Indonesia · Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta · Jakarta
Thousand Islands, Jakarta — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Thousand Islands is Jakarta's offshore island district, a scatter of coral cays and reefs in the Java Sea.
About Thousand Islands
Where to stay in Thousand Islands
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Choosing a base here means choosing an island. Because Thousand Islands is a chain of separate cays reached by boat from Jakarta, each islet functions as its own small resort world, and the water between them shapes every stay far more than any street grid ever could. Divers and snorkellers gravitate to the reef-fringed outer islets; day-trippers stick nearer Jakarta.
About Thousand Islands
What are the main landmarks in Thousand Islands?
The islands themselves are the sight. Coral reefs, white-sand cays, and mangrove edges make up the draw across the Kepulauan Seribu chain, and much of the outer archipelago falls inside a protected marine zone that guards the reefs and their fish. Beaches and dive sites carry the district.
There are no grand monuments; the Java Sea does that work instead.
What is the history of Thousand Islands?
Jakarta reaches back to 1527. The islands off the coast of Java served that older port as fishing grounds and anchorages long before they became a governed unit, and Kabupaten Administrasi Kepulauan Seribu was constituted as a distinct administrative district of Indonesia only in 2001. The name outran the count.
Local usage settled on Kepulauan Seribu, a thousand islands, though the true tally of cays runs well short of that round figure.
Where is Thousand Islands?
The district spreads across the Java Sea north of Jakarta, its land barely ten square kilometres of low coral cays scattered over a wide stretch of tropical water.
Good for
More areas in Jakarta
Updated July 2026