Sunday, January 11, 2009

v4






This video shows my journey from Long Bagun to Long Pangai at Mahakam river in West Kutai, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. We had to take some soil samples from this area to be analyzed.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

MVI 0823





This video shows Batu Dinding at Mahakam river in West Kutai, East Kalimantan province in Indonesia. I made this video in June 2008.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Along Mahakam River






This video shows my journey along Mahakam river in West Kutai, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It took place in May-June 2008.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Welcome to Soil Surveyor









The name Indonesia was derived from “indos and nesos”, meaning islands near India. The country is in fact the largest archipelago over the world with thousands of islands, 17,508 to be precise, spread in an area between the Asia continent and Australia, and between the Pacific and the Indian oceans. The islands are inhabited by many tribes with diverse culture and languages, although there is a national language spoken throughout the country, namely Bahasa Indonesia. It is thus appropriate, that the country’s motto is Bhinneka Tunggal Ika which means: Unity in Diversity. The capital city of Indonesia is Jakarta.

One of the big islands in Indonesia is Kalimantan. It’s also famous with name “Borneo”. Kalimantan has four provinces. There are West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, and East Kalimantan. In this time, we want to introduce East Kalimantan that have a lot of natural resources. The capital city of East Kalimantan is Samarinda. We have surveyed for land suitability, fertility, and social impact for farming program in Kabupaten Kutai Barat, one of the cities in East Kalimantan. The area of our survey is near Mahakam River side.

Our team consist of soil scientist, forestry and social expert team. We have to research about the feasibility and land suitability of location along the Mahakam River. The areas that we have to survey are Danau Jempang at Tanjung Isuy, Long Bagun, and Long Pangai. We flew from Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta to Sepinggan airport in Balikpapan. The flight took time about two hours. From Balikpapan, we continued our trip by car to Tanjung Isuy.

We have prepared many stuffs and tools which had to be brought according to term of reference. The survey tools that we brought were GPS, maps (included Google Earth Map), Belgi bore, compass, soil samplers bags, and another complement tools.

We rather confused about Danau Jempang because the local government has recommended that the area were suitable to be surveyed and they said that it was a dry land. After we arrived in Tanjung Isuy, we found and proved that the survey location was a lake (=danau, in Indonesian) and Google Earth Map has given us an accurate information about the geographic condition in this area. There were a lot of water as long as we saw this area. My friend told me that this was a strange survey and he said this looked like the “Water World” movie (Bruce Willis). We laughed very laud because we felt a foolish thing in this journey. Because of this experience, we very suggest to use Google Earth Map as a main geographic information.

In Tanjung Isuy, we leaved in “Losmen Wisata” as our base camp. It was a guest house or cottage which was owned by the native people. We found a house near this cottage which sold originally souvenirs and many hand made stuffs.

After we finished our survey in Danau Jempang, we went to Long Bagun by regular ship, and then we continued our survey to Long Pangai by long boat.