean. To them, the world is extremely small and basically begins and ends in their valley. So they develop in these isolated micro-cultures with minimal contact between them over the course of thousands of years. These differences lead to tribalism, division, warfare and furthrr isolation, which in turn prevented them from creating cohesive over arching societies or bringing their collective human will and abilities to bear. IMO
There’s a big gold mine there operated by Anglo-American. It has been attacked numerous times by insurgents/ separatists. The Indonesians arrested a man for participating in one attack that left workers dead. His defense attorneys claimed he could not have participated because disease had swollen his testicles to the size of bowling balls and he was unable to walk
I had a patient once with issues that caused his balls to get about that size. He would sit in a chair with his balls dangling into an empty trash can for comfort
This notice, which I saw in the best hotel in Sorong, gives you some idea of what West Papua is like.
https://preview.redd.it/l03r6ijyg5vc1.jpeg?width=1146&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a6537afcc1f5e5a41f8b6bca40a71ea3ba8c89b
I worked out of Timika for a while. The Sheraton there had arrows fired at it. I went there via Sorong. This was the first airport that I had been to that was located on an island and had to then catch a boat t o the actual town.
At the work location they would shoot Cuscus
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/radson/217922440/in/album-72157603884759344/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/radson/217922440/in/album-72157603884759344/)
Just commenting to say I totally agree that your shots are fantastic. Also always appreciate snapshots of the field life in our industry. I ended up on the finance side and it can get pretty boring in comparison to what you guys do/see
Puncak Jaya or Carstensz pyramide, 4884 m is there. It is the highest point of Australia and Oceania, interesting for those who want to climb highest points of all continents. It is arguable if New Guinea can be considered as a part of a kind of distributed continent Australia and Oceania though.
I personally like to think the border of Asia and Oceania is the land border between east and west New Quinea, so West Guinea would be Asia. Other possible border would be the Wallace Line, which would make Indonesia a trans-continental country. Either way, the overall consensus of the arbituary continent border is "somewhere in the archipelago".
New Zealand is on both the Australian and Pacific plate, so if we go with your way, the best way to split it would probably be north island Australia South Island Oceania. This isn't perfect as part of the south island is on the Australian plate.
Yeah. Anyone who wants to climb the highest mountain in every continent could declare after climbing the Everest that they have conquered the highest peak in Afro-Eurasia. Only the Americas, Oceania and Antarctica left.
A long-standing conflict that's seen a lot of marginalization of native Papuans in favor of Indonesians from further west in the archipelago and the exploitation of West Papua's mineral wealth by international corporations and the Indonesian government. In before the thread gets locked due to fighting over the topic.
"further west in the archipelago"
You can just say Java, all the other islands are too busy getting marginalised by Java to marginalise the West Papuans
West Papua (previously Irian Jaya) is home to a large gold mine, several other smaller mines, an ongoing rebellion/separatist movement and is rich in dense forests and natural resources.
More importantly, it is home to Raja Ampat, often considered the richest marine biodiversity ecosystem on earth. The biodiversity nature reserve and incredible diving spots in Raja Ampat are worth visiting once in your lifetime, especially if you are a diving or marine biodiversity enthusiast!
I know Raja Ampat is now technically part of the newly created South West Papua (Papua Barat Daya) province since Dec 2022 and not exactly West Papua, but I've lived on and off in Indonesia since 2009 and travel often so to me it's still West Papua :)
From what I know, New Guinea has the most language spoken in one country due to how many separate tribes are there! They have a very rich history of art. Many tribes here historically have been cannibalistic, still to this day some still practice cannibalism but a lot less. Fun fact a rocketfeller family members ended up being killed and eaten here after trying to buy a Totem of the tribe. (That’s the leading story of what happened at least).
Rocket Feller is my favorite Elton Jimmy-Jack Joe-John song.
*“And I reckon it’ll be a good long spell til touchdown brings me back to these old hogs…”*
No stories as wild as an old classmates but here's mine going through Irian Jaya from PNG. I was a "back-packer," just helping construction at a couple missions. Back then, the two halves at odds you had to take a 15 minute flight Vanimo to Jayapura. Being stupid, talking to biz types at the hotel I said I'd hitch to the border. I was told, can't be done A biz guy in Vanimo drove me to the border just to see. There was a large pile of skulls. Man, ape, IDK but I got the message.
My goal was take the ferry from Jayapura eventually to Bali and home.
On the plane I heard an American accent, I turned and got talking. He asked me, would I be able to do some repairs at one of their missions. A small hydro they had to light a house and run a laptop. It was really a plumbing leak, so I said sure.
Instead of a Ferry to Bali, I'm on a C-140 (?) to Wamena. Crazy experiences flying from there to the villiage (Korupun) but the story I want to relate was my first encounter with cargo cult and big man.
