Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world — after China, India and the USA — and by far the largest in Southeast Asia. Indonesia also has the largest Muslim population in the world.
Indonesia markets itself as Wonderful Indonesia, and the slogan is quite true, although not necessarily always in good ways. Indonesia's tropical forests are the second-largest in the world after Brazil, and are being logged and cut down at the same alarming speed. While the rich shop and party in Jakarta and Bali, after decades of economic mismanagement, 53% of the population earns less than US$2/day. Infrastructure in much of the country remains rudimentary, and travellers off the beaten track (pretty much anywhere outside Bali) will need some patience and flexibility.
The Indonesian people, like any people, can be either friendly or rude to foreigners. Most of the time, though, they are incredibly friendly to foreigners.
Histori
The early, modern history of Indonesia begins in the period from 2500 BCE to 1500 BCE with a wave of light brown-skinned Austronesian immigrants, thought to have originated in Taiwan. This Neolithic group of people, skilled in open-ocean maritime travel and agriculture are believed to have quickly supplanted the existing, less-developed population.
From this point onward, dozens of kingdoms and civilizations flourished and faded in different parts of the archipelago. Some notable kingdoms include Srivijaya (7th-14th century) on Sumatra and Majapahit (1293-c.1500), based in eastern Java but the first to unite the main islands of Sumatra, Java, Bali and Borneo (now Kalimantan) as well as parts of the Malay Peninsula.
The first Europeans to arrive (after Marco Polo who passed through in the late 1200s) .
There is no one unified Indonesian culture as such, but the Hindu culture of the former Majapahit empire does provide a framework for the cultural traditions of the central islands of Sumatra, Java and Bali. Perhaps the most distinctively "Indonesian" arts are wayang kulit shadow puppetry, where intricately detailed cutouts act out scenes from the Mahabharata and Ramayana and other popular folk stories, and its accompaniment the gamelan orchestra, whose incredibly complex metallic rhythms are the obligatory backdrop to both religious ceremonies and traditional entertainment. Indonesia is culturally intertwined with the Malay, with notable items such as batik cloth and kris daggers, and Arabic culture has also been adopted to some degree thanks to Islam.
Destinations
The following is a limited selection of some of Indonesia's top sights.
# Baliem Valley — superb trekking into the lands of the Lani, Dani and Yali tribes in remote Papua.
# Borobudur — one of the largest Buddhist temples in the world located in Central Java province; often combined with a visit to the equally impressive Hindu ruins at earby Prambanan.
# Bromo-Tengger-Semeru National Park — some of the scariest volcanic scenery on the planet and one of the best locations in the world to see sunrise.
# Bunaken — one of the best scuba diving destinations in Indonesia, if not the world.
# Kerinci Seblat National Park — tigers, elephants, monstrous rafflesia flowers and so much more in this huge expanse of forest in Sumatra.
# Komodo National Park — home of the Komodo dragon and a hugely important marine ecosystem.
# Lake Toba — the largest volcanic lake in the world.
# Lombok — popular island to east of Bali with the tiny laid-back Gili Islands, mighty Mount Rinjani and much more.
# Tana Toraja — highland area of Southern Sulawesi famed for extraordinary funeral rites.
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