Home ATTRACTIONS City/Village Kaget Island With Proboscis Monkey, Banjarmasin South Kalimantan

Kaget Island With Proboscis Monkey, Banjarmasin South Kalimantan

June 13, 2017

Location : Pulau Kaget, Kecamatan Tabunganen, Barito Kuala, Kalimantan Selatan, Indonesia.

Kaget Island, the sanctuary of the ‘bekantan’ in Indonesia, monyet Belanda in Sarawak or more properly called proboscis monkey because of its unusual pinkish long nose. Although this monkey can be found all over Borneo the boat ride to see them at Kaget island is unique in itself.

Bekantan, Banjarmasin, adventure, outdoors, nature, Borneo, Pulau, Kota Seribu Sungai, Martapura River, Barito Kuala, Obyek wisata, Tourism, Monyet Belanda, proboscis monkey, 长鼻猴 — Looking out for the monkeys

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The journey started at 2pm from the hotel we stayed in, Hotel Mira, on foot for about 10min to where the boat was parked just next to the ‘Kawasan Wisata Kuliner’ or Culinary Tourism area. It was a roofless boat and the sun was brutal that afternoon. Luckily, we always had an umbrella handy. Mr Tailah who is a Meratus Dayak from Loksado was our freelance guide who spoke English but had a hearing problem.

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The initial boat ride along the meandering Martapura river was like a city tour passing through different sections of Banjarmasin. Commercial boats of different sizes keep this ancient waterway busy. As we throttled along, the busy city scenery slowly changed to a more scattered farming landscape with fewer houses along the banks. Just before we entered into the bigger Barito river we saw vast paddy fields partially submerged by the overflowing river.

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After an hour of the boat ride we caught sight of the delta/island called Pulau Kaget or ‘Shocking Island’, for whatever reason. As we entered the swamp our boatmen turned off the engine and manually maneuvered through the overhanging branches keeping our voices down. It was not easy for our city eyes to adjust to the foliage and Tailah was the first to spot the grey/brown monkeys. Suddenly, there was a loud splash like something huge fell into the water. It turned out to be a proboscis making a dive into the water to grab something, perhaps a fish. Or maybe it was just showing off to the new visitors as we saw nothing in his hand as he climbed back to the tree. Getting a good angle to photograph through the foliage was a huge task and the strong wind that day made our job more difficult as our boat kept drifting and shifting. Nevertheless, Mei Er got quite a number of good shots. From that spot we ventured round the island to see if we could be lucky enough to meet another troop or two but sadly none. We decided we had enough after an hour here.

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On the way back the boatman took a different route and we saw two massive log ponds which I guessed must be to feed the plywood factories here.

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Farther upstream, I suggested to Tailah we stopped at a floating convenience store (toko terapung) just for the experience. Long bundled bamboos provided the buoyancy for such stores or houses locally called ‘rumah lanting’ while on the Sarawak side it is called ‘jelatong’.

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After we had our refrigerated drinks it was time to move on. By then it was around 5pm and kids were coming out for their swim, splash and scream. All were every ready to pose and smile for your camera. A very happy ending indeed. Next ‘Floating Market of Banjarmasin’.