Kapuas River, Pontianak. February 1997
Equator Monument, Pontianak. February 1997 (with Irfan my ex-student)
The start of the Big Borneo Adventure
We only went to Borneo once, both the Indonesian and Malaysian sides. The trip started in Pontianak because there was a regular flight from Pontianak, Indonesia to Kuching, Malaysia which meant we didn't have to fly to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur and "backtrack", The domestic flights to Pontianak from Jakarta were very cheap and very regular. An added bonus, one of my ex-students was from there, so he offered to guide us around for a day. In 1997, a day was more than enough to drink in Pontianak. I have the sneaking suspicion that might not have changed.
That part of Borneo was pancake flat. The Kapuas River cut through town and was quite large as Indonesian rivers go. There were only a handful of large buildings which were either government or education related. We did visit a cultural park with some of the "native" dwellings on display in a parklike setting. For first timers, those houses were certainly different from anything we had seen in Java, Sumatra, or Bali. Later in the trip we realized a lot more variation existed in native Borneo architecture and we had far more to learn about the culture and peoples there.
Pontianak was founded in the 1700's by a pirate who earned a small fortune raiding Western ships and used the funds to make his own little empire a few kilometers up the Kapuas River from the sea. Local lore tells us that the place was inhabited by ghosts and everyone was afraid of a "vicious female ghost, Pontianak". The sturdy Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie fought off a ghost attack by firing cannons at them (who knew??) and promptly built a mosque on the site which was the first building of the city. That mosque still existed (built on pilings) and was the most revered building in the city. Pontianak might also have been one of the most multi-ethnic cities in Indonesia that we visited with Malays, indigenous peoples, Javanese, Overseas Chinese, and a mix of others. The largest population would have been the local Malays, but they formed the largest minority only. According to Irfan, everyone really did get along. Given the place was ON the equator, perhaps everyone was just too hot to fuss at each other.
Pontianak was famous for rubber and a large latex factory graced the river on the edge of town. If you ever thought a foundry smelled bad (Wrightsville and Columbia, PA friends) or a paper mill smelled worse (York County, PA friends), you have not lived until you have experienced a rubber mill. How those people carried on life there with that smell was truly a mystery - and people literally lived all around the factory! I guess humans can get used to anything?
Two memories stick out about largely forgettable Pontianak. One, was the equator monument (featured above) because one of the streets in the city actually IS the equator and the city literally lies partially in the northern and southern hemispheres. People who lived there really did cross the equator "countless times" without ever leaving their hometown. That oddity was never really surpassed by any other city I visited - even the Prime Meridian in Greenwich, England pales in comparison (you have to pay to see that line and it apparently disappears outside of the Greenwich Observatory).
The other place we visited was down where the Kapuas let out into the Java Sea. A small Chinese temple there was locally famous. I am not sure why Irfan brought us to be honest. The temple was neither large nor impressive and Irfan was Muslim. It was mildly interesting to see the mouth of the muddy Kapuas, but other than that - not much to see. Was the temple really that well-known, or had we simply run out of things to do in Pontianak City and poor Irfan was scrambling to fill the time on our itinerary? Nonetheless Brian and I appreciated his company for the day and we saw more of Pontianak than most casual visitors would have.
Thus started our adventure on the island of Borneo. It only got better and then at the end, disaster struck. tbc....