BBC - Equator with Simon Reeve (2006) Part 2 Indonesia

Simon Reeve travels to paradise beaches, dense rainforests and towering volcanoes on a 40,000 kilometre journey following the invisible line around the world. For most people, the equator is just an imaginary line around the globe but in this series Simon Reeve comes face-to-face with the reality. On a 40,000-kilometre journey, he reveals the equator as a unique region of our planet; home to both the world's greatest concentration of human poverty and natural biodiversity. Beneath the sweltering heat of the equatorial sun lie paradise beaches, strange foods and exotic wildlife, along with some of the world's most extreme terrains: dense rainforests, towering volcanoes and perilous rapids.

Part 2: Indonesia

In Indonesia, Simon visits a village of sea gypsies and meets tribes people who want to adopt him. He continues his epic journey in Asia and finds himself on a sun-kissed island in the far west of Indonesia, the world’s largest archipelagic nation – a collection of perhaps 18,000 islands that are home to more than 220 million people speaking hundreds of languages. Children on the island have never seen a foreigner before, but locals welcome their visitors and invite Simon hunting. On mainland Sumatra, he hears fears about bird flu and meets the matrilineal Minang people. Men live as guests in their wives’ familial homes, and women propose marriage (Minang men call their daughters “iron butterflies”). In Kalimantan, conservationists warn that hundreds of orang-utans in Borneo – the only great apes living outside Africa – are killed each year as a result of illegal logging; a large tree can be worth $10,000. In recent years, there have been regular mass-killings in Borneo of immigrants who have arrived from other Indonesian islands (often due to a government policy of trans-migration) by the Dayak head-hunters.

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