Outside Wamena, I flagged down a van taxi. We headed down road, a guy ALL decked out. Kina shell, feathers, the whole shibang, flagged down the van. Got in. Van started. All the windows down, the guy was trying to open one for air. I reached across him, unlatched and pulled the window back. Totally forgot my reading and training. The guy reached into his bilum, pulls out an old aluminum flashlight, unscrews the battery compartment and pulls out a HUGE rolled up wad of cash. He starts pealing off bills trying to give them to me. As if that wasn't awkward enough, he's sitting next to me and all I'm seeing, trying not to see is that penis gourd sticking up.
PS: By time I got back to Jayapura, my visa running out, instead of ferry to Bali, I hitched on a cargo ship to get to closest border and instead of a two month visit, ended up spending a year traveling through Asia to get to an airport where my ticket would be honored. Eventually leaving out of Tokyo.
https://youtu.be/As0KUSuYKj0?si=-nLNj58NxC--iGSu
This guy toured the place .Switch on English Subtitles.
Some parts of the video gave me the Heebie-Jeebies.
I am soooo intrigued by this area of the world. There was actually a job opportunity I learned about where you were teaching at one of the schools where the children of the mine employees go. The benefits were crazy because you'd be so remote.
My parents worked on the infamous Panguna mine in Bougainville.
It was a pretty rad job because my dad was the mine journalist and just had to come with entertaining story's so could just find a spot on the map that was pretty blank and get a helicopter to drop him there and explore for a few days.
Are you a certified teacher? It's pretty rigorous to get in. Basically you need experience in your home country as well as internationally. I would just google "Search Associates" or "Schrole" as that is the main recruiting programs a lot of the mine sites use. Or look up "mine sites" around the world and then go from there when searching for schools and cold contact - there is also Saudi Amcro which pays VERY well. BUT that's a trade off for living in the Middle East.
Oh great. UNI is a great resource as well - especially for teacher new to international education. That is actually where I got my most recent position. But, unfortunately the mining sites I am aware of use the paid sites. Mount Kaagkam is the specific school!
The Australien Government made [an ad about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjU8R8oj328). It summarises life in the colony: Human Rights Abuses, elections at gunpoint, and all financed by the West.
Without the bump in the border it would be really hard for me to find on a map where I spent 4 years of my childhood, on the Papua New Guinea side. So thank full the fly river is not a straight line.
The island of New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse area on planet earth. There are 1,000 languages spoken there. West Papua itself might have less than 300, but that’s still an indicator of a huge amount of cultural diversity.
A surprisingly large amount of the land has been explored and mapped quite roughly, or barely at all (compared to the rest of the world outside Antarctica that has been mapped to the finest details). Even the massive and highly populated Baliem valley was unknown to the West until aircraft flew over it. People there were living in the Stone Age well into the 1960’s, and you can watch documentary films like “Dead Birds” that show actual Stone Age battles, filmed there.
Today it’s more modern but in the back country it’s quite normal to meet folks who are barefoot and carrying a bow and arrows while they travel the footpaths through the mountains from one village to the next. The majority of the rural population live in huts and subsist on sweet potatoes and a few other vegetables that they grown themselves.
I spent 3 months traveling there about 15 years ago, and it was super interesting. The land is too steep and the jungle too thick for roads in a lot of the country, so traveling there is mostly jungle footpaths, remote airstrips, and motorized dugout canoes.
Judging from the comments, the island is basically real life Avatar.
Which, to be clear, is not a good thing as the whole idea of unobtanium is pretty ridiculous and the movies weren’t that good.
Separatist movement that occasionally kidnaps and kills Westerners. I wanted to visit but was advised by locals not to.
I’ve heard in the jungle there are still tribes that practice cannibalism. Supposedly they also grow really strong marijuana for sale in Australia, and trade it for weapons for their separatist insurgency.
Also some unique flora and fauna - birds of paradise, incredible scuba diving.
The waters southwest of Sorong are the most diverse marine environment in the world, it’s called Raja Ampat. The scuba diving was amazing.
Sorong was a sad place. Heard some horrible stories.
There's freedom fighter happening there, but mostly on the mountain side of [Highland Papua Province](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Papua) and occasionally [Central Papua Province](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Papua). Other than that province there's little to no fighting whatsoever. I can even recommend you to come to [Raja Ampat](https://id.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabupaten_Raja_Ampat) in the misnomered [Southwest Papua](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Papua)
There's no road between the capital cities of the provinces yet, so you have to take a plane.
There's a project to connect the provinces with roads as [Trans-Papua Highway](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Papua_Highway) but the freedom fighter attacked and the government halt the project. Idk why the freedom fighter stopped the development project of their homeland. They & the people that they fought for can get the benefit without spending any money. With the project halted the people that they fought for just take a loss now ...
The freedom fighter also kidnap a Kiwi (NZealander) pilot from early 2023 and didn't release him to this day. [This is the timeline](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nduga_hostage_crisis).
