Kutai National Park

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Lowland dipterocarp rainforest in East Kalimantan that has survived a rougher history than most protected areas in this guide — major fires in the 1980s and 1990s, along with illegal logging and encroachment, badly damaged large sections of the park. Reaching it means flying into Balikpapan's Sepinggan Airport, travelling on to Samarinda, then taking a boat along the Mahakam River to the park itself. Despite its history, Kutai remains one of the few places left in the province with a genuinely wild orangutan population, and the forest's slow recovery is itself a case study in how tropical rainforest regenerates after disturbance.