Equator Monument (Tugu Khatulistiwa)

The Tugu Khatulistiwa — Equator Monument — stands a few kilometres north of Pontianak's city centre, marking the point where the equator crosses the Kapuas River. The original wooden post was erected by a Dutch expedition in 1928; the current structure is a 1930 reconstruction featuring a large arrow pointing north and south along the zero-degree latitude line.

The monument sits in a small park with an adjacent building explaining the equatorial phenomenon with maps and displays. You can straddle the equator here for the obligatory photograph, standing with one foot in the northern hemisphere and one in the southern. The experience is simultaneously silly and surprisingly moving — this is genuinely the middle of the world.

Go at solar noon on the March or September equinox if you can: shadows genuinely disappear from vertical objects, which is a strange and memorable sight.

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A story
At the equinoxes in March and September, at solar noon, the sun passes directly overhead at Pontianak and vertical objects cast no shadow at all. The monument holds a ceremony for this event twice a year — the Kulminasi Matahari — when locals and visitors gather to watch shadows disappear. The monument was first built by the Dutch in 1928; the current structure with its globe and arrow is a 1930 reconstruction and enlargement.