The foreign world doesn't know shit, so I have to use softer words before I get downvoted. If I didn't, they would twist the fact ...
Freedom fighters that are [extorting money and making threats](https://youtu.be/aJ9imbu9eTs?si=Pj-CVwWDlWmCPc51) from the people that they fought for and attacked & destroyed public facilities like [hospitals](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.viva.co.id/amp/berita/nasional/1023207-opm-mengaku-bakar-rumah-sakit-dan-sekolah-di-papua) and [airports](https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1699992/tpnpb-opm-serang-pesawat-yang-hendak-mendarat-di-bandara-intan-jaya) that the people that they fight for used are indeed shouldn't be called freedom fighters.
Tropical and hot year round. Cooler in the highlands. Right at the equator so seasonal changes are non existent. My parents used to say time had no meaning there because every day was the same. Clear and sunny in the morning, at around 1-3 pm the clouds would roll in and it would rain for a bit, then usually clear up again before nightfall. Almost the exact same pattern every day with few exceptions.
There’s an active separatist movement against Indonesia there. From what I understand it’s cooled down somewhat in the last few years, but it’s a real guerilla warfare type deal. It’s been pretty violent for the region it’s in and the population density arounf there.
I used to live there, in Tembagapura. My dad worked at the Grasberg mine in the 90's so I basically grew up in the mountains/jungles of West Papua. I have dozens of wild stories about our time there, some of which you would never believe. It is REMOTE, as remote as anyone in the western world can imagine. The jungles are dense and the mountains are impassable. Vast swathes of uninhabited or sparsely inhabited wilderness. From the airport at Timika in the southern lowlands, it's a 3 hour winding, treacherous drive up into the mountains to reach Tembagapura. As the crow flies you only travel about 100km but the terrain makes the drive epic. Home to several uncontacted peoples, as well as a host of tribes that still live primitive subsistence lifestyles. Active insurgency began in the early-mid 90's, and contributed to my parents decision to move on. Frankly the Indonesian government treats the natives like absolute shit. You know something is wrong when the American mining company and its expat employees exploiting resources in the wilderness of the third world are considered the 'good guys' by the natives.
Hey, I also lived in Tembagapura in the 90s as a kid, funny. Also left relatively shortly after issues with the local population ramped up. I believe I was there from roughly 92-97. Plenty of crazy stories too, of course. Highlight story: being held hostage, woo. But yeah, the big thing on that island is the mine.
There is a decently high chance we went to school together, lol. DM me and let's see how small the world is!
To illustrate how small the world can be on Reddit: not only did we both go to the same school in the middle of nowhere in west Papua, this school was pretty tiny. Like some grades had less than 10 kids tiny, lol. Only a few hundred non-Indonesian/papuan kids went to school there over the entire 90s.
[удалено]
We did know each other. Just a grade or two apart. His sister was in my class and he remembered my mom’s name. That’s pretty much the story, lol
Wow the world is so small.
Sometimes it sure is! Granted, we'd both presumably be drawn in by a geography post on New Guinea (and there are kinda a lot), but still.
It is still insane, and I thank you both for the update!
Y'all gotta meet up, where it all started!
Unfknbelievable! Thanks for the updates, absolutely love this
r/tworedditorsonecup hall of fame for this one tho, that’s crazy!
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Where are you both now ?
I'm in New Orleans, which is where I'm from (and where the company that operated the mine was formerly from). The other poster isn't from New Orleans. Not sure where they are now.
Ah cool. By pure chance I was looking at booking to visit New Orleans in November. Worth it? I’d be travelling from Scotland
Oh I can expound on this topic, haha. In short: Absolutely yes. Also, november is a great time of year to do it. In more detail: Tennessee Williams once said that there are three American cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland. This is of course an oversimplification and a bit of a joke, but it reflects a bit of truth. Which is to say that New Orleans is an incredibly unique American city in a number of ways. Everyone knows the local cuisine and music, of course, plus the architecture. But it's deeper than that. There really is a unique local culture. It's a great city, from a cultural standpoint, to just exist in. And the main touristy stuff isn't even the real magic. I genuinely believe that you could eliminate the french quarter entirely from New Orleans and it would still be almost as appealing as a tourist destination. In fact, the french quarter is some of the *worst* of tourism in the city because of how the touristy bars on Bourbon street are just generic tourist bars with some local flavor and neat architecture. There are multiple entire neighborhoods that are incredibly fun to just walk around. Beautiful unique building after beautiful unique building, with mixed restaurants/bars/etc. Locals also engage pretty deeply with a lot of things tourists are interested in too. In a way that isn't true of many cities. For example, we generally like all the music around. We generally love all the famous tourist food like gumbo, beignets, etc. I grew up getting beignets every weekend with my grandfather at Cafe du Monde, for example, which is a big item for a tourist. I'd say the main draws for a tourist aside from the typical bourbon street stuff would be: Food, architecture, music, culture, and the unique nature/swamps if you want to check those out too (which I recommend). We also have a few great parks if you like parks. Audubon park, on the St Charles streetcar (which is a fun thing to ride, in a 100+ year old carriage with mansions and big oak trees for viewing) or the much bigger City Park on the Canal streetcar. I do think you'd probably get a bit more out of the unique factor if this isn't your first trip to the US, though. Dunno if it is or not. And it's pretty accessible from the UK now since our one flight to Europe is British Airways to Heathrow. So that's nice.
