Central Kalimantan | Indonesian Consulate | Tanjung Puting National Park | Biruté Galdikas

Island: Kalimantan
This famed island is known to the West as Borneo. It's the world's third-largest island and is actually divided up among Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. The bulk of the 287,000 square miles, though, belongs to the Indonesian side and is called Kalimantan. It's also home to one of the world's richest rain forests.

Those best suited for a visit to this island are ecotourists and people who want to experience this incredible biodiversity before it's destroyed by loggers eager to harvest tropical woods. Kalimantan is less touristy than Malaysian Borneo (or Sarawak), so the traveling can be slower going, but the deep forests and the indigenous Dayak culture - famed for its communal longhouses - can make it well worth the journey. Having some basic ability in Bahasa Indonesia, the Malay-like national language spoken across the country (in addition to the local dialects), can be helpful in getting around.

Some tourists stick to East Kalimantan and its capital, Samarinda, where you can travel up the Mahakam River by longboat. But probably the most celebrated areas are the orangutan preserves started by legendary conservationist Biruté Galdikas, where you can still see the endangered species (whose name means "man of the forest").

"Visitors to Kalimantan usually go for the orangutans, and you can even stay in guesthouses near the research camps," says Meinarti Fauzie, a spokeswoman for the Indonesian Consulate in New York. She suggests flying to Palangkaraya, Central Kalimantan's capital, before you make the 120-mile trek to preserves like the 2,500-square-mile Tanjung Puting National Park, where Galdikas's renowned Camp Leakey is situated.

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