A country · 415 places · 35 regions
Indonesia, all of it.
415 curated places across 35 regions — photographed, mapped, and noted with the season each is best in.
The 4 biggest regions — Bali, Jakarta, Central Java and East Java — read below as chapters, with 31 more waiting past them.
Chapter I · Bali · 66 places
Bali
Terraced rice paddies carved into a steep river valley north of Ubud, Tegallalang is among Bali's most photographed agricultural landscapes. Subak irrigation channels direct water across tiers of vivid green and gold paddies, and the morning light striking the stepped fields from the east creates particularly striking images. Roadside cafes line the ridge above, offering elevated vantage points over the valley.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter II · Jakarta · 47 places
Jakarta
The old town of Jakarta preserving Dutch colonial buildings around Fatahillah Square, once the heart of Batavia. Museums, cafes and cobbled plazas draw visitors into the city's trading-era past.
✦ May to September · $
Chapter III · Central Java · 33 places
Central Java
A volcanic plateau at over 2,000 meters elevation in the highlands of Central Java, the Dieng Plateau is home to some of the oldest surviving Hindu temples in Indonesia, dating to the 7th and 8th centuries. Active volcanic features including colored crater lakes, bubbling mud pools, and fumarole fields sit in close proximity to the temple groupings, creating an unusual combination of geological and archaeological interest. Morning mist and cold temperatures are characteristic of the plateau, which produces some of Java's finest Cavendish potatoes and aromatic crops.
via Wikimedia CommonsChapter IV · East Java · 33 places
East Java
Mount Bromo is a small, constantly steaming cone standing inside a much larger caldera in East Java, about 90 kilometres southeast of Surabaya and 55 kilometres from Malang. Its summit reaches 2,329 metres, which makes it far from the tallest thing in view, but its position is what counts: it rises from the floor of the Tengger caldera, a collapse basin roughly ten kilometres across whose flat floor is covered in fine volcanic ash and known as the Laut Pasir, the Sea of Sand. Bromo shares that floor with the perfectly fluted, extinct cone of Batok and the older stumps of Kursi and Watangan, and behind them all, eight kilometres to the south, stands Semeru at 3,676 metres, the highest mountain in Java, which puts up an ash plume roughly every twenty minutes. The whole assembly forms Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, gazetted in 1982 and covering about 50,000 hectares. What it does. Bromo is one of Indonesia's most persistently active volcanoes. Its crater is an open pit several hundred metres across that vents sulphur dioxide continuously with an audible roar, and eruptive episodes are frequent rather than exceptional — significant activity in 2010 and 2011 and again in 2015 and 2016 closed airports across East Java and Bali with ash, and evacuation zones around the cone are declared and lifted regularly by Indonesia's volcanology agency. Access to the crater rim is suspended during elevated alert levels, and checking the current status before travelling is not optional. The people. The caldera and the slopes around it are home to the Tenggerese, a Javanese-speaking people who practise a distinct form of Hinduism and who trace their origin to the Majapahit era, having kept their religion through the Islamisation of Java. Their principal ceremony is Yadnya Kasada, held at the full moon of the fourteenth day of the Kasada month in the Tenggerese calendar. Worshippers gather at Pura Luhur Poten, the temple that stands alone on the black sand at the foot of Bromo, and then climb to the rim and throw offerings — rice, fruit, vegetables, flowers, live chickens and goats, money — into the crater. The rite derives from the legend of Roro Anteng and Joko Seger, who were granted children on the condition that the twenty-fifth be given to the mountain. Some villagers descend into the crater on ropes to catch the offerings mid-air. What you actually see today. The standard programme is a pre-dawn one. Jeeps leave Cemoro Lawang and other rim villages between one and three in the morning and grind up to a set of viewpoints on the northern caldera wall: Penanjakan at 2,770 metres, which is the classic and the most crowded, plus King Kong Hill, Seruni Point and Bukit Cinta, which are lower and less mobbed. What you are waiting for is the moment when the light comes over the eastern rim and the sea of sand is still full of mist, with Batok's fluted cone in the foreground and Semeru smoking behind — one of the most reproduced views in Indonesia, and genuinely worth the cold. Afterwards the jeeps drop down onto the caldera floor and drive across the ash to the base of Bromo, where the last stretch is a walk over dunes and then 245 concrete steps to the rim. Horses can be hired for the flat section. On the rim there is a narrow ledge with a low railing along part of it and nothing along the rest, above a drop into the vent. Getting there and timing. Cemoro Lawang, on the northeastern rim, is the usual base and has simple guesthouses; Malang and Probolinggo are the transport hubs, with public minibuses to the rim in the mornings only. Surabaya is three to four hours away by car. The dry season from May to October gives the clear mornings; the wet season from November to April brings cloud that regularly cancels the sunrise entirely. It is genuinely cold before dawn at this altitude — 3 to 10°C, with occasional frost on the sand in the driest months of July and August — and almost nobody arrives dressed for it. Park entry fees are higher at weekends and higher again for foreign visitors, and are paid at the gates. Jeep transport reaches the viewpoints and the caldera floor, but the ash crossing and the crater staircase are not accessible.
✦ April to October (dry season) · $$
Regions of Indonesia
- Bali66
- Jakarta47
- Central Java33
- East Java33
- West Java29
- Yogyakarta23
- North Sumatra22
- East Nusa Tenggara18
- West Nusa Tenggara13
- South Sulawesi12
- West Sumatra12
- Maluku8
- North Sulawesi8
- Aceh6
- Jambi6
- West Kalimantan6
- Central Sulawesi5
- North Maluku5
- Banten4
- East Kalimantan4
- Lampung4
- Southeast Sulawesi4
- Southwest Papua4
- Central Kalimantan3
- West Papua3
- Riau2
- South Kalimantan2
- South Sumatra2
- Bangka Belitung Islands1
- Bengkulu1
- Central Papua1
- Highland Papua1
- Riau Islands1
- South Papua1
- Sulawesi1
Every place in Indonesia
