such as Palangkaraya, Banjarmasin, Balikpapan, Samarinda, and Tanjung Selor. other towns also Connected in the Province of West Kalimantan, such as Ketapang, Singkawang, Sintang, etc., as well as other provinces. As Pontianak lies on the Trans Kalimantan Highway, it is possible to travel to East Malaysia and Brunei by land using the Trans Kalimantan Highway. Several bus routes operate from Pontianak to Kuching in Malaysia and Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei. History Etymology The city was formerly the capital of the independent Sultanate of Pontianak and was founded on 23 October 1771 around an old trading station on the western coast of Borneo. It was built on swampy ground and tropical forest subjected to regular flooding by the river, requiring buildings to be constructed on piles to keep them off the ground. The name Pontianak refers to a story about ghosts that people in West Kalimantan refer to as Pontianak (a ferocious female ghost in Malay); it was a ghosts' haunt until Syarif Abdurrahman Alkadrie and his army fought and expelled the ghosts who attacked them by firing cannons. He then built a mosque and a palace, exactly on the location of the ghosts' haunt, and settled there. The mosque and palace became the first buildings in the city, and to this day locals fire bamboo cannons on Ramadan and other holidays in memory of this. Pontianak in the Chinese language is known as , (pinyin): Kūndiān) in the local Hakka Chinese, Pontianak is known as Khuntîen. In Malay mythology, the Pontianak is also the name of an astral creature that is said be a spirit of a woman who died while pregnant. Similar stories about the Pontianak first emerged from mythical and folkloric tales that are popular in Kalimantan (Borneo) before the city was built on a large scale of natural habitat. This was an active ancient civilization in the late 17th century. Early development The history of the city of Pontianak written by a Dutch historian, V.J. Verth in his book Borneos Afdeling Wester, whose content is slightly different from the version of the stories circulating in the community today. According to him, the Dutch started to go to Pontianak in 1773 from Batavia. Verth wrote that Syarif Abdurrahman, son of Sharif Hussein bin Ahmed cleric Alqadrie (or in another version called Al Habib Husin), left the Kingdom of Mempawah and began to wander. In the region of