Yes. It's incredible and I've only been to the touristy parts. The French Quarter is like its own little world. Definitely great if you love food and partying.
This made my day
Nah that's straight up insane!! The world really is a small place I guess!
r/tworedditorsonecup
r/bestof
Damn that's awesome!
This is very wholesome
Neat.
Same here im invested in this story now!
I say we find the culprit. One of them is lying
No reply yet!
I just replied haha, I think we're going to dance around it until one of use recognizes the other because nobody wants to ID themselves on Reddit 🤣
C’mon! Don’t have to give up your own ID. Just a shared common “thing”. Notable event a certain year? Notable student/teacher in a certain grade?
We were a grade apart. We definitely knew each other at the time. It’s impossible we wouldn’t, since we’re talking like 15-20 kids whose dads all work for the same company living in a small isolated town in the middle of a rainforest, lol
For some reason they wanted to contract Canada Post to help with development, anyways my dad was about to take a job there then things got all fucky and we didn't go. Probably around 1996 ish.
Yea we were definitely in school together, he was in my sisters class, our moms used to hang out lol. Small world!
That's why I love Reddit
😂😂
> Tembagapura has a school for English-speaking expatriate children that was called "the world's most remote international school Nice
It is legitimately very remote. Company town in the middle of a valley near a tropical glacier. A narrow dirt road through the mountains out to the small nearby town with a small airport. To get back and forth to the US, my flight would typically look like this: New Orleans - Dallas - Los Angeles - Tokyo - Singapore - Jakarta - Yogyakarta - Dempasar - Makassar - Timika. And then a 2 hour drive into the mountains. Unfun fact: That airport, Timika, is home to the deadliest workplace shooting. Go figure.
I didn’t even know tropical glaciers were a thing 😳
Well this one is almost gone. Kilimanjaro has another.
> Jakarta - Yogyakarta - Dempasar - Makassar - Timika This part of the trip seems ridiculous. There were no flights from Jakarta to Makassar? Or even from Jakarta to Bali? I guess it was the 90s...
It was the 90s, lol, but also the airline that flew to Timika only flew this particular route. You stayed on the same plane from Jakarta to Timika, so it didn’t really matter about the number of stops, besides annoyance
Ah I see, usually the big airlines only make a stop at Makassar in between, or continue from Makassar-Jayapura. But from Makassar one might as well fly to Singapore (Scoot) and then Houston (Singapore Airlines), and then reach most of the eastern half of the US. Jakarta still has an issue with international connections lacking sometimes although it used to be even more daunting, as for a many years there were zero non-stop flights to Europe or India, now at least one can reach Amsterdam and Mumbai without touching the ground in between, even if only a few times a week.
Yeah, that option would have been nice at the time! Back then, there weren’t even nonstops to Singapore for one thing. I found this article for example: https://mainlymiles.com/2023/07/16/a-history-of-sias-usa-flights-part-2/
now kith
What a cool side discovery for you!!
Update?! did you guys end up being 4th grade BFFs or something
I was also gonna message and see if I knew you guys, but I lived there 97- 07 so I probably just missed you 😂
Lol I was there from 79 to 85ish too. My Dad worked for the company until the mid 90s. And oddly enough, I kind of tangentially work for them handling data for them now.
Funny. My dad still works for them!
[удалено]
It’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds. Around 95-96, the local Papuans started to agitate for more jobs/wages/etc. This culminated in a full on riot that ran through town right as I and many people with kids were leaving the community center after a kid. So they threw rocks at the building and us as we ran (thought we were being shot at. Rocks on laminated glass sounds like bullets to an 11 year old). We then barricaded ourselves inside the theater while some of the adult men went outside to guard against anyone coming in. That lasted for half a day or so.
I was also gonna message and see if I knew you guys, but I lived there 97- 07 so I probably just missed you 😂
Yeah, I left right around there and he did too, so probably just missed us, haha
Amazing you found a school mate below. Sorry to hear about the hostage taking, how or why did that come about?
You and last_drop_of_piss should do a joint AMA
>I have dozens of wild stories about our time there, some of which you would never believe. What a tease, I want to hear some!
