Explore Indonesia

Bali

The most visited island in the Indonesian archipelago draws millions with its Hindu temples, emerald rice terraces, surf beaches, and a spiritual atmosphere unlike anywhere else in Southeast Asia. From the clifftop Tanah Lot sea temple to the cremation ceremonies of Ubud, Bali rewards visitors who venture beyond its famous beach resorts into living village culture.

Ubud

Bali's cultural and artistic heartland sits among terraced river valleys in the island's cool uplands, its central market and palace flanked by galleries, woodcarving workshops, and dance performance venues. The surrounding countryside — Tegallalang's rice terraces, the Sacred Monkey Forest, and Campuhan Ridge Walk — makes Ubud a destination in its own right, separate from the beach resorts of the south.

Yogyakarta

Java's royal city remains the epicentre of Javanese art and learning, home to the sultan's kraton palace complex, the ancient shadow-puppet (wayang) tradition, and some of the finest batik workshops in the country. Positioned between the twin UNESCO sites of Borobudur (45 minutes west) and Prambanan (17 kilometres east), it is the natural base for exploring Indonesia's most important ancient monuments.

Jakarta

The sprawling capital of 34 million inhabitants combines Dutch colonial heritage in the old Kota district, world-class museums, and a booming restaurant and nightlife scene built on wealth from one of Southeast Asia's largest economies. The chaotic street-food stalls of Glodok's Chinatown, the hip cafés of Kemang, and the extraordinary collection of the National Museum represent Jakarta's contradictions at their most compelling.

Lombok

Bali's quieter eastern neighbour offers pristine beaches on its southern Kuta coast, the forested caldera of Mount Rinjani (Indonesia's second-highest active volcano, at 3,726 metres) for serious trekkers, and a Sasak culture distinct from Bali's Hindu traditions. The island has emerged as a standalone destination rather than a Bali overflow, particularly since road infrastructure improvements have opened up the south coast's untouched bays.

Labuan Bajo

This small fishing port on Flores' western tip has transformed into the gateway for Komodo National Park, putting visitors within easy reach of the islands where Komodo dragons roam wild beaches beside pristine coral reefs. Sunset cruises from the harbour, liveaboard diving expeditions, and the pink-sand beach of Komodo Island have elevated Labuan Bajo into one of eastern Indonesia's prime destinations.

Raja Ampat

Scientists have identified the seas around these four West Papua islands as the most biodiverse marine ecosystem on earth, home to over 1,500 fish species and 700 coral species in waters of extraordinary clarity. Reached by a short flight to Sorong followed by a ferry crossing, Raja Ampat rewards the journey with manta ray cleaning stations, pygmy seahorses, and jungle-cloaked karst islands rising from turquoise shallows.

Gili Islands

The three vehicle-free Gili islands off Lombok's northwest coast — Trawangan, Meno, and Air — offer white-sand beaches and turquoise shallows at different price points and social registers. Gili Trawangan draws a lively backpacker crowd; Gili Meno is the honeymoon island; Gili Air splits the difference, with reliable turtle-sighting snorkel spots just metres from shore on all three.

Nusa Penida

Bali's largest offshore island became an Instagram phenomenon driven by the iconic view of Kelingking Beach — a T-rex-shaped sea cliff plunging to turquoise water — and reliable manta ray encounters at underwater cleaning stations. Reachable in 45 minutes by fast boat from Sanur, the island's rugged roads and dramatic scenery feel worlds apart from mainland Bali.

Komodo Island

The legendary home of the world's largest living lizard rewards visitors with surreal scenes of Komodo dragons draped on dusty hillsides or gathered near water buffalo, all within a savannah-and-mangrove landscape that feels primeval. The surrounding Coral Triangle waters attract manta rays, dugong, and schooling hammerhead sharks, making Komodo as compelling below the waterline as above it.

Mount Bromo

Rising from the vast Sea of Sand caldera in East Java's Tengger massif, Bromo's smoking crater is one of Asia's most photographed volcanoes, best experienced at dawn from Penanjakan viewpoint as light breaks over the caldera rim. The approach on horseback across the flat volcanic plain, followed by a steep staircase to the crater lip, is one of Indonesia's great sunrise experiences.

Seminyak & Canggu

Bali's most sophisticated beach strip runs from the boutique hotels and design restaurants of Seminyak through the hip surf cafés of Canggu, where digital nomads and professional surfers share the same beach breaks. The sunset scene at Ku De Ta and the vibrant nightlife of Canggu's Batu Bolong district make this Bali's most stylish — and most expensive — coastal address.

Bandung

Perched at 768 metres on a volcanic plateau, the so-called 'Paris of Java' built under Dutch colonial rule is now a college city famous for its factory-outlet fashion stores, art deco architecture, and cool-climate café culture. The surrounding volcanoes — Tangkuban Perahu's walk-in crater and the hot springs of Ciater — are easy half-day excursions from the city centre.

Flores Island

The Trans-Flores Highway rewards drivers with a succession of volcanoes, traditional ikat-weaving villages, and the extraordinary tri-coloured crater lakes of Kelimutu, whose waters shift between turquoise, green, and black due to volcanic mineral chemistry. Portuguese missionaries shaped the island's character in the 16th century, leaving a legacy of Catholicism unusual in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.

Toraja (Rantepao)

The Toraja highlands of South Sulawesi host one of the world's most elaborate death-ritual cultures — multi-day funeral ceremonies involve buffalo sacrifices, cliff-face tomb galleries, and tau-tau wooden effigies standing guard over the deceased. The surrounding countryside is spectacularly beautiful, with traditional tongkonan boat-roofed longhouses set among rice paddies beneath limestone karst formations.

