Indonesia

August 13, 1995

Indonesia is home to an endless list of rare and exotic animals ... Komodo National Park includes the islands of Komodo, Rinca and Padar....thrilling stuff! In Sumatra, you’ll spy rare birds and elephants and the endangered Sumantran rhino. Orangutans roam free and proboscis monkeys play in the trees in the Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan. Rare birds of paradise admired for their colourful plumage and entertaining mating dances can be spied deep in the forests of Papua. Thousands of years ago, the region was part of the Australian continent, and marsupials such as wallabies and kangaroos can still be found! Indonesian food is sublime...the volcanic lunar landscapes of Bromo are entrancing - there is so much to see and do!

🙂 Lovely people. AMAZING food (Satay and nasi goreng!); amazing landscapes. Komodo Dragons!

🙁 Locals who start vomiting the minute they board a bus! Dumping garbage bags overboard from the ferry between islands.

Currency: Indonesian Rupiah

THREE things we did not know about Indonesia:

Indonesia is the largest country in the world comprised solely of islands. With around 18,000 islands (nobody knows the exact number) covering approximately 1,919,440 square kms, it takes over 12 hours to fly from one end of the country to the other.
Headhunting; the practice of taking and preserving a person’s head after killing the person… Apparently it hasn’t died out completely yet! The Indonesian side of Timor is said to be home to some of the last remaining headhunting villages. The Korowai, a Papuan tribe in the southeast of Irian Jaya, live in treehouses, some nearly 40 meters high, presumably as protection against a tribe of neighbouring headhunters, the Citak.
The Borobudur temple on the island of Java is the largest Buddhist monument in the world, decorated with 2,672 relief panels and 504 Buddha statues. It resembles a nine-tiered “mountain,” rising to 113 feet (34.5 m) tall. It is said to have taken 75 years to complete.