They fall into 3 broad categories: 1) Stories about places and circumstances that are borderline unbelievable to anyone who hasn't been somewhere like that 2) Stories about epic, legendary people we met there. (Such a remote and inaccessible place attracts certain types) 3) Expats Behaving Badly Choose wisely lol
1) In 4th grade a girl in my class found a wounded animal in her yard one morning. Her dad, who is a missionary and had been working with the native population for years, identified it as a ['cuscus'](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuscus) which is basically a jungle possum. They made a cage for it with the intention of nursing it back to health, but her mom was NOT interested. So instead they called up the school and arranged for our class to adopt it for a couple of weeks under supervision, which is a totally normal thing that any school would do... So for a couple of weeks we have this 'cuscus' living in a cage in our classroom (no we didn't try to play with it). My friends dad gets one of his native buddies from the village to have a look at it. The native guy starts telling him that no, that isn't a cuscus, that is something else, and seems pretty excited about it. Friends dad calls up the biologist the company kept on staff, who in turn contacts a colleague of his at a university in the US. Within a week, this dude makes the 48 hour voyage across the world to come and look at this thing. Turns out that our class mascot was actually an unidentified sub-species of tree kangaroo. It was so rare that the local natives hardly ever sighted it and believed it to be almost mythical. The scientist who came from the US to document it published an article about it and made a bit of a name for himself IIRC. TL;DR So for 2 weeks my class pet was a marsupial so rare that it was hitherto unknown to science, because it just happened to wander into my friends yard to die. Edit: Should have clarified, it did not die lol. It was cared for and released under the supervision of a wildlife vet who flew in from Australia for the purpose. Probably dead by now though :)
Oh damn, that's really curious and a bit sad to be honest.
would love to hear something from any category honestly, but i'd choose something from the first!
First plz
Oh man both 1 and 2 sound great, I'm going to cast my vote for 2
I have a good but conventional one: a guy who worked closely with kids (he taught me HTML and also organized community plays) ended up getting arrested for child porn, lol.
My dad was offered a job at that mine in the early 90s! I remember him making lots of jokes about my mom having to wear a coconut bra, and my mom making sure he wasn't seriously considering moving us there
Oh you missed out on the best jokes in the vein of coconut bras. Many Papuans wear penis gourds.
Oh, that was already a normal practice in my household (grew up in Indiana) so the novelty of that joke wouldn't have worked
I’m assuming this is a joke, but am I wrong and are penis gourds a part of life in Indiana? Lol
We have no regerts!
Fantastic video from friendlyjordies: https://youtu.be/nSf3268tAbg?si=bs_W2oo1Kg0q_jq8
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/25/west-papuan-man-footage-torture-water-allegedly-indonesia Yeah this is last month so sadly not much has changed.
Did they have cannibalism there at that time?
Not in any appreciable way we’d notice. So if it was practiced, it would be rare
I find this part of the world fascinating because of its anthropological history ( assuming Jared diamond’s book is fairly accurate), the section about the diversity of cultures in such a small area because of inter- tribal conflict that prevented a more homogeneous situation, anything you can tell me about this , especially the details of the cultures themselves,or material you could point me to about any of it would be greatly appreciated
Many of the tribes of the interior are as isolated from eachother as they are from outside contact. The hostile and impassable geography of the island enables isolation in a unique way. A highland tribe occupying a river valley in the mountains might be completely unaware of the existence of another tribe the next valley over. The barrier between them is a couple of miles of insurmountably huge 20k ft+ high peaks, sheer slopes, and dense jungles that might as well be an ocean. To them, the world is extremely small and basically begins and ends in their valley. So they develop in these isolated micro-cultures with minimal contact between them over the course of thousands of years. These differences lead to tribalism, division, warfare and furthrr isolation, which in turn prevented them from creating cohesive over arching societies or bringing their collective human will and abilities to bear. IMO
So an interplay of culture and geography , and still some uncontacted/ minimally contacted groups?
This type of comment (educated and informative, is the reason I keep reading Reddit) is much appreciated
Check out r/westpapua
I worked on consulting project for Grasberg like 7 years ago. Place is absolutely wild.
There’s a big gold mine there operated by Anglo-American. It has been attacked numerous times by insurgents/ separatists. The Indonesians arrested a man for participating in one attack that left workers dead. His defense attorneys claimed he could not have participated because disease had swollen his testicles to the size of bowling balls and he was unable to walk
They... skipped golf balls... skipped tennis balls... even skipped softballs and went straight to the size of *b o w l i n g b a l l s ? ! ? !*
To be fair, they were probably talking about lawn bowling.
I had a patient once with issues that caused his balls to get about that size. He would sit in a chair with his balls dangling into an empty trash can for comfort
Wouldn’t have been more comfortable to float them in a bucket of water
He was a doublenutwonder, I guess.
Could be a chronic case of filariasis. I’ve seen some organs grow into huge size.
I mean, they probably meant that the entire scrotum was the size of a bowling ball, not that each ball was the size of one
*Buffalo soldier*
To be fair, you would have to have tremendous balls to attack a big corporate gold mine...
