The sight of hundreds of colorful boats tightly cram together, being loaded with hand-picked exotic fruits and vegetables, may still seem unfamiliar to many. For them, it’s the famous Floating Market, of Lok Baintan in the Banjar district of Indonesia.
Favoring the local residents for their livelihood since 500 years, now the markets are addressed as intetesting tourist attractions of the region where ordinary people, in ordinary boats bid their goods, rocking in the weaves.
Lok Baintan floating Market is located in South Kalimantan Province. Largely it is used for buying and selling products that produced by local communities. Activities here have been runned by almost 50 women traders.
The Floating Market deals with both processed and unprocessed natural product from plantation and fishery products. Buyers here can find typical swamp land plantation products like oranges, pineapples and bananas and fishery products such as patin, pepuyu, haruan and sepat that are commonly grown in the territorial waters of the swampland.
Merchants here also sell handicraft products, like purun hats, and baskets. Purun hats and baskets are handicrafts derived from palm tree and purun plants.
In addition some traditional cakes such as bingka and amparan tatak and traditional dishes of gangan keladi, and gangan humbut are displayed for sell in the market too. All its cuisines utilize agricultural products of the swamplands as ingredients.
Though this unique market can be accessed with cars or motorcycles, the most recommended way is to visit it by motorize wooden boats, locally known as klotok.
Floating markets are one of the most unique tourist objects in Indonesia. Relying on locals the Lok Baintan’s floating market is the first floating market in South Kalimantan and unfortunately is the last one probably , as that kind of markets, in other locations, are replaced by the regular land markets.
Other than Indonesia such concept is also found in countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India.
