Roughly half of the country’s international tourists land in Bali, but Indonesia is so much more than one enticing island.
One day, you can be strolling beneath the glistening skyscrapers of a modern city; the next, climbing the freezing-cold summit of a puffing volcano or beating through tropical rainforests in search of orangutans or tigers. You can start out walking alongside a rice terrace dotted with traditional buildings or end up in a hilltop village scarfing down steaming gado gado (tofu, tempeh and vegetables slathered in a creamy peanut sauce).
Where else can you salute the sun at sunrise, then surf a world-class barrel back to a virgin beach at sunset? Here are the top places to visit in Indonesia, from Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi to the frontier islands of West Papua (shared with Papua New Guinea) and Borneo (shared with Malaysia and Brunei).
1. Jakarta, Java
Best city for art and history
There’s no better place to get to grips with this vast and complex nation of more than 13,000 islands than its capital, Jakarta. With about 11 million residents and sprawling over nearly 700 sq km (270 sq miles), it is chaotic, traffic-clogged and home to the nation’s finest restaurants, wildest nightclubs and best museums.
Take time to browse the collections at the Museum Nasional (for history), Galeri Nasional (for classical art) and Museum Macan (for modern and contemporary art). From the Dutch-style buildings of the Kota Tua neighborhood to the modern skyrises of the Golden Triangle, the city is both a study in contrasts and a crossroads of cultures, classes and cuisines.
2. Tanjung Puting National Park, Borneo
Best place to see orangutans
If you want to see orangutans, the island of Borneo is the last place on earth (other than a few spots in neighboring Sumatra) where these great apes still thrive. Travelers looking for surefire sightings head to Tanjung Puting National Park, a coastal tropical swamp forest that looks today like much of southern Borneo looked a few decades ago.
Planning tip: Most visitors hire liveaboard boats to travel up the Sekonyer River to feeding stations in the rainforest and at Camp Leakey, the iconic rehabilitation center deep in the jungle where these auburn-haired animals live out a serene, semiwild existence.
3. Raja Ampat, West Papua
Best place for snorkeling and diving
Raja Ampat was once an under-the-radar destination visited only by intrepid scuba divers, but the whispers about this enchanting island group have now reached a fever pitch. Off the coast of West Papua, the archipelago is a picture-perfect vision. Its lumpy green isles are blanketed in rainforests, dotted with languid lagoons and surrounded by warm turquoise seas at the vibrant heart of the Coral Triangle – an area of ocean with some of the greatest marine biodiversity on earth.
Raja Ampat’s prismatic birds-of-paradise, which dance through the trees each morning at sunrise, informed the theory of evolution through natural selection, first developed by Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin’s less-appreciated contemporary. The British naturalist’s restored hut is a popular attraction on the island of Gam.
Planning tip: In addition to the dive lodges in Waigeo and Misool, many visitors sleep in homestays on virgin beaches, offering a chance to learn more about West Papua’s distinctive culture.
4. Ubud, Bali
Best city for wellness and culture
Rice paddies tumble down palm-lined hills, gamelan music fills the air, and floral offerings line the streets in Bali’s most alluring (and on-trend) city, Ubud. By day, you can take a motorcycle out to the Monkey Forest Sanctuary for simian encounters, pop into the Yoga Barn for an Ashtanga session, ogle the works at the Agung Rai Museum of Art or shop for world-class beauty products, wood carvings and batik textiles downtown. At evening performances at local temples, audiences are hypnotized by the beauty of courtly Legong ballets or wild Kecak fire dancing. Be careful! Many visitors come to Ubud for a few days and end up staying for a few years.
5. Komodo National Park, Nusa Tenggara
Best place for surprising wildlife encounters
Dragons really do roam the earth at this expansive national park, covering three arid islands – Komodo, Padar and Rinca – that shelter the world’s largest lizards. Komodo dragons are ancient-looking creatures that can grow up to 3m (nearly 10ft) in length and weigh up to 70kg (154lb). Sadly, there are fewer than 1400 of these fork-tongued giants left in the wild. The chance to see them lures thousands of visitors each year, many of whom arrive on a boat tour en route from Lombok to Flores, stopping along the way to snorkel or dive off the coast of Sumbawa.
6. Borobudur and Yogyakarta, Java
Best place for Indonesian history
Peru has Machu Picchu, Cambodia has Angkor Wat, and Indonesia has Borobudur in Java, a nine-tiered temple from the 9th century that clocks in as the largest Buddhist structure in the world. The 2672 bas-relief panels featuring Buddhist legends and scenes of daily life emblazoned across its walls are accompanied by 72 perforated stupas and more than 500 Buddha statues.
This colossal World Heritage Site lies amid rice paddies near Yogyakarta, an important education center and a hub for classical Javanese art forms, including batik, wayang puppetry and silversmithing. Yogya, as the city is known locally, is fiercely independent and still headed by a resident sultan, whose walled palace complex is the city’s top attraction.
7. Tana Toraja, Sulawesi
Best place for cultural traditions
The jungled hills and rugged granite cliffs of Tana Toraja would be enough of a lure for most places, but the big draw of the central highlands of Sulawesi is the Torajan people themselves. The customs that the inhabitants of this fascinating region maintain mark them apart from other Indonesians.
Living in villages of elaborately decorated houses with intricately carved walls and boat-shaped roofs, Torajans observe many rituals around death and the afterlife. The bodies of the deceased remain in the homes (and lives) of their relatives for months or even years after they pass – death is viewed as a gradual and social process, and locals are generally comfortable sharing these traditions with visitors.
8. Kerinci Valley, Sumatra
Best place for hiking
Southeast Asia’s tallest volcano, Gunung Kerinci – a 3805m (12,484ft) monster – lords over a remote highland valley in Sumatra, which has become one of Indonesia’s top spots for adventure travel. You can climb to the summit, swim beneath cascading waterfalls or search the dense jungles for gibbons and langur monkeys.
Much of the land is within Kerinci Seblat National Park. At 13,791 sq km (5325 sq miles), it is twice the size of Bali and protects more forest than all of Costa Rica’s national parks combined. Kerinci Seblat is the last large refuge for Sumatran tigers. The critically endangered large cats survive here in greater numbers than anywhere else on the planet.
9. Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park, Java
Best place for beautiful views
You don’t have to look far in Indonesia to find a volcano, but Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park in East Java contains a whopping five volcanoes right next to each other. These conical peaks are dotted around a lunar landscape that has sprung from the ancient Tengger caldera.
The most striking site is the smoldering Gunung Bromo, which rises 2329m (7641ft) out of a crater that is almost 10km (6 miles) across, surrounded by the nation’s only erg (dune sea). Most visitors time their hike to arrive at the summit at dawn to view the crater and volcanoes at their ethereal best.
10. Gili Islands, Lombok
Best place for beach parties
These tiny dollops of coral and sand off the coast of Lombok carry an outsize reputation, thanks to crystalline turquoise waters, white sand beaches, ambitious vegan and health-food restaurants, renowned freediving schools and epic beach parties. The Gilis started out as a boho backpacker destination, but the islands now cater to all types of travelers, with everything from backstreet hostels to luxurious beachfront cabanas (beach huts).
Planning tip: Gili Trawangan, aka Gili T, is the largest and most developed of the islands, with a main drag that heaves with shops, massage parlors and cafes. Gili Meno is the smallest and most traditional island, while Gili Air offers the best of both worlds and is a lively hub for yoga tourism.