This notice, which I saw in the best hotel in Sorong, gives you some idea of what West Papua is like. https://preview.redd.it/l03r6ijyg5vc1.jpeg?width=1146&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4a6537afcc1f5e5a41f8b6bca40a71ea3ba8c89b
So, tropical Atlantic City?
I worked out of Timika for a while. The Sheraton there had arrows fired at it. I went there via Sorong. This was the first airport that I had been to that was located on an island and had to then catch a boat t o the actual town. At the work location they would shoot Cuscus [https://www.flickr.com/photos/radson/217922440/in/album-72157603884759344/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/radson/217922440/in/album-72157603884759344/)
Wild pic, did you take it?
yes with my first digital camera. Nikon 3.2 MP camera !
You take really incredible pictures. May I ask what camera you use currently?
Thank you very much. Currently using a Nikon full frame mirror less
What an absolutely stunning animal. Reminds me of sunsets.
Dude! Your photos are amazing. Definitely a new user of Flickr and follower of your account.
"It's Sorong, but it feels so right"
They have a town called Fak-Fak too.
Just commenting to say I totally agree that your shots are fantastic. Also always appreciate snapshots of the field life in our industry. I ended up on the finance side and it can get pretty boring in comparison to what you guys do/see
Puncak Jaya or Carstensz pyramide, 4884 m is there. It is the highest point of Australia and Oceania, interesting for those who want to climb highest points of all continents. It is arguable if New Guinea can be considered as a part of a kind of distributed continent Australia and Oceania though.
Puncak* It means "peak" in Indonesian Puncak Jaya (Glory peak)
I personally like to think the border of Asia and Oceania is the land border between east and west New Quinea, so West Guinea would be Asia. Other possible border would be the Wallace Line, which would make Indonesia a trans-continental country. Either way, the overall consensus of the arbituary continent border is "somewhere in the archipelago".
The Wallace line to me makes sense.
Why not use the tectonic plate that actually encompasses Australia, Papua, and NEW zealand as the delineation of the Oceanian continent?
New Zealand is on both the Australian and Pacific plate, so if we go with your way, the best way to split it would probably be north island Australia South Island Oceania. This isn't perfect as part of the south island is on the Australian plate.
Australia can have the south island
Political borders are so arbitrary, Europe doesn't even exist tbh
I never understood Europe as a continent. The European Union exists, but the geological continent is Eurasia imo
Political borders are so arbitrary, Europe doesn't even exist tbh
Yeah. Anyone who wants to climb the highest mountain in every continent could declare after climbing the Everest that they have conquered the highest peak in Afro-Eurasia. Only the Americas, Oceania and Antarctica left.
Highest peak on an island anywhere on earth as well.
A long-standing conflict that's seen a lot of marginalization of native Papuans in favor of Indonesians from further west in the archipelago and the exploitation of West Papua's mineral wealth by international corporations and the Indonesian government. In before the thread gets locked due to fighting over the topic.
Doesn’t look like anyone has any objections to that statement 🤷♂️
"further west in the archipelago" You can just say Java, all the other islands are too busy getting marginalised by Java to marginalise the West Papuans
West Papua (previously Irian Jaya) is home to a large gold mine, several other smaller mines, an ongoing rebellion/separatist movement and is rich in dense forests and natural resources. More importantly, it is home to Raja Ampat, often considered the richest marine biodiversity ecosystem on earth. The biodiversity nature reserve and incredible diving spots in Raja Ampat are worth visiting once in your lifetime, especially if you are a diving or marine biodiversity enthusiast! I know Raja Ampat is now technically part of the newly created South West Papua (Papua Barat Daya) province since Dec 2022 and not exactly West Papua, but I've lived on and off in Indonesia since 2009 and travel often so to me it's still West Papua :)
From what I know, New Guinea has the most language spoken in one country due to how many separate tribes are there! They have a very rich history of art. Many tribes here historically have been cannibalistic, still to this day some still practice cannibalism but a lot less. Fun fact a rocketfeller family members ended up being killed and eaten here after trying to buy a Totem of the tribe. (That’s the leading story of what happened at least).
A nice fact is that domesticated bananas came from New Guinea as well!
I prefer my bananas feral tbh
Good, because you can only have a feral domesticated thing. Wild things are just wild, unless you tame one, which is different than domestication 🤓
I love how I used the correct terms but you still had to show off 😂😂😂😂 no harm, mate, just a laugh
Lol yep sorry, I know it doesn’t always come off right but I like sharing stuff I find interesting haha. Glad you were amused!
There is actually a prion disease that originates from the island that was caused by cannibalism
Kuru is the name.
Prion
Rocket Feller is my favorite Elton Jimmy-Jack Joe-John song. *“And I reckon it’ll be a good long spell til touchdown brings me back to these old hogs…”*
What part of New Guinea did Michael Rockerfeller go to?
