Loudspeaker at the mosque disguised as a palm tree

After a very strange breakfast at the hotel of banana fritters, a rather meaty tasting porridge, some noodles and nasi goreng we set out for the day. The internet has found three apparently English speaking travel agents in Pontianak so we're heading their way.

It's very hot and humid and  bit of a walk. We eventually find the first. They are incredibly helpful but have no English although they give us a telephone number to call later. We buy a SIM card and continue. We can't find the next one so pop in another tour place and ask bisa bahasa Ingris (do you speak English) thinking the answer would be no we had planned to just ask directions to the other agent. The girl speaks good English as does another customer in the shop and, although she can't help, she has a friend who can. She says her friend is coming to us but another girl appears and we are asked to get on the back of their two motor bikes to be taken to the friend ... why not? So off we go.

We meet Dewi who speaks great English and does tours to the places we want to visit. We explain to her we don't want tours as such although may use guides for some of the time - her trips are also expensive! She again phones a friend and soon we are getting contact numbers and better prices. She's so helpful and we spend quite a while with her. We hope she makes some money if we do use her guides. We even get another lift back to our hotel. We try another couple of agents and don't get much more info but yet another contact number for a guide. We've had enough for the day and decide we'll take the bus tomorrow to Sintang where we plan to visit the Dayak tribes. Unfortunately the bus is full so we book the next day and manage, in our very basic and broken Indonesian, to secure the hotel for one more night.

We're really making the effort to learn a little as we really need it! Luckily they use the roman alphabet and don't use tone and inflection like most south east Asian languages so you can at least be understood if you get the words right.

It's been a busy day so we google beer in Pontianak and lonely planet online says you can get a beer at the corner cafe which is close to our hotel. We spotted Pizza Hut earlier and they have a salad bar ... It's been a while since we've had salad so head there first. A salad each and we share a very mediocre and slightly odd pizza and head to corner cafe ... it looks like a bar but no beer!