Surabaya

Indonesia's second city and East Java's commercial hub retains a rough-edged port-city character, with the Dutch colonial architecture of Kota Lama, the Arab Quarter of Ampel, and Chinese-Indonesian street food in Chinatown sitting alongside one of the country's busiest container ports. Surabaya is the logical base for climbing Mount Bromo and visiting the Ijen volcano's ethereal blue-flame sulfur crater.

Lake Toba

The caldera lake of Toba — 100 kilometres long on North Sumatra's highland plateau, formed by the largest volcanic eruption in the past 25 million years — contains Samosir Island, where Batak Toba communities maintain traditional longhouse architecture and intricate woodcarving. The cooler highland air, boat trips between villages, and proximity to Bukit Lawang's orangutan forest make Lake Toba one of Sumatra's most rewarding regions.

Sumba Island

The 'forgotten island' has emerged as one of Southeast Asia's most compelling off-beat destinations, combining traditional animist megalithic culture — stone tombs, clan houses, spectacular ikat weaving — with internationally recognised surf breaks and some of the archipelago's most undeveloped beaches. Pasola, a ritual cavalry battle fought in February and March at four traditional sites, is one of Indonesia's most viscerally spectacular festivals.

Amed

This string of fishing villages along Bali's northeast coast offers a quieter alternative to the island's busier south, with black-sand beaches, traditional salt-farming operations using ancient methods, and beginner-friendly diving at the Liberty shipwreck at Tulamben — a World War II US Army cargo vessel resting in just 10 metres of water, its hull blanketed in corals and schooling fish.

Makassar

The thriving capital of South Sulawesi has long been the archipelago's most important eastern trading port, its Makassarese and Bugis seafaring heritage visible in the traditional perahu schooners still moored at Fort Rotterdam's harbour. The city is the gateway for flights to Toraja country and the diving of the Spermonde Archipelago, with its own fish-market restaurants serving sublime grilled seafood along the waterfront.

The world's largest Buddhist temple rises in nine stacked platforms above the Kedu Plain of Central Java, its galleries lined with 2,672 relief panels narrating Buddhist cosmology in stone — a complete visual encyclopaedia of the universe as envisioned by the 9th-century Sailendra dynasty. Sunrise from the upper terraces, where 72 bell-shaped stupas each contain a seated Buddha figure, is one of Asia's great spiritual and aesthetic experiences.

The three main islands of Komodo National Park — Komodo, Rinca, and Padar — host the last wild population of Komodo dragons in a landscape of savannah, thorny scrub, and pink-sand beaches more reminiscent of the Pacific than Southeast Asia. Below the waterline, nutrient-rich upwellings sweep through the Flores Sea to support extraordinary marine biodiversity including manta rays, dugong, and four species of sea turtle.

Built in the 9th century as a Hindu counterpoint to Buddhist Borobudur, Prambanan's central compound comprises 240 temples of which the eight largest are dedicated to the Trimurti — Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva — with the Shiva temple rising 47 metres tall. The Ramayana Ballet performed against the illuminated temple backdrop on full-moon evenings is one of Java's most memorable cultural spectacles.

Occupying the westernmost tip of Java and the offshore Krakatau island group, Ujung Kulon is the last refuge of the critically endangered Javan rhinoceros — fewer than 80 individuals survive in a peninsula largely reshaped by the catastrophic 1883 Krakatau eruption. The park's lowland rainforests, mangrove swamps, and coral reefs form an almost pristine ecosystem accessible only by boat.

The subak — Bali's 1,000-year-old cooperative water management system — links village temples, terraced paddy fields, and highland water shrines into a unified landscape governed by the spiritual concept of Tri Hita Karana (the three causes of wellbeing). The inscription protects five core landscapes, including the spectacular Jatiluwih terraces in Tabanan, as a living expression of the relationship between Balinese Hinduism and rice agriculture.

The alluvial sediments of the Solo River valley at Sangiran, north of Yogyakarta, have yielded the most complete fossil record of Homo erectus anywhere in the world, including the famous 'Java Man' skull discovered in 1936 alongside remains spanning 1.5 million years of hominin evolution. The site museum presents original fossils in the context of the stratigraphic layers that have made Sangiran essential to understanding human migration out of Africa.

Indonesia's largest national park covers 2.5 million hectares of West Papua, encompassing the full ecological spectrum from ocean floor through mangroves and lowland rainforest to the permanent glaciers of Puncak Jaya — the highest peak between the Himalayas and the Andes. The park's extreme isolation has produced extraordinary levels of endemism, including the long-beaked echidna and tree-kangaroo species found nowhere else on earth.

Three national parks — Gunung Leuser, Kerinci Seblat, and Bukit Barisan Selatan — form a contiguous belt of Sumatran rainforest protecting the last place on earth where tigers, orangutans, rhinos, and elephants coexist in the wild. The site is listed as endangered due to ongoing encroachment and agricultural conversion, making visits to the accessible Bukit Lawang section of Gunung Leuser particularly significant for conservation support.

The Ombilin coal mine in West Sumatra was developed by the Dutch colonial government in the 1890s as an integrated industrial complex — mine shafts, a railway, workers' housing, and a storage warehouse — representing one of the best-preserved examples of colonial-era resource extraction in Southeast Asia. Sawahlunto, once known as the 'city of the dead' for its forced-labour prison camps, has reinvented itself as a heritage tourism destination around the mine's striking 19th-century industrial architecture.

Inscribed in 2023, this living cultural landscape connects the Merapi volcano to the south seas along a 12-kilometre ceremonial axis through Yogyakarta, aligned by the 18th-century sultan Hamengku Buwono I to symbolise Javanese-Hindu cosmology. The axis passes through the kraton palace, Malioboro street, the Tugu monument, and the Parangkusumo beach rituals at the Indian Ocean shore — a complete sacred landscape still actively maintained.