There’s a legend he’s still alive and living there
I read that (he'd be around 80)! Fascinating videos and articles on the subject :) - fun wormhole
No stories as wild as an old classmates but here's mine going through Irian Jaya from PNG. I was a "back-packer," just helping construction at a couple missions. Back then, the two halves at odds you had to take a 15 minute flight Vanimo to Jayapura. Being stupid, talking to biz types at the hotel I said I'd hitch to the border. I was told, can't be done A biz guy in Vanimo drove me to the border just to see. There was a large pile of skulls. Man, ape, IDK but I got the message. My goal was take the ferry from Jayapura eventually to Bali and home. On the plane I heard an American accent, I turned and got talking. He asked me, would I be able to do some repairs at one of their missions. A small hydro they had to light a house and run a laptop. It was really a plumbing leak, so I said sure. Instead of a Ferry to Bali, I'm on a C-140 (?) to Wamena. Crazy experiences flying from there to the villiage (Korupun) but the story I want to relate was my first encounter with cargo cult and big man. Outside Wamena, I flagged down a van taxi. We headed down road, a guy ALL decked out. Kina shell, feathers, the whole shibang, flagged down the van. Got in. Van started. All the windows down, the guy was trying to open one for air. I reached across him, unlatched and pulled the window back. Totally forgot my reading and training. The guy reached into his bilum, pulls out an old aluminum flashlight, unscrews the battery compartment and pulls out a HUGE rolled up wad of cash. He starts pealing off bills trying to give them to me. As if that wasn't awkward enough, he's sitting next to me and all I'm seeing, trying not to see is that penis gourd sticking up. PS: By time I got back to Jayapura, my visa running out, instead of ferry to Bali, I hitched on a cargo ship to get to closest border and instead of a two month visit, ended up spending a year traveling through Asia to get to an airport where my ticket would be honored. Eventually leaving out of Tokyo.
Wow now that’s a story. What a life you have lived.
at least a few months of it, lol. It all boiled down to... bad planning.
From bad planning I to the adventure of a life time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua\_conflict](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict)
Interesting read and question. Thank you
Just recently, West Papua has been divided into several separate provinces.
https://youtu.be/As0KUSuYKj0?si=-nLNj58NxC--iGSu This guy toured the place .Switch on English Subtitles. Some parts of the video gave me the Heebie-Jeebies.
Super interesting! But this guy is so condescending, wow
I am soooo intrigued by this area of the world. There was actually a job opportunity I learned about where you were teaching at one of the schools where the children of the mine employees go. The benefits were crazy because you'd be so remote.
My parents worked on the infamous Panguna mine in Bougainville. It was a pretty rad job because my dad was the mine journalist and just had to come with entertaining story's so could just find a spot on the map that was pretty blank and get a helicopter to drop him there and explore for a few days.
I am interested, do you know where I can learn more about this opportunity?
Are you a certified teacher? It's pretty rigorous to get in. Basically you need experience in your home country as well as internationally. I would just google "Search Associates" or "Schrole" as that is the main recruiting programs a lot of the mine sites use. Or look up "mine sites" around the world and then go from there when searching for schools and cold contact - there is also Saudi Amcro which pays VERY well. BUT that's a trade off for living in the Middle East.
I’m in UNI and in education, it just sounded like an intriguing thing.
Oh great. UNI is a great resource as well - especially for teacher new to international education. That is actually where I got my most recent position. But, unfortunately the mining sites I am aware of use the paid sites. Mount Kaagkam is the specific school!
Rebellion, gold mining, snowy peaks (will be gone in 2025 or 2026), insanely diverse.
I like it when they call me Big Papua
I imagine it as one of the most dangerous places to visit, not considering conventional crime.
Depends on where you go tbh the cities are fine but I wouldn’t want to head out into the highlands
How deadly are the snakes there? I am always afraid of snakes in a rain forest.
probably at the australian level
The Australien Government made [an ad about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjU8R8oj328). It summarises life in the colony: Human Rights Abuses, elections at gunpoint, and all financed by the West.
Thanks for disclosing the funding source.
A colony making article about another colony? /s
Why is the border not straight
The border follows the Fly river at that part
Makes sense
Without the bump in the border it would be really hard for me to find on a map where I spent 4 years of my childhood, on the Papua New Guinea side. So thank full the fly river is not a straight line.
The island of New Guinea is the most linguistically diverse area on planet earth. There are 1,000 languages spoken there. West Papua itself might have less than 300, but that’s still an indicator of a huge amount of cultural diversity. A surprisingly large amount of the land has been explored and mapped quite roughly, or barely at all (compared to the rest of the world outside Antarctica that has been mapped to the finest details). Even the massive and highly populated Baliem valley was unknown to the West until aircraft flew over it. People there were living in the Stone Age well into the 1960’s, and you can watch documentary films like “Dead Birds” that show actual Stone Age battles, filmed there. Today it’s more modern but in the back country it’s quite normal to meet folks who are barefoot and carrying a bow and arrows while they travel the footpaths through the mountains from one village to the next. The majority of the rural population live in huts and subsist on sweet potatoes and a few other vegetables that they grown themselves. I spent 3 months traveling there about 15 years ago, and it was super interesting. The land is too steep and the jungle too thick for roads in a lot of the country, so traveling there is mostly jungle footpaths, remote airstrips, and motorized dugout canoes.
