Indonesia: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Indonesia known for?

Indonesia is the world's largest archipelagic state, a run of more than 17,000 islands scattered across the Equator. Islands are the draw. Bali is the best known, though Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and the shared expanses of Borneo and New Guinea each pull travellers of their own.

Rainforests cover much of the land, earning the country its old name, The Emerald of the Equator, and sheltering some of the highest levels of biodiversity on the planet.

Where is Indonesia?

Indonesia lies in Southeast Asia and Oceania at once, spread across the sea between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. The Equator runs straight through it. More than 17,000 islands make up the country, the largest archipelagic state on earth, though only about 6,000 inhabited islands among them carry any settlement.

The big islands anchor the rest. Sumatra, Java, and Sulawesi stand across the western and central reach of the archipelago, while the country also holds part of Borneo and part of New Guinea, two great islands it shares with its neighbours. Sea lies between every part of it.

Neighbours ring the archipelago. Indonesia shares land borders with Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea, with Timor-Leste, and with Malaysia on Borneo, and across the surrounding water it faces Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines. Rainforest covers a great deal of the land.

Those forests hold some of the highest levels of biodiversity found anywhere on earth, and by sheer extent the country ranks as the 14th-largest in the world by area. Warm, wet, and green, the land sits squarely in the tropics on both sides of the Equator.

What is the history of Indonesia?

Indonesia became a single country only in the modern era, when the Republic of Indonesia declared its founding in 1945. Before that, no single state held the archipelago together. The land itself was never a single place to begin with.

More than 17,000 islands lie scattered here, and for most of the past they answered to no common capital, each of the great islands, Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and the shared expanses of Borneo and New Guinea, a world of its own across the sea. Unity itself was the harder achievement. Drawing so many islands into one republic, the Republik Indonesia, meant binding together lands separated by long reaches of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

The Equator itself cuts through the country, so the young state stretched across both halves of the globe from its very first year. What binds them together is one republic spanning many thousands of islands. From that founding in 1945, the country has held its shape as the largest archipelagic state on earth, a single nation spread across a whole sea of islands set between two oceans.

What is Indonesia like?

Indonesia is defined by its spread, a single country scattered across more than 17,000 islands. Diversity is the theme. With some 6,000 inhabited islands, the country holds an enormous range of places and peoples, from Sumatra and Java in the west to Sulawesi and the far reaches of New Guinea.

One language ties the whole together. Indonesian serves as the common tongue across the archipelago, a shared thread running through islands that are otherwise worlds apart. Bali is the face the country shows abroad.

It is the best-known destination by far, though it is only one island among thousands, and much of what draws travellers lies well beyond it. Nature sits close to daily life here. Rainforest covers a great deal of the land, dense enough and green enough that the country earned the old name The Emerald of the Equator, and those same forests hold some of the highest levels of biodiversity on earth.

Life runs to the rhythm of the sea. Between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, on both sides of the Equator, the islands share a warm, wet, and tropical world that shapes how people live across the whole archipelago.

What is the climate of Indonesia?

Indonesia has a tropical climate, hot and humid the year round, shaped by its place astride the Equator. There are no true seasons of cold. Instead the year splits between a wetter spell and a drier one, and the heavy rains are what keep the rainforests standing across so many of the islands.

The archipelago draws its moisture from the sea on every side, set between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean. It stays warm from Sumatra to New Guinea.

How do you get to Indonesia?

Indonesia is reached mostly by air, with the busiest arrivals landing on Java and Bali before travellers spread out across the islands. Distance rules the trip. The country shares land borders with only three neighbours, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, and Malaysia, so most visitors come from further off by plane.

By sea it faces Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines across the water. Once inside, ferries and short flights carry travellers from one island to the next.