Travel in Indonesia: an archipelago crossed by plane and ferry

How visitors reach an archipelago

Moving between the main islands means crossing water, by air or by sea. Britannica lists the airports that carry most international flights as Jakarta and Yogyakarta on Java, Medan on Sumatra, Denpasar on Bali and Balikpapan on Kalimantan, with limited services from other cities in Sumatra and Sulawesi to Singapore and Malaysia. The scheduled carriers include Garuda Indonesia, the national airline, and the privately owned Lion Air. Most of the main airports and seaports issue the visa on arrival, according to the British advice.

Foreign arrivals have climbed back after the pandemic. Wikipedia's tourism article records 16.10 million foreign tourist arrivals in 2019, and the article on the country gives 11.6 million international arrivals in 2023, bringing foreign-exchange earnings of about US$14 billion. Between January and November 2024 BPS-Statistics Indonesia counted 12.66 million, about 20.7% more than in the same months of 2023. Singapore, Malaysia, China, Australia and Japan were the main sources of visitors in Wikipedia's account.

The formalities depend on the passport. The British government's advice, updated on 18 September 2026, says that British citizens need a visa to visit; a 30-day single-entry visa on arrival covers tourism and visits to family, and longer visas are applied for online before travel. Passports must be valid for at least six months after arrival and have two blank pages. Foreign visitors staying outside hotels must register where they stay, and Bali's provincial government charges foreign tourists a levy on arrival.

Why most foreign visitors start in Bali

Bali is the province where international tourism concentrates, and it shows on the island's own accounts: Wikipedia's article on Bali puts tourism-related business at 80% of its economy. Western tourism there dates from Dutch rule, and in the 1960s the island became a stop on the overland route between Australia and Europe, with Kuta known as an undeveloped surf spot. The Inna Grand Bali Beach Hotel, opened in 1966, belonged to the hotel building of Sukarno's years.

What draws visitors is what the culture article describes: the only Hindu-majority province, where 86.40% of the population followed Balinese Hinduism in 2022 according to Wikipedia, with its temple festivals and dance, and its rice terraces watered by the subak. The upland town of Ubud is treated as Bali's cultural centre, and the island's own arts run from dance and music to painting, sculpture, leather and metalwork. The heaviest rain falls between December and March, within a monsoon that usually runs from October to April, and fewer tourists come then.

Two events in the island's recent history shaped how it is visited. Bombings by militant Islamists in Kuta in 2002, which killed 202 people, most of them foreigners, and again in 2005, cut tourism for several years. And the island's water is under strain: Wikipedia's article on Bali reports that 200 of its 400 rivers have dried up through over-use by the tourist industry.

Once a year the island stops. On Nyepi, the Balinese New Year, custom requires everyone in Bali to stay indoors with the lights off and make no noise, and Ngurah Rai International Airport closes for the whole day. The British advice gives the date in 2026 as 19 March.

What the temples of Central Java hold

Yogyakarta became the second centre of foreign tourism after the restoration of Borobudur was completed in 1982, according to Wikipedia's tourism article. The city is still the seat of a reigning sultan, and its royal axis was inscribed by UNESCO in 2023 as the Cosmological Axis of Yogyakarta and its Historic Landmarks.

Borobudur, inscribed in 1991, was built in the 8th and 9th centuries under the Shailendra dynasty in the Kedu valley. UNESCO describes it as a stupa in three tiers around a natural hill: a base and five square terraces, then three circular platforms crowned by a single great stupa, standing for the three spheres of Buddhist cosmology. Reliefs cover 2,520 square metres of its walls and balustrades, and 72 openwork stupas on the circular platforms each hold a statue of the Buddha. The property includes two smaller temples, Mendut and Pawon, on a straight axis to the east.

Prambanan, inscribed the same year on the border between Yogyakarta and Central Java, is in UNESCO's description a group of more than 500 temples. Its Hindu centre, also called Loro Jonggrang, dates from the 9th century and is carved with reliefs of the Indonesian version of the Ramayana; the Buddhist temple of Sewu stands in the same archaeological park. Britannica notes that the sendratari, a modern form of dance-drama, is associated with Prambanan. The Sangiran Early Man Site, where Homo erectus fossils were found in the 1930s, was inscribed in 1996.

Where the volcanoes and the parks are

Most of the natural sites visitors travel for are products of the geography, volcanoes above all. Mount Bromo in East Java, given by Wikipedia's tourism article as 2,329 metres high, is visited for the plain of volcanic sand around its crater. Lake Toba in North Sumatra lies in a landscape left by a supervolcano eruption. Bunaken off northern Sulawesi is known for diving. Labuan Bajo, on the western tip of Flores, grew from a small fishing settlement into the gateway for Komodo National Park and its lizards.