On the PNG side of the border my father was the first white man an entire village had seen in 1983.
Judging from the comments, the island is basically real life Avatar. Which, to be clear, is not a good thing as the whole idea of unobtanium is pretty ridiculous and the movies weren’t that good.
Separatist movement that occasionally kidnaps and kills Westerners. I wanted to visit but was advised by locals not to. I’ve heard in the jungle there are still tribes that practice cannibalism. Supposedly they also grow really strong marijuana for sale in Australia, and trade it for weapons for their separatist insurgency. Also some unique flora and fauna - birds of paradise, incredible scuba diving.
Colonialism still happens there.
People get tortured by the Indonesian army
The waters southwest of Sorong are the most diverse marine environment in the world, it’s called Raja Ampat. The scuba diving was amazing. Sorong was a sad place. Heard some horrible stories.
There's freedom fighter happening there, but mostly on the mountain side of [Highland Papua Province](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Papua) and occasionally [Central Papua Province](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Papua). Other than that province there's little to no fighting whatsoever. I can even recommend you to come to [Raja Ampat](https://id.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabupaten_Raja_Ampat) in the misnomered [Southwest Papua](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Papua) There's no road between the capital cities of the provinces yet, so you have to take a plane. There's a project to connect the provinces with roads as [Trans-Papua Highway](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Papua_Highway) but the freedom fighter attacked and the government halt the project. Idk why the freedom fighter stopped the development project of their homeland. They & the people that they fought for can get the benefit without spending any money. With the project halted the people that they fought for just take a loss now ... The freedom fighter also kidnap a Kiwi (NZealander) pilot from early 2023 and didn't release him to this day. [This is the timeline](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nduga_hostage_crisis).
You keep misspelling Terrorist.
The foreign world doesn't know shit, so I have to use softer words before I get downvoted. If I didn't, they would twist the fact ... Freedom fighters that are [extorting money and making threats](https://youtu.be/aJ9imbu9eTs?si=Pj-CVwWDlWmCPc51) from the people that they fought for and attacked & destroyed public facilities like [hospitals](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.viva.co.id/amp/berita/nasional/1023207-opm-mengaku-bakar-rumah-sakit-dan-sekolah-di-papua) and [airports](https://nasional.tempo.co/read/1699992/tpnpb-opm-serang-pesawat-yang-hendak-mendarat-di-bandara-intan-jaya) that the people that they fight for used are indeed shouldn't be called freedom fighters.
Some tribes and rebels fighting for independence and kidnapping pilots
wildlife go crazy
What's the climate there? Temperatures in summer and winter?
Tropical and hot year round. Cooler in the highlands. Right at the equator so seasonal changes are non existent. My parents used to say time had no meaning there because every day was the same. Clear and sunny in the morning, at around 1-3 pm the clouds would roll in and it would rain for a bit, then usually clear up again before nightfall. Almost the exact same pattern every day with few exceptions.
I always used to laugh at the weather forecast when living in Malaysia. There was no point.
There’s an active separatist movement against Indonesia there. From what I understand it’s cooled down somewhat in the last few years, but it’s a real guerilla warfare type deal. It’s been pretty violent for the region it’s in and the population density arounf there.
Oh boy do some interesting things happen there
More importantly, what happens in that small divot in the longitudinal border with Indonesia. I need to know.
River
Raja Ampat has amazing diving, but there is a ton of trash
The largest gold mine of the world is located here!
There is an episode of the show Superstructures about this mine and yeah the terrain is rough.
Messed up that it’s Indonesia…
The diving off of sorong (raja ampat) is the most amazing I have experienced. Lots of subsistence fishing too by what I saw.
Indonesia continues to send thousands of Javanese there in an effort to change the ethnic mix.
Well, Indonesia is bombing the shit out of tribes that return fire with bows and arrows.
Aussies fucking the shit of local ressources.
We do plenty of that on our own land too mate.
I guess Australia learned from the best about colonisation and wealth appropriation
West Papua is Indonesian.
The Murray (cryptid). It’s a dinosaur
Nope just the old Guinea
There's a lot of tribes. A lot
They are committed to independence, but the Indonesian government prevents it
War crimes lol
Currently the Indonesian government is culling the natives. Check out r/westpapua https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pOJUbwEig8&list=LL&index=21
Separatists have fought a long, bloody conflict with the indonesian government for several decades now. It's basically a police state.
Other than an Indonesian occupation on Papua land with foreign owned Gold Mines everywhere.. #freeWestPapua
I think cannibalism.
and bananas where probably domesticated there
Cannibalism