Let me briefly introduce West Kalimantan to those not very familiar to the state.
West Kalimantan covers a area of 146.806 sq km or about one fifth of total land surface of Kalimantan island. Pontianak is the provincial capital of West Kalimantan.

Pontianak lies exactly on the equator alias known as “The Land of Equator”.

Night shot of the scenery from our hotel room in Jakarta

After a early breakfast, at 9.15am we met up with Niwan at the hotel lobby and proceed to the airport for the flight to West Kalimantan. Left to right : Alvin Koh, Niwan, Kelvin Fong and me, waiting for the flight.

Upon the flight we were able to get a birds eye view of River Kapuas, from small channel right to big open river mixing into open sea, the view stretching across West Kalimantan was unbelievable. The Kapuas river, one of Indonesia’s longest rivers with 1143 km long divides the town into two

Pic 1. Canals crisscross of it, providing an essential and historical communications link. Pic 2. This is the smaller part, where many Indonesians work and lived on it. The River is the artery of traffic and trade beside roads and air transportation. It connect Pontianak, as the capital of West Kalimantan with the other major towns and cities throughout the archipelago or towns along the coast and the the hinterland. Note the river opening and mixing with the open sea at the top right of the picture. Pic 3. Close up….look at the colour of the river!. Note the many houses and structure along the river bank. Believe me…the river is not that small.

The flight was quite short, approx 1 hr and 20 min to reach Pontianak International Airport from Jakarta. Upon reaching there we were introduced to a young lady by the name of Ms Yunida, the operation manager of Robin’s farm. She is to be our guide for the day. We proceed to check in our rooms at Hotel Kapuas. After that on our way to the farm!.

Pontianak International Airport

While on our way to the farm, Ms Yunida decided to make a small detour to visit the famous Equatorial Monument. Found in 1928 by a Dutch Astronomical Expedition, a unique natural phenomena can be observed twice a year on 21-23 March and September, the path of Sun over the monument is such that exactly at noon no shadow is cast by the monument spire. The Solar Culmination is visible for 5 – 10 mins only.

Closed up of River Kapuas from a bridge.	The monument from outside.	The original one inside the building.

We only manage to stay for about 10 minutes before continuing. Soon we are out of the busy city and heading to the more rural area of Pontianak. Along the way we also managed to drop by a Aloe Vera farm for a visit.

I notice a lot of small streams such as these in the pic beside the roads we travel as well as spreading in the plantations too. I manage to take a closer look and guess what I see….

Ready blackwater for use! The water in the stream is deep tea colored! No wondered the Kapuas River is brownish coloured. It all started along these little streams.

Soon we left the main road and were traveling along the small track roads no unlike our old Kampong days. After much twisting and turning we finally reach the farm at 330pm!

Notice the high fences that had become a characteristic of a arowana farm.

We wasted no time in taking in all the beautiful scenery in front of us! The farm is set against a backdrop of mountains and water source is from both mountain as well as underground spring water.

City guys like us really need a break at places such as these once in a while.

One of the ponds that breed RTG. Note the backdrop.

Closer look at the RTG breeding pond

Another view

This farm is less than 2 yrs old and already most of the arowana in the ponds are breeding profusely. There are about 14 ponds here and distributed among the ponds are approx about 1800 fishes include RTG, Reds, Banjar Red, Green, Jardini and excluding a whooping 4000 pcs of Silver! Here are some pictures of the ponds.

This is one of the super reds pond. In Indonesia all reds are known only as Super reds. There are no fancy names.

These are the ponds breeding the slivers

This is the large pond housing more than 150 super reds!

One of the mud pond.

Like a scene from a postcard.	The farm employed about 20 workers.

So much for the ponds…now for the real show…the arowanas! Much had we try to lure the Super reds out for us to take some shot, they just don’t want to show. Its too bad we went during afternoon sun and its too hot for the reds to surface. The best time to view Super reds will be during early morning and evening where its much cooler.

A sole one….

A whole group of them doing their business

A unique black silver!

Feeding time!...note this is not their usual diet,

We really appreciate they trying to lure the fishes and show us their feeding behaviour. The super reds just don’t respond….u wouldn’t have guess there are over 150 reds inside if they didn’t tell u…the ponds are absolutely dead quiet. Unlike the Silvers and the Gold.

Feeding frenzy!

Ms Yunida mention that there are no seasons for Silver and that they are breeding and harvesting almost every week! Every pc we saw in the pond were perfect. No droppy eyes nor protruding lower jaw. We manage to caught not one but two Platinum at the farm! These plat are awaiting their buyers from Japan, we were just in luck to be able to caught sight of them. Enjoy the shot

Fully crossed wearing white shiny amour.

They are quite camera shy….can u see the two of them?

Here is a rare shot of a Super red to manage to sight! These fellas are huge 3 feet monster!

A group photo. From left to right: Niwan, Ms Yunida, me, Steven, Alvin and Kelvin

How time flies when you are enjoying yourself, soon its evening and its time to take our leave. We left the farm around 6.15pm and proceed to have dinner before going to the next destination: Robin’s show room!, so much fun so little time!.

Many thanks to Niwan and Ms Yunida for sparing their time effort in ferrying and showing us around.

We will have all the juicy report on this visit on part 4 of our Indonesia Visit report, stay tune!!.

(A Joint Effort between www.arofanatics.com, www.arowanaclub.com, and www.arowanas.com)