The Kahayan flows past the eastern edge of Palangka Raya and is the city's reason for being. A short klotok trip upstream gives you the city from the water — the orange Kahayan Bridge, the floating houses on the far bank, and after an hour or so the Dayak villages where life still revolves around the river.
Boatmen wait at the riverside near the bridge. Negotiate before stepping on board.
A story
The Kahayan is the second-longest river in Central Kalimantan — over 600 km from its headwaters in the Schwaner Mountains to its mouth on the Java Sea. For centuries it was the only road into the interior, and the chain of Dayak villages strung along its banks still use it that way. Sukarno chose this stretch of riverbank in 1957 as the future Indonesian capital partly for its symbolic geographic centrality.