Borneo

[Walt Mankowski <waltman@netaxs.com>]

One of the questions in last night's Quizzo game was "What is the
largest island in Indonesia?"  Discussion at the table centered on
Borneo, Java, and Celebes, and after changing our minds a few times we
decided to go with Borneo.  The official Quizzomaster's answer,
however, was Sumatra.

Well, I just happened to pick up the 2001 World Almanac today so I
decided to double-check.  It turns out that Borneo is by far the
largest of the Indonesian islands.  At 280,000 sq mi it's nearly 70%
larger than Sumatra (165,000 sq mi).  Celebes and Java are much
smaller and 69,000 and 48,900 sq mi, respectively.  Borneo is so large
that it is just slightly smaller than the combined areas of Sumatra,
Celebes, and Java.

One might argue that Borneo is not completely an Indonesian island.
The north coast is part of Malaysia, and Brunei occupies about 2,200
sq mi.  But even the 70% of Borneo that is Indonesian is still almost
20% bigger than Sumatra.

W

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