Banjarmasin
A City Built On Rivers And Canals Where Women In Wide Hats Still Trade Fruit From Canoes At Dawn, And The Floating Markets Dissolve By Eight In The Morning · Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan
Banjarmasin is built on water - on the Barito and Martapura rivers and a network of canals, with whole quarters on stilts and houses that face the river rather than the road. THE REASON TO COME IS THE FLOATING MARKETS, AND THEY ARE GENUINELY WORKING MARKETS: at LOK BAINTAN and KUIN, before dawn, women in wide hats and thanaka-like rice powder paddle JUKUNG canoes loaded with fruit and vegetables into a loose raft in midstream and trade with each other, hooking produce across with poles. THEY ARE NOT STAGED, AND THEY ARE OVER BY ABOUT EIGHT IN THE MORNING - which means a four or five o'clock start and is why most visitors miss them entirely. Tourist boats attend now and the markets have adapted to that, which is worth being honest about. PROBOSCIS MONKEYS live on KEMBANG ISLAND in the river, and the diamond diggings at CEMPAKA are still worked by hand by men standing waist-deep in pits. Almost no visitor to Indonesia comes here, which is exactly why the markets still work.
Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Indonesia
THE FLOATING MARKETS ARE A DAWN EVENT AND THIS IS THE WHOLE PLANNING PROBLEM. LOK BAINTAN, the larger and more authentic, is roughly forty-five minutes to an hour upriver and REQUIRES A DEPARTURE AROUND FOUR OR FIVE IN THE MORNING; KUIN is closer to the city and also early. BOTH DISSOLVE BY ABOUT EIGHT. BOATS ARE CHARTERED THROUGH HOTELS OR AT THE RIVERSIDE and are arranged the day before. KEMBANG ISLAND, with its proboscis monkeys and long-tailed macaques, is usually visited on the way back. THE SABILAL MUHTADIN GRAND MOSQUE and the city markets keep ordinary hours. THE DIAMOND DIGGINGS AT CEMPAKA are about an hour out at Martapura. Banjarmasin is hot, humid and low-lying, and parts flood.