West Kalimantan
West Kalimantan is not a large tourist destination, and therefore not a place where you can expect to find many tourist facilities. The region has about four million inhabitants, and the largest concentration of people with Chinese background in Indonesia. The most important town is Pontianak, founded in 1770 by an Arabic trader. Pontianak has [...]
Kalimantan facts
Kalimantan is the name of the Indonesian part of Borneo, the third largest island in the world. This province alone makes up for 28 percent of the area of Indonesia (539.000 sq. km), but only 5 percent of the population (about 10 million). Two thirds of Borneo belong to Indonesia, the northern region is part [...]
Slash-and-Burn and Budidaya Rotan in East Kalimantan
Forests in Asia and throughout the tropical world are being rapidly transformed through slash-and-burn. Increasing population pressure has made this ancient system unsustainable in many areas. In lesser populated areas slash-and-burn, or shifting agriculture, is less problematic and perhaps even the only viable form of utilisation of indigenous peoples natural resources. Shifting cultivation is a [...]
East Kalimantan
East Kalimantan, or Kalimantan Timur (Kaltim), is perhaps the most accessible part of Kalimantan and at present probably the most industrially advanced province of Indonesian Borneo. Mostly its prosperity is due to its oil and timber resources. After Irian Jaya it is the second most spacious province of Indonesia, and with its 2.5 mill people [...]
Dayak identity
Another group of ethnic minorities struggling for recognition in the 1980s were the peoples of southern Kalimantan. Traditionally, most of the scattered ethnolinguistic groups inhabiting the interior of the vast island have been labelled collectively by outsiders as Dayak. Among the Dayak are the Ngaju Dayak, Maanyan, and Lawangan. Although they have traditionally resided in [...]
