Live and Work in Indonesia
To fully enjoy living in a country like Indonesia you need the ability to quickly adapt. Many people will on their first visit to Asia experience a cultural shock, absolutely everything is different. A cultural shock is not just a way of speech, it can be quite real for most of us moving to a [...]
Moving abroad – The spouse situation
This article is basically written for expatriates moving to Indonesia for a shorter or longer period, the article’s main focus is on the wife who decides to follow her husband abroad, as this is still the most common case when a family moves to a developing nation. Every move abroad starts with a decision (still) [...]
Indonesian Embassies and Consulates abroad
Below is a list of Indonesian Embassies and Consulates abroad. The list is not 100% complete. Before you go to Indonesia you should check your passport expiry date. Indonesia require passports to be valid for six months following the date of arrival. New regulations have implemented one month tourist Visa’s for most countries, which for [...]
Foreign Embassies to Indonesia
Most embassies in Indonesia are located in Jakarta, while several nations have consular representatives in Bali as well as in some of the major cities in Indonesia. Some countries deal with Indonesia from an embassy in a third country. This is a list of foreign embassies and consulates to Indonesia. The list below may not be 100% [...]
Tradition and Multiethnicity
This article give some background to the complex traditions and multiethnicity of the young Indonesian nation. In the early 1990s, Indonesia’s society was divided into numerous ethnic groups and minorities (see list of principal ethnic groups). The largest group were the Javanese at 45 percent of the total population. Sundanese made up 14 percent, followed [...]
Indonesia facts
Indonesia consists of more than 17.000 islands, of these about 6.000 which are permanently inhabited. About 80 percent of the archipelago is water. The country stretches across some 5.150 km from Sumatra in the west to Papua in the east, almost one eighth of the Earth’s circumference. The distance from north to south is about [...]
Sumatra facts
Sumatra is the fifth largest island in the world and the third largest in Indonesia. Population is about 40 million. The island is divided in the Aceh, Riau, Jambi, Bengkulu and Lampung provinces, and North, South and West Sumatra. It borders the Indian Ocean to the west and Malaysia to the east, separated from the [...]
Bali Facts
Total area of Bali is 5.623 square kilometers, the island is 145 km long and 80 km wide. The capital is Denpasar on the southern part, the second largest city is Singaraja on the north side of the island. Parts of Bali consist of several large volcanoes, according to old beliefs home of the Gods. [...]
Money talks, costs and bargaining
The local currency in Indonesia is called rupiah. Notes commonly used is 500, 1.000, 5.000, 10.000, 20.000, 50.000 and 100.000 Rupiah. Coin values are 50, 100, 500 and 1.000 rupiah. It is not allowed to bring more than 50.000Rp out of the country. One of the small everyday problems you will encounter is to have [...]
Principal Ethnic Groups of Indonesia
For centuries the many thousands of islands and mountainous terrain have separated groups of people in the Indonesian archipelago from each other. The result of this is huge variations in culture and languages across the nation. The exact number is not clear, but approximately 300 ethnic groups live here, which speak 365 languages and a [...]
