RIYADH, 30 July 2005 — Indonesia has embarked on an ambitious plan to promote new tourist destinations following a government decision to grant visa-on-arrival to citizens of 14 countries, including Saudi Arabia. Indonesia has a lot to offer to international tourists in addition to its beaches and the seas, among the most exciting in the world. It is rich in culture, history and cuisine. From the golden grass of Puncak to the black volcanic sands of Yogyakarta, one can laze in the sun or relax on any of the 17,508 islands of that country.
“It is always an amazing experience to visit Indonesia,” said Arif Suyoko, first secretary at the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh. “A tourist can feel and find five-star hotels, ultramodern shopping centers, Asian and Western restaurants and halal cuisine along with the evidence of hospitable Indonesian and Javanese culture,” said Suyoko, who pointed out three emerging tourism destinations in his country.
Puncak, near the capital city of Jakarta, he said, is one of the three popular tourist locations, known for its outstanding beauty of dense rainforest and manicured tea plantations.
Trekking, riding, hot springs, a safari park and a national flower park are the other features of Puncak.
“The natural conditions here are very different from the capital city of Jakarta, but Puncak offers a calm and cool experience for tourists, who wish to come out of Jakarta,” said Suyoko. It has many cultural and historical attractions besides a bustling night life. The place is also surrounded by the famous 50-year old tea bushes.
The fields in Puncak or along the Puncak pass look like a manicured formal garden on rolling hills since they are always trimmed neatly in long waving rows.
“Besides Puncak, the second emerging tourist center in Indonesia is Yogyakarta, a province which has a special regional status,” said the Indonesian official.
“A major cultural and educational center, Yogyakarta is a vibrant city, bursting with traditional dance, music and theatre shows,” said Suyoko, adding that there are many ruins of historical monuments around the city.
In addition to its historical richness, Yogyakarta also boasts of a wealth of artistic traditions, very much alive today. These include batik-making, silver work, wood-carving, and other handicrafts. Strategically located in the center of Java, Yogyakarta can be reached easily from every point of the Indonesian archipelago. The area’s geography includes mountains, beaches and lowland planes.
Suyoko said Yogyakarta had a number of tourist attractions such as the water palace, the garden of the sultan near the Yogyakarta palace and the tombs of the royal families. A stately cemetery with formal courtyards built on a hilltop reachable via 345 terraced steps is another attraction besides the Roman Catholic pilgrimage site, museum of arts, historical residence of patriotic Prince Diponegoro, who fought the Dutch.
Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument, considered one of the wonders of the world is also located here. The Yogya Keraton, home of the current Sultan, is open to the public and is the city’s premier tourist attraction. Attached to the Keraton complex is Tamam Sari, a two-century-old water palace and pleasure garden built by Yogyakarta’s first Sultan for his wives. Close to the extraordinary monuments, this tourist city offers a feast of culture and history as well as nature in all its majesty from rumbling volcanoes to pounding surf.
Bogor is the third site now becoming popular among foreign tourists.
“On way to Puncak, just 60 km south of Jakarta, the town of Bogor has grown around an 18th century resort, now turned-to-be a town called Buitenzorg (without worries),” says a promotional material from the Indonesian Tourism Ministry.
Bogor was chosen as the first palace of the Dutch governor in 1745. Restored in 1832, the palace is located elegantly amid nature, where hundreds of deer roam freely under majestic old trees and their shadow.
The palaces are also surrounded by gardens and towering bamboo stands. It is full of tropical rainforest, ponds of water, lilies and fountains.
Perhaps the garden’s best-known occupants are the giant rafflesia and bungu bangkai, two of the world’s biggest (and smelliest) flowers.
A museum here has some 30,000 specimens, including a complete skeleton of a blue whale, a stuffed Javan rhino and a Komodo dragon.
This is the reason that three destinations are now attracting tourists from the Gulf countries, according to Suyoko. He said that besides Bali, these destinations represent a new Indonesia, a country of incredible beauty.
Indonesia is considered the most complex single nation on Earth, with each of its 6,000-plus inhabited islands — especially the three new tourist sites — representing their own customs, dress, architecture, dialects and ethnology. Its puppets, unearthly gamelan music, exquisite textiles, matchless and varied cuisines, ancient ruins, nature reserves and friendly people make Indonesia one of Asia’s last travel discoveries.
Not many people outside Jakarta know that dotted in and around Indonesia’s capital city are some of Asia’s finest golf courses. This is in addition to a very high level of marine life variety seen in that country. Komodo in Indonesia is one of the richest areas for coral biodiversity in Indonesia and one of the richest fish faunas in the world with an estimated 1,000 species.
In East Java, there are many other fascinating attractions such as live volcano and black sands.
One of the must-see places is the enormous Taman Mini, or Beautiful Indonesia, in Miniature Park. Taman Mini is probably Jakarta’s top tourist destination covering more than 165 hectares. “In that park, you can see an amazing variety of animals like tiger, buffalo and birds, roaming around your vehicle,” said Suyoko.
“Your children will shout with cheers by interacting with the flora and fauna of the park,” he said.
Suyoko said one of the wonders of Indonesia is the ability of its diverse peoples to co-exist. It was in Indonesia, home to more than 100 ethnic groups, where the theme “Unity in Diversity” first became popular during the time of Sukarno.
Most Indonesians are of mixed Malay origins and practice Islam. Several of Indonesia’s islands hosted powerful trading kingdoms between the 5th and 16th centuries AD.
Today, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous country after China, India, and the United States. More than half the people live on Java, largely because Java’s fertile volcanic soils enables it to support a large agricultural population. It is in Java where Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and largest city, is located.
A chain of volcanic mountains rises to heights of more than 3,600 m (11,800 ft) in Indonesia and extends from Sumatra in the west to Timor in the east. The highest points are Kerinci (3,805 m) on Sumatra and Semeru (3,676 m) on Java. The most extensive lowland areas are in Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, and Papua.
The rest of Indonesia is more sparsely settled but contains most of the country’s mineral wealth, including oil in Kalimantan and Sumatra, timber in Kalimantan, and copper in Papua.
Indonesia’s greatest distance from north to south is about 1,900 km and from east to west about 5,100 km. The country’s total area is 1,904,570 sq km.
Because of its tropical climate and geography, much of Indonesia’s population lives near water, either on the coast or by rivers and lakes.