The British advice notes that Indonesia has many active volcanoes, that eruptions can come without warning and that local authorities enforce exclusion zones around a number of them; on 18 September 2026 it dropped its blanket advice against travel to volcanoes in favour of following those local rules. Earthquakes happen regularly, and a tsunami can arrive within minutes of a large one near the shore.

In 2016 the government named ten priority areas for tourism development:

Where travel goes beyond Java and Bali

The rest of the archipelago is reached by smaller airports and by the PELNI liners, and each island group has its own reason to go. At the eastern tip of Java, Baluran National Park is mostly open savanna, unlike the forest of the rest of the island, with banteng, the wild cattle of Java, grazing on it. The Dutch made it a wildlife refuge in 1937 and Indonesia a national park in 1980, and the official tourism site notes that it gets on average only three months of rain a year, with the wet season in East Java peaking in December and January.

Lake Toba in North Sumatra is a crater lake 900 metres above sea level with an island in its centre, and the official site describes it as covering more than 1,145 square kilometres. It has its own airport, Sisingamangaraja XII at Silangit, besides the route by land from Medan. Weh Island, off the northern tip of Sumatra at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca, is a diving island reached by ferry from Banda Aceh in a couple of hours.

In the north Moluccas, Ternate and Tidore are two small volcanic islands facing each other west of Halmahera, each formed by a single volcano, Gamalama on Ternate and Kiemtabu on Tidore. They were two of the four historical sultanates of Maluku, the spice islands the Portuguese came for in the 16th century, as the history article records, and they are reached today by air through Manado or by the inter-island liners that call at Ternate. On Sulawesi, Toraja is a destination for cultural tourism alongside the Minangkabau country of western Sumatra.

When the calendar matters more than the weather

The archipelago's seasons are wet and dry, with the dry season for most of the country from May to October, but for planning a trip the religious calendar counts for more. Ramadan, the fasting month, ran from 19 February to 20 March 2026 according to the British advice, which asks visitors not to eat, drink or smoke in public in the daytime during it and to dress more conservatively.

The end of Ramadan, Idul Fitri, known locally as lebaran, brings the largest movement of people in the country: urban Muslims return to their home towns, intercity traffic peaks and fares rise. The government adds days of collective leave, cuti bersama, around it and around other holidays, so that the public holidays join into long weekends; the holidays page lists them. Wikipedia's tourism article notes that hotels in popular destinations fill on those weekends, and that domestic tourists are by far the largest market.

What the law expects of visitors

The law is strict on some matters and local on others. Indonesia has a policy of zero tolerance for illegal drugs, and the British advice warns that those caught may face long prison sentences or the death penalty; cannabis in any form, including CBD products, is illegal. The death penalty remains in law, though Wikipedia's article on the country records no execution since 2016. Aceh is the one province that enforces Islamic law, and it applies to non-Muslims as well as Muslims: the consumption, production and sale of alcohol are illegal there, and the punishment after a sharia court process is public caning. Elsewhere alcohol is sold, and the British advice warns of deaths from counterfeit spirits containing methanol, bought in licensed bars, shops and hotels in tourist areas.

Some areas carry specific government advice. The British advice for the Papua region describes armed separatist groups fighting for independence, violence increasing since 2018 and a heavy security presence, especially in Highland Papua. It also mentions past unrest between religious groups on Ambon, and describes Aceh as a province that has emerged from a long period of internal conflict.

How people move between the islands

Within the islands the choice is between road and, on Java, rail. The railway runs mainly on Java and Madura, with less service on Sumatra, and Britannica describes rail between Java's main towns as a popular alternative to buses and planes; the high-speed line between Jakarta and Bandung began commercial operation in 2023. Intercity buses cross between islands by ferry, some running from Medan in northern Sumatra all the way to Surabaya. In the towns minivans, motorcycle taxis and the becak, the pedal trishaw, carry short trips, though the becak is prohibited in Jakarta.

Between the islands the sea is the old road. Coastal and inter-island shipping links most of the large towns, which lie near the coast, and the seas are sheltered from typhoons. The British advice warns that boats and ferries are often crowded and safety standards vary, and that sea conditions can change quickly, so it advises checking for life jackets before boarding. The main cargo ports are Tanjung Priok for Jakarta, Tanjungperak for Surabaya and Belawan for Medan.

Jakarta's old Dutch port town lies to the north; the city grew south from it from the early 19th century, to Weltevreden, now Central Jakarta, and later to Menteng. The National Monument and the Hotel Indonesia were built for the Asian Games of 1962.