We visited four Dayak villages along the rivers in Central Kalimantan: Pahandut, Tanjung Pusai, Tumbang Nusa and Pilang. Some of the villages had no road access, so you could only reach them by boat. They shared several common characteristics: Visitors were always welcome, there was plentiful kids, and people appeared to be genuinely happy.

Tanjung Lusaka Village (above) had a school where kids went to class for two hours a day six days a week, right next to the cows (upper right). Sadly, it was clear that most of the homes had never been maintained since first constructed. All buildings here appear to be made with community love, but then left to deteriorate from that day forward (bottom row). Also, sadly, plastic bottles and trash are a major problem, with trash just thrown into the river, between the houses (upper left).

Many people we met were entrepreneurs, selling fresh vegetables, fresh fish, cookies, donuts, dried fish, gear for fishing and many other items for daily living. One woman gave us two dozen of her fresh mini-donuts as a welcome, and to thank us for taking a photograph for her Instagram marketing. They were delicious… ☺

We also met various skilled weavers, who made hats, baskets, and mats from pond fronds, reeds and other weaving materials.

A unique product was honey from the bee hives from the Tumbang Nusa Village. The black bees do not have stingers, and the owner allowed us to sample the honey with a straw, directly from the hive. It was excellent honey, and we bought a small bottle from the beekeeper.

We enjoyed all of our guides and fellow travelers, including John (upper left), David Metcalf (our photo guide, upper right), Julie (our river guide) and Eri (her friend) (middle left), our houseboat captain (middle), Evelyn enjoying her birthday cake (middle right), and Fritz (lower left).

Of course, John was larger than life throughout the trip, so he earns a second appearance, in his form as Pied Piper of every village we visited (lower right)

Interacting with local people is a favorite part of visiting any new area. The Dayak villages of Central Kalimantan were a special treat in this regards. Not only was there a throng of adorable children, but they mostly clamored for us to take their photograph and they welcomed visitors.

Some of the children were embarrassed, laughing and covering their mouths when we approached. In almost every case though, all it took was taking a photograph of one of their friends, and then showing the camera LCD of the image. Immediately, all their friends came out and wanted their photos taken too. After taking photos like that, we would show the kids their photos on the camera LCD. The universal response was laughter, while all her friends would shriek with glee, and then want their photo taken.

The population of Indonesia is growing at an unsustainable rate, with 56% under the age of 25. As a result, every village we visited was swarming with children, many of them adorable. In the last 20 years, the economic situation of many families has improved to the point that motorcycles and scooters are everywhere.

Because these bikes are the main form of transportation, and most families have many children, it is common to see motorcycles with one or two parents, along with one or two infants on a motorcycle. Above shows a small sampling of such transportation. It is also common to see mobile phones, despite little access to internet in many of the villages.

Where there are lots of children, there are of course, also lots of groups of kids interacting. We captured many photos of them together after we had gotten individual images, and they had become comfortable with being photographed (middle-right and bottom).

John traveled with us, and was like a Pied Piper for children. His large size (over 6 ft), friendly manner, and ability to speak some Indonesian (he lives in Bali) made him a magnet for locals everywhere we traveled (center). They all wanted selfies with John.

Whenever we were around a mother with children, she would almost always gather her children around her, tell them to look at the camera, and pose as a family. When we showed them their image on the camera LCD, we got the same giggle and mouth-covering from the mother, as the children had shown.

In many ways, it was the children that were the stars of these village walks. The Dayak people of Central Kalimantan were all universally welcoming though, and appeared happy even though most were very poor.

As part of our tour in Central Kalimantan, we spent three days on a houseboat floating down the forest lined rivers of Palangkaraya. While I was initially concerned that we might be bored on this portion of the trip, nothing could have turned out further from the truth!

Juli Kristalia, from Wow Borneo organized this portion of our travels for Dave Metcalf, and I want to particularly give her a massive Thumbs Up for her efforts and for our enjoyment of this portion of our travels.

You can see the houseboat we stayed on upper-left, and then lower-left as we approached it after one of our canoe excursions. Juli and her friend, Ery Stevani went to the bow to recreate a scene from the movie Titanic, but this image of them facing us was the better photo. Center image shows Dave (our photo guide, from David Metcalf Photography) looking over the bow at a typical beautiful sunset.

On one morning, prior to boarding the houseboat, we took a canoe down a river in Palangaraya, to see how the Dayak people of the area lived. The homes were mostly falling apart, and it was clear there has been essentially no maintenance since they were first built.

The center image shows the village mosque in the background, the largest and best maintained building in town.

Life revolves around the river for the indigenous people in the villages. While the top-center image shows a young man building a new canoe, others can be seen left to rot (upper left). The man in the center image is making new fish traps, used to gather the main food for the village, while the bottom-center image shows men offloading fishing nets for repair.

Commerce is all along the river. Left-middle image shows a powered canoe hauling a fish trap to a location where they will drop it overnight, retrieving it the next day for trapped fish. Middle-right shows the tallest building as a “birdhouse” or more accurately, bird’s nest factory. These have thousands of roosting slots for swiftlets, and speakers near the roof blasting out recordings of the swiftlets’ song 24/7 to attract the birds. After two years, the locals begin to harvest the nests for the ingredients for birds’ nest soup, which is sold in China. We were surprised to hear that they can only harvest every three months, and gain roughly $500 per building with each harvest. In some villages, there were dozens of birdhouses.

Some of the commerce is ecologically damaging though. The top image shows a typical gold mining machine, most of which are illegal. There are hundreds of these machines along the river, each dredging up the bottom, then processing it and dumping the sand in piles that obstruct navigation and water flow. When we talked to one of the operators, we asked how much he made per day. “Not per day,” he said. “Per week, we might recover 1 or 2 grams.” At the current price of $60 per gram, that is a lot of work with a lot of equipment and a team of 4 or 5 people for very little return.

The Indonesian government is also getting into growing more rice. There were multiple locations with large construction equipment, as seen on the bottom image. The government is using these to clear forests and swamps to create more rice fields to feed the rapidly growing population, where 56% of the population is under 25 years of age.

One afternoon, we took a short canoe ride off the houseboat to a “black lake,” filled with water soaked peat. The surface is mostly dead-still, producing mirror-like reflections.