Palangka Raya.. part 1

Palangka Raya Trip

18-20 April 2014

Rita. Yana. Tiwi. Erni. Ambi

After multiple visits to different parts of Borneo (Banjarmasin, Loksado, Pontianak, Ketapang, Derawan, Balikpapan, Samarinda and Tanjung Puting), the time has come to visit Palangka Raya. Palangka Raya, a city which was once proposed as the future capital of Indonesia.

This is day one

We arrived at Tjilik Riwut airport on a Friday morning. Our first destination is Nyaru Menteng Orangutan Rescue Center. Visitors can only visit the Information Center on Sundays or public holidays. But we can only see the orangutans from a big window that separates us from the orangutans as we are not allowed to come into contact with the orangutans.   

orangutan at Nyaru Menteng

Next we went to the nearby Tahai Lake which they say has a red water. Well, they say red, I say brownish.

It was holiday, yet not many people were there, just less then 10 people. A little bit strange for me.

danau tahai

And then we went to Fantacy Beach, another supposedly famous place to go for locals. Yet, there were also not many people in sight. We didn’t enter the place, instead we went to the nearest ‘’warung’’ to eat some indomie (a ‘’must eat’’ when u’re traveling, haha). So with our full stomach, we went to Mission Aviation Fellowship to see if we can charter a waterplane to go anywhere. The destination doesn’t matter to us, we just wanted to experience the flight. Too bad, it was a day off for the pilots. Plus, they use the planes mainly for humanitarian aids, so they offer charter only when there’re no humanitarian activities.

me with the plane : )

Next stop, we went to visit the replica of Rumah Betang (a Dayak traditional long house) at Jl DI Panjaitan. After that, tried ‘’buah paken’’, similar to durian only smaller and the color is orange.

buah paken

We still have so much time, so we decided to go to Kereng Bangkirai pier, to see if there are any boats that can take us to experience the river of sebangau. But again, there were nobody around, so we decided to postpone the boat ride.

Kereng Bangkirai

After a late lunch at Tjilik Riwut Gallery and Resto, we went back to Fantacy beach. Yup, we went back. Because earlier we didn’t went inside, and now suddenly we want to see the inside :D

Fantacy Beach

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Taman Monumen Soekarno and went down near the pier to see the famous kahayan bridge and to watch the afternoon fades away.

part of the Kahayan Bridge :P

For day 2 and day 3, please click here