A klotok is a traditional
river boat
A riverboat is a watercraft designed for inland navigation on lakes, rivers, and artificial waterways. They are generally equipped and outfitted as work boats in one of the carrying trades, for freight or people transport, including luxury un ...
used to navigate the waters of
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
. Fitted with
inboard
An inboard motor is a marine propulsion system for boats. As opposed to an outboard motor where an engine is mounted outside the hull of the craft, an ''inboard motor'' is an engine enclosed within the hull of the boat, usually connected to a pr ...
or
outboard motor
An outboard motor is a propulsion system for boats, consisting of a self-contained unit that includes engine, gearbox and propeller or jet drive, designed to be affixed to the outside of the transom. They are the most common motorised method ...
s, klotoks are primarily used for
cabotage
Cabotage () is the transport of goods or passengers between two places in the same country. It originally applied to shipping along coastal routes, port to port, but now applies to aviation, railways, and road transport as well.
Cabotage rights ar ...
up rivers, transporting people and goods.
Klotoks are found in
floating marketplaces, national parks, and fishing areas. Depending on their function or how they are equipped, they may be called by various names.
Etymology
The boat's name refers to the noise it makes, “klok tok tok tok”. The klotok may also be referred to by other names, such as
water taxi
A water taxi or a water bus is a watercraft used to provide public or private transport, usually, but not always, in an urban environment. Service may be scheduled with multiple stops, operating in a similar manner to a bus, or o ...
, or “motorized gondola”
or “mini-trawler”.
Design
The klotok is a wooden river boat with a shallow draft.
Its size varies somewhat by use. Common sizes are by , such as for a dugout, or by for a small commercial boat.
It can be even larger, such as a
houseboat
A houseboat is a boat that has been designed or modified to be used primarily as a home. Most houseboats are not motorized as they are usually moored or kept stationary at a fixed point, and often tethered to land to provide utilities. How ...
.
Klotok often have a roof, which forms an upper deck for tourists. The boats may be fitted with inboard engines. Klotoks have varying levels of accommodation, some tourist vessels may provide passengers overnight accommodations with sleeping, dining, and toilet facilities.
Uses
Floating markets, which have existed for over 400 years, use klotoks for trade, including buying and selling agricultural and handicraft products that are brought from the interior of Indonesia to coastal areas.
Klotoks are a popular form of transportation for tourism. Sojourns to visit wild life parks, such as the
Tanjing Puting National Park, provide for viewing wildlife along a waterway, particularly the
orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ...
s, which are found in this park in large numbers, plus
macaques
The macaques () constitute a genus (''Macaca'') of sociality, gregarious Old World monkeys of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. The 23 species of macaques inhabit species distribution, ranges throughout Asia, North Africa, and (in barbary macaques ...
,
proboscis
A proboscis () is an elongated appendage from the head of an animal, either a vertebrate or an invertebrate. In invertebrates, the term usually refers to tubular mouthparts used for feeding and sucking. In vertebrates, a proboscis is an elong ...
,
gibbons Gibbons may refer to:
* The plural of gibbon, an ape in the family Hylobatidae
* Gibbons (surname)
* Gibbons, Alberta
* Gibbons (automobile), a British light car of the 1920s
* Gibbons P.C., a leading American law firm headquartered in New Jersey
...
, and
monkeys
Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...
.
Such travel is a unique experience as klotok navigators are also good wildlife guides within the parks.
fishermen
A fisher or fisherman is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish.
Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishers and fish farmers. Fishers may be professional or recreat ...
who buy them even though they are expensive to use. Modern equipment fitted for some klotoks include purse seine
Seine fishing (or seine-haul fishing; ) is a method of fishing that employs a surrounding net, called a seine, that hangs vertically in the water with its bottom edge held down by weights and its top edge buoyed by floats. Seine nets can be dep ...
, inboard engines, halogen lamps
A halogen lamp (also called tungsten halogen, quartz-halogen, and quartz iodine lamp) is an incandescent lamp consisting of a tungsten filament sealed in a compact transparent envelope that is filled with a mixture of an inert gas and a small ...
, cool box and radio. A few klotoks are also used for pole-line fishing. However, for seine
)
, mouth_location = Le Havre/Honfleur
, mouth_coordinates =
, mouth_elevation =
, progression =
, river_system = Seine basin
, basin_size =
, tributaries_left = Yonne, Loing, Eure, Risle
, tributarie ...
fishing, the klotok is equipped with a converted drive shaft
A drive shaft, driveshaft, driving shaft, tailshaft (Australian English), propeller shaft (prop shaft), or Cardan shaft (after Girolamo Cardano) is a component for transmitting mechanical power (physics), power and torque and rotation, usually ...
. When fitted with the additional fishing equipment, klotoks may be known as "mini-trawlers".[ When fitted with an outboard motor (''comnjarmasin''), commonly seen in ]Banjarmasin
)
, translit_lang1 = Other
, translit_lang1_type1 = Jawi
, translit_lang1_info1 = بنجر ماسين
, settlement_type = City
, motto = ''Kayuh Baimbai'' ( Banjare ...
in Kalimantan
Kalimantan () is the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. It constitutes 73% of the island's area. The non-Indonesian parts of Borneo are Brunei and East Malaysia. In Indonesia, "Kalimantan" refers to the whole island of Borneo.
In 2019, ...
and Jambi
Jambi is a province of Indonesia. It is located on the east coast of central Sumatra and spans to the Barisan Mountains in the west. Its capital and largest city is Jambi. The province has a land area of 50,160.05 km2, and a sea area of 3, ...
in Sumatra
Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...
,[ it is called a water taxi.
Other examples of commercial use for transport and distribution include ]rattan
Rattan, also spelled ratan, is the name for roughly 600 species of Old World climbing palms belonging to subfamily Calamoideae. The greatest diversity of rattan palm species and genera are in the closed-canopy old-growth tropical forests of ...
stored in specially built sheds on river docks depend on large klotoks to transport the palms to the timber port town of Sampit
Sampit is a city located in East Kotawaringin Regency, Central Kalimantan. Previously a timber port town, it has grown to be a medium-sized city with a population of 166,773 according to Statistics Indonesia in 2019, with the economy having since d ...
.[Sevin, p. 700]
References
{{Reflist, 2
External links
Kalimantan 2: Sekonyer River to Camp Leakey
YouTube video of trip by klotok including views from aboard boat and of other klotoks
Sail blog discussing the klotok
Boats of Indonesia
Kalimantan
Shipping