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More photos of Borneo and Pontianak
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Rafts of Logs
Travel a river in Borneo and the major obstacle to contend with are the huge island-like rafts being shunted and towed by small rivercraft on their way downstream from logging sites to timber mills. Each year millions of cubic meters of logs are float down the river.
Average raft sizes are around one million cubic metres of softwood timbers bound for plywood factories to supply Western countries.
During the dry season these large rafts are seen every hour or so on the river.
During the wet season when the rivers are more navagatable ,the rafts are commonly seen every couple of hundred metres.
Often small camps are set up on these large timber islands for a live-a-board watchman who ensures small fires remain burning on the perimeter of the rafts as safety lights during the night time journey.
Stray Logs
Often logs breakaway from these massive rafts but are salvaged by locals living on the side of the river bank and processed into boards for building materials.
Hardwood timbers are transported by large barges to riverside sawmills.
The result of all this logging is that we only saw about 10 kms of the riverside rainforest that had not been logged in the 340 km journey.
Lunch Time
On our journey up the river every couple of hours we had the privilege of being treated to sumptuous banquet lunches and dinners and delicious snacks of local delicacies such as Chill River Prawns, Fried Bean Curd ,Banana Fritters and ofcourse Nasi Gorang for Breakfast.
All the meals were prepared by our'on board' chef who purchased fresh supplies where we stopped.
We then sat,ate and enjoyed the river life passing by.
School's in.
At Muara Muntai we visited a few of the classes at the "Smu Negri 01 Muara Muntai" High School and spoke to the kids about where we where from and a few things about Australia.
The "Beagle "crosses the equator.
On the 23rd of August 2001, Rod finally achieved his lifelong dream of fliyng his plane the 'Beagle' into the northern hemisphere.
This was achieved as we flew from East to Western Borneo fringing the equator.
It was a major thrill for Rod to finally see his GPS ticked over to 00'00 as we crossed the equator.
The event was celebrated with Duncan knocking up the batch of Vegemite sandwiches which we ate for lunch that day in the air.

Pontianak -Equator City
That evening we arrived at Pontianak on the far western coast of Borneo .
We organised a tour guide with Ateng Tour [ phone 0011-62-561-732683].
Our guide took us to the equator monument known localy by the rather long name of "Kawasan Tugu Khatulistiwa Pontianak".
Ofcourse there we marked the 'Beagle crossing the Equator' achievment by stradling the equator line for photos with one foot in each Hemisphere and by purchasing dozens of tin replicas of the equator monument.
That night in town we wandered around the famous Durian fruit markets and dined in a couple of the restaurants.
In Pontianak on we stayed at the Hotel Kapuas [phone 0011-62-800-561121].
This is a large international style hotel on the edge of the city.