Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan, Indonesia — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan known for?

Banjarmasin, the largest city, spreads across the delta where the Martapura River meets the Barito River, and its trade still moves by boat along a web of tidal channels. Sellers paddle jukung canoes to the floating market at Lok Baintan each dawn. Inland, the town of Martapura has cut and sold diamonds for generations, while Banjarese women dye the tie-resist cloth called sasirangan.

The forested Meratus Mountains rise behind it all.

Where is Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan?

South Kalimantan occupies the south-eastern corner of Borneo, the far end of Indonesia's Kalimantan territory. It is the smallest of those Kalimantan provinces by land, and second only to West Kalimantan in people. The Java Sea washes its entire southern edge.

Central Kalimantan wraps around it to the west and north, while East Kalimantan meets it in the north-east. Down the middle run the Meratus Mountains, a forested spine of ridges that rises to Mount Besar, the range's highest summit. West of that spine the land sinks into peat swamp and the marshy basin of the Negara River, a maze of black-water channels.

East of it, coastal lowlands run flat to the sea. The Barito River drains the western side, gathering the runoff of the interior and carrying it south past Banjarmasin to the Java Sea, where coal barges queue at its mouth. The Martapura River branches off it and threads through Banjarmasin itself.

Tides push far up these channels, so the rivers rise and fall twice a day even well inland. Offshore in the east lies Pulau Laut, the large island anchored by the port town of Kotabaru. Rivers order the whole map.

What is Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan like?

The Banjar people give the province its character, and their language, Banjar, is the everyday tongue of market and mosque alike. Islam sits at the centre of Banjar life. Grand mosques anchor the towns, and the dawn call to prayer carries out over the water.

Banjar traders long carried their goods and their cooking across the archipelago, settling as far off as Sumatra and the Malay coast. Much of what a visitor notices here grew straight out of the rivers. Trade by boat, dawn markets, and houses on stilts above the channels are not staged for outsiders but simply how the delta has always lived.

Craft runs deep in the Banjar towns. Women dye sasirangan, a wavy tie-resist cloth once worn as healing dress, while Martapura's workshops still cut diamonds by hand. The kitchen has its own signature.

Soto Banjar, a clove-scented chicken soup thick with rice cakes, is the dish every household argues over. Up in the Meratus Mountains, the Dayak Meratus keep another world of longhouses, forest rice, and animist rite, apart from the Muslim delta below. Two cultures share one province.

What is the history of Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan?

Power here once belonged to the Sultanate of Banjar, an Islamic kingdom that rose in the 1520s and grew rich on pepper, rattan, and later coal shipped down the Barito River. The Dutch pressed in over the centuries and finally abolished the sultanate in 1860, touching off the long Banjar War across the forests and swamps. Resistance smouldered for decades.

South Kalimantan took its present shape as a province of Indonesia in 1950, a few years after independence, with Banjarmasin as its first capital.

What is the climate of Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan?

South Kalimantan is hot and humid the year round, close to the equator and never far from rain. The wettest months run from December to March, when winds off Asia and the Pacific dump heavy afternoon storms and the Barito River swells over its banks. June to September is the drier stretch, as dry air off Australia settles in and the floating markets sit under clear morning skies.

It never turns cold. Even the Meratus highlands stay green and dripping through the year.

How do you get to Provinsi Kalimantan Selatan?

Most travellers fly into Syamsudin Noor International Airport, which serves both Banjarmasin and Banjarbaru and links the province to Jakarta, Surabaya, and the other hubs of Java. Ferries and passenger ships still cross the Java Sea from Surabaya to the port of Banjarmasin, a slower echo of the old sea trade. Roads run north into East Kalimantan.

Once there, the last mile is often water, with a chartered jukung or klotok running out to the floating markets and the villages along the Martapura River.