Ujung Kulon National Park is located on a peninsula at the extreme west part of Java, it was Indonesia's first national park and by many still considered as the finest. Gunung Honje (620 m) is the highest point, at the center of the park there is a plateau called Telanca with an altitude of about 140 m. The rest of the park is mostly lower land and a shifting coastal landscape, in total it covers 760 square kilometers.

If you travel from Jakarta to Bandung you can pass through the scenic Puncak pass, about 90 minutes by car from the capital. The Puncak area is a very popular escape from the hot and hectic city, and along the road there is an abundance of bungalows, cottages, hotels, villas, restaurants and recreation places, starting about 10 km from Bogor at Ciawi and continuing up through the villages of Cibogo, Cipayung and Cisarua to the Puncak pass and down on the other side to Cipanas.

Yogyakarta and the neighboring city Surakarta, also known as Solo, is located among some of Java's and Indonesia's largest tourist attractions, the Borobodur and Prambanan temples. Prambanan, some 20 km from Yogya, was under the Sailendra dynasty built as a Hindu answer to the Buddhist Borobodur and completed in 856 AD. Even if Sailendra was a Buddhist kingdom a marriage between the Hindu Rakai Pikatan from the Sanjaya dynasty in the north of Java and the Sailendra princess Pramodhavardhani at the end of the 9th century helped merge these two major religions.

About one hour by car from Surabaya you will find the city of Mojokerto and just east of this the Trowulan village. Trowulan was in the 14th century the capital of the great Majapahit empire, once the mightiest kingdom on Java and the first to control the entire Indonesian archipelago. Majapahit's rule lasted from 1294 to the beginning of the 16th century. The Majapahit palace was supposedly a large structure surrounded by high walls with guard towers.

Malang is located between two massive groups of mountains with Semuru, the highest mountain on Java, and the national park Bromo-Tengger to the east. The climate up here is relatively cool. The Sungai Brantas river floats through the city, which were founded by the Dutch at the end of the 18th century as a center of tobacco trade. The Dutch had an important military base here until 1949, and Malang was the capital of the district of the same name.

Madura is a large island on East Java, 5.290 square kilometers, about 160 km long and 35 km wide. It is separated from Surabaya by the narrow Madura strait, and is administered as a part of the East Java district. Main income is fishing, salt, cattle and agriculture. The local capital is Pamekasan. Number of inhabitants is about 3-4 million, and the population is considered to be an unique ethnic group like Javanese and Sundanese. Madurese is also a separate language.

The capital of Indonesia is located on Java's northwest coast. From a small village it has during the last hundred years grown to be one of the largest cities in South East Asia. The official number of inhabitants is about 8 million, but the correct number is probably 10-12 million, people from all over Indonesia come to this melting pot to try to make a living, and Jakarta is today an important center for trade and business.

Bromo-Tengger national park is located on East Java, about three hours by car from Surabaya. Tengger is a huge, old caldera with the Bromo volcano inside. The smoking cone of Bromo raises from the plain of this 10 km wide caldera, but is not the highest mountain inside. Side by side with Bromo are also other mountains like Gunung Batok (2.440m) and Gunung Kursi (2.581m). Bromo (2.392m) and the nearby Semeru volcano, the highest mountain on Java (3.676m), have during the two previous centuries had at least 100 eruptions.

The largest Buddhist monument in the world is located 42 kilometers northwest of Yogyakarta. It was built sometimes between the years 750-850 AD, during the Sailendra dynasty's rule on Java. The name probably origins from the Sanskrit words "Vihara Buddha Ur", meaning something like "Buddhist monastery on the hill". About one hundred years after it's completion a violent eruption of the nearby Merapi volcano covered the entire temple in volcanic ash.

Bogor was by the Dutch during the colonial era called Buitenzorg (means "without a care"). Governor General van Imhoff built his country estate by the same name here as early as 1745, and it became a favorite place of retreat for later governors as well. Sir Stamford Raffles made Bogor his country home during the short British rule of Indonesia from 1811 to 1816. A railway was completed in 1873 between Batavia and Buitenzorg.