60 Fun Facts About Indonesia

Roughly how many islands does Indonesia consist of?

About 17,000 is the usual figure, but official counts have ranged from roughly 13,500 to 18,300, partly because some surveys counted sandbars and reefs that vanish at high tide.

As of 2025, India, China and which country have more people than Indonesia?

The United States is third. More than half of Indonesia's roughly 280 million people live on a single island, and that crowding is one reason the government is building a new capital on another.

Which spice comes from a tree native to Indonesia's Banda Islands?

Nutmeg once grew almost nowhere else, which made the Bandas so valuable that in the 1667 peace treaty the Dutch kept the tiny Banda island of Run and let England keep Manhattan.

In 2022 Indonesia went from 34 provinces to 38 by carving four new ones out of which region?

Papua, Indonesia's half of New Guinea, tripled its number of provinces that year; the last one created, Southwest Papua, actually sits at the island's northwestern tip.

Indonesia's highest peak, Puncak Jaya, is better known to climbers by which name honouring a Dutch explorer?

Carstensz Pyramid is named for Jan Carstenszoon, who in 1623 reported ice on the peak, barely four degrees from the equator; those glaciers have shrunk so fast that scientists expect them to vanish in the 2020s.

Lake Toba, Indonesia's largest lake and the world's largest volcanic lake, lies on which island?

Sumatra's Lake Toba fills a crater left about 74,000 years ago by the largest eruption of the last two million years; Samosir, the big island in the lake, is old lake bed since pushed up hundreds of metres.

Which island does Indonesia share with Malaysia and Brunei?

Borneo takes its name from Brunei, the sultanate that today holds only a sliver of the north coast, while Indonesia's part, Kalimantan, covers almost three-quarters of the island.

Which volcano, often called Indonesia's most active, killed over 300 people in 2010?

Merapi's 2010 victims included Mbah Maridjan, the 83-year-old spiritual guardian of the volcano, who stayed in his village on its slopes after the evacuation order.

The volcano Krakatoa, which erupted catastrophically in 1883, sits in which body of water?

The Sunda Strait made the eruption deadly: most of the roughly 36,000 victims were killed not by the blast but by tsunamis, the worst over 30 m high, that swept the strait's coastal towns.

The explosions of Krakatoa in August 1883 were heard about 3,100 km away in which Australian city?

Perth and other Western Australian towns reported booms like the firing of heavy guns, and on Rodrigues island, some 4,800 km from the volcano, the police chief likened them to distant gunfire.

What does Anak Krakatau, the name of the island that rose from Krakatoa's drowned crater in the late 1920s, mean?

Child of Krakatoa is apt: the island grew up inside the crater its parent left in 1883, and in 2018 a collapse that cost it over two-thirds of its height sent a deadly tsunami onto nearby coasts.

Mount Tambora, whose 1815 eruption was the largest in recorded history, is on which island?

Sumbawa lost at least 10,000 people to the blast and tens of thousands more to the famine that followed, and Tambora itself, once about 4,300 m high, was left a third shorter.

Because of Tambora's 1815 eruption, 1816 became known in Europe and North America as what?

The Year Without a Summer brought snow and killing frosts to New England and western Europe through June, July and August, and its endless rain kept Mary Shelley indoors by Lake Geneva, where she began Frankenstein.

A 1926 expedition that brought live Komodo dragons to New York helped inspire which monster film?

King Kong's co-creator Merian Cooper took the idea from his friend Douglas Burden, who led the trip and coined the name 'Komodo dragon'; Cooper first pictured a giant gorilla fighting the lizards.

Kopi luwak, one of the world's priciest coffees, is made from beans that have passed through which animal?

The palm civet eats ripe coffee cherries