KALIMANTAN

Kalimantan comprises roughly the southern three-quarters of the equatorial island of Borneo, the third-largest island in the world after Greenland and New Guinea. Despite exploration and development, many areas of Kalimantan are almost untouched by the Western world. Maps of Kalimantan`s river-laced interior still excite the imagination. On the political map, the Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah and the sultanate of Brunei lie to the north, occupying the top one-quarter of the island. The territory makes a unique travel experience for the more rough and ready traveller.
 
Tourist facilities are relatively undeveloped in Kalimantan, and visitors are few. Those Westerners you do meet are leftovers from the oil and wood booms of the 1970s, their jobs gradually being taken over by Indonesians. Good roads are found only in the oil and timbering centres and around big coastal cities. Travel is restricted in some areas, as are border crossings into Malaysia. Although travellers may arrive here to visit interior Dayak villages and wildlife reserves, most natives will take you for an expat worker. Expect to encounter officialdom wherever there are navigable rivers, airstrips and roads (though most roads shown on maps don`t exist). Good roads run between Banjarmasin and Samarinda and around Pontianak, but rivers are the main transportation arteries. There are airports in the major cities, and airstrips throughout the interior serviced by commercial flights and missionary aircraft.

Most of Kalimantan`s population predominantly Chinese and Malays live near the coastal areas. Javanese, Buginese and other Indonesians come here to find work, competing with other Indonesians, and even other nationalities, for skilled jobs. Under Indonesia`s massive transmigration programme, tens of thousands of Javanese and Balinese families have been brought in to settle the island`s hinterlands.
 
`Dayak` is a collective name for the 200 or so different tribes that comprise the island`s native peoples. Living inland along the banks of major rivers and tributaries, they make up almost half of the territory`s population. Each tribe has its own tribal name and speaks its own dialect. Contrary to myth, the Dayak race is light-skinned (resembling the Chinese) with rounded, well-featured faces and slightly slanted eyes. Mountain Dayak tribes are physically imposing, taller than most Asians, heavily muscled and weighing 75 kilograms (165 pounds) or more. Numbering in the millions, the Dayaks have traditionally lived upriver in the hill areas` thriving as hunters, gatherers and, more recently, as slash-and-burn hill rice growers.
 
Since the 1970s, the government has encouraged them to take up wet-rice cultivation and to produce such cash crops as rubber, pepper and cloves, kerbau, cows, pigs, chickens, ducks and a few goats are kept. Recent exposure to the forces of modernization is changing many aspects of traditional Dayak life. The Indonesian government is abolishing multiple-family long houses and replacing them with modern, single-family dwellings, a drastic change in village life. Tattooing, mastery of traditional crafts and the custom of wearing huge bunches of metal ear-rings to elongate the earlobes are all disappearing. Few Dayaks hunt with blow-guns and poison darts or spears these days preferring instead home-made Daniel Boone-style flintlocks. Though there are occasional unexplained decapitations in the more remote regions, the traditional practice of head-hunting has officially ended. Increasingly, young Dayaks leave their villages to work for timber and oil companies or take menial jobs in Kalimantan`s boom towns. Children of wealthy Dayaks study engineering, forestry and other subjects in Indonesian and European universities.

Maluku

The Moluccas are a province of about a thousand scattered islands, spanning 1,300 kilometres (800 miles). They range in size from Seram and Halmahera, which are about 20,000 square kilometres (7,720 square miles) in area, to many which are so small they are not shown on most maps. These are the famous `Spice Islands` which drew Indian, Chinese, Arab and eventually European traders in search of cloves and nutmeg. Maluku is blessed with incredible sea gardens, idyllic, tropical beaches and rugged forest-coated volcanic mountains.
 
The main gateway into Maluku is through the provincial capital of Ambon, which is served by regular flights to most parts of the archipelago. Air and sea transportation connects the islands with 79 seaports and 25 airports. Roads on many of the islands provide access to the more remote places of interest. To proclaim Maluku as a tourist destination on the east park of Indonesia, Maluku recognized with a new call name that is; Moluccas Spice Island exotic Marine Paradise.

The average annual rainfall of the Moluccas is 2,370 millimeters (90 inches), but the distribution of the rainfall varies throughout the province from year round in Seram and northern Halmahera to markedly seasonal in southern Halmahera, Obi, north-east Buru and the smaller islands to the south.
 
Maluku lies at the intersection of two global currents, with influence flora and fauna in this area. It’s exotic nature, almost unequalled by other regions in the pacific, has attracted many visitor to this lush archipelago since ancient times. Wild tropical jungle interiors with evergreen forest are found on most islands.

In 1511, the Portuguese built their first fort in the area on the island of Ternate, and cornered the clove trade. The Dutch, who arrived in 1599, mounted the first serious threat to Portuguese control of Maluku`s treasures. Armed conflicts broke out, taking a heavy toll from the island populations as well as the rival European powers. When the Dutch finally emerged as victors they enforced their trade monopoly with an iron fist. Whole villages were razed to the ground and thousands of islanders died, especially on the island of Banda.

The British briefly occupied Maluku during the Napoleonic Wars, but Dutch rule was restored in 1814 and it wasn`t until 1868 that the compulsory cultivation of spices was abolished in the province. Now fish and other sea products are Maluku`s major sources of revenue, but nickel, oil, manganese and various kinds of timber also contribute to the province`s wealth.

Sulawesi

Such astonishing diversity is partially a product of Sulawesi’s tortured geography. The island’s four outstretched "arms" are in a sense all separate; they rise from a deep seabed formed by contiguous folds in the earth’s crust but are isolated from one another by steep ravines, dense forests and forbidding peaks. Unlike many other Indonesian islands, only Sulawesi’s northeastern and southwestern extremities (the Minahasa and Makassar regions) are volcanic, and instead of gently sloping contours and broad plains, most of the island consists of jagged uplands and rugged plateaus lying 500 meter (1,600 feet) or more above sea level. The central peaks of Sulawesi reach as high as 3,400 meters (11,000 feet).
 
 
Sulawesi features, steep mountains, deep gorges, fast flowing rivers, blue highland lakes, lush rainforests, Savannah’s and white-sand beaches and a fascinating range of unusual flora and fauna.

Many species of fauna found in Sulawesi can not be found else where in the world, like the black macaque, the babirusa wild boar, the anoa dwarf buffalo, the eccentric maleo bird, the saucer-eyed tarsier, and many beautiful and colorful butterflies.

Sumatra

The great island of Sumatra the third largest in the archipelago and fifth largest in the world (roughly the size of California or Sweden), is Indonesia’s most important territory. In just about every way, strategically, economically and politically, Sumatra has always formed a pivotal "backbone" for the nation. Second among the major islands in population numbers but first in exports (principally oil, natural gas, rubber, tin and palm oil, but also tobacco, tea, coffee and timber), it stands at the crossroads of Asia.
 
Like Java, Sumatra is formed by a longitudinal range of mountains, a double fold in the earth’s crust with a central trough through which towering volcanoes have thrust upwards. This so-called Bukit Barisan Range extends for about 1,600 kms (1000 miles) in a northwest-southeasterly direction rising at several points above 300 meters (1000 feet). There are about 90 volcanoes in this range, 15 of which are active, but unlike those in Java and Bali they frequently deposit material of an acidic nature which does not improve the fertility of the surrounding soils. 
 
The majority of Sumatrans live in the long range of undulating foothills, plateaus, river basins and highland lakes along the island’s spine, where they make a living as subsistence cultivators. Two major ethnic groups the Minangkabau and the Bataks, and a number of minor ones (the Gayo, Alas, Kubu, Kerinci, Rejang, Lampung and others) can be identified. The Minangkabau are settled people who are related to the Malay of the east Sumatran coast and are thought to be descended from an inland. The other great highland people of Sumatra, the Bataks, inhabit a fertile volcanic plateau, roughly oval in shape, that covers much of the northern central Sumatra.

The island of Sumatra was once covered in dense rainforest and inhabited by many exotic Asian animals (elephants, tigers, rhinos, gibbons, orangutans, mousedeer, tapir, flying foxes), unfortunately the flora and fauna of Sumatra has decreased in recent years as land has been altered from tropical rainforest to agricultural land.

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