That is just one of many landmarks in the coastal village of Timbulsloko in Demak, Central Java, swallowed by rising tides, which have forced residents to adapt to a new life on the water.

More than 200 people have stayed in one of Indonesia's fastest sinking areas, which has turned from a landscape of lush rice paddies into a network of boardwalks and canoes in an alarming sign of how climate change could upend coastal communities everywhere.

"It's only memories now [...] there are no such activities anymore," said 49-year-old Sulkan.

"Why? Because the place is already flooded by the tide."

Timbulsloko residents' lives have been drastically altered by rising sea levels, coastal erosion and excessive groundwater extraction making the land sink.

The coastline has also been left vulnerable to floods after locals cut down mangroves for fishing ponds in the 1990s.

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