12-Mar-2008 -- The trip to 1°N 109°E started from Singkawang, a small town in Western Kalimantan, some 140 km north of the province capital Pontianak. It is a remarkably clean town by Indonesian standards, with a majority of ethnic Chinese living there.

I took a bus going north for about 10 km and got down in the village of Semelagi. The satellite picture from gooogle earth indicated that from there two other roads lead east in direction of the confluence, one passing north, the other south. I took the northern road, since it passed the confluence a little closer. The Google Earth picture shows a black area around the confluence which I thought stemmed from burnt fields. But it turned out to be a swampy area turned into rice fields. I walked for about two km on the road along a small channel, used to drain the area. When I was just north of the confluence, I crossed the channel over a small bridge and asked for a way leading south for the last 500 m. A man told me that there was only a "jalan sawah" which meant a footpath through the rice fields. Now I thought it was quite easy to reach the point. But it turned out that the path was also flooded most of the time. So I had to move on bare footed on the slippery terrain. At least there were not many thorns on the ground. Being 250 m from the point I now had to find a way in western direction, but these fields were unusually big, there was no such way. But since the rice plants were already more than one meter high, I found I could risk to walk through the field without destroying the harvest. After wading through knee deep water and mud for a few minutes I reached the point.

The way back to the road was at first easier, because I found a jalan sawah that went directly into my direction, but reaching the channel again, there was no bridge and it took me quite a long time to fight my way through bushes to get to the next crossing. An hour later I reached Singkawang again.