ABSTRACT
The Province of Riau (sometimes spelt Rhiau or Riao) is located on the eastern coast of the island of Sumatra. It is bordered by the provinces of North Sumatra (Sumatera Utara) to the north-west, West Sumatra (Sumatera Barat) to the south-west and Jambi to the south. North-east across the Strait of Malacca (Melaka) lies the Malay Peninsula, mainly Malaysian territory, but with Singapore at its southern tip. East of that and washing the southern shores is the Berhala Strait, beyond which are the Riau Islands (Kepulauan Riau), part of Riau province until 2004. Riau still includes a string of coastal islands, the biggest of which are Merbau, Bengkalis and Rupat. Riau is the second largest province of Sumatra, after South Sumatra (Sumatera Selatan), covering an area of 87,024 sq km—elsewhere in Indonesia as a whole, only the two provinces of Papua and three of the four provinces of Kalimantan (Borneo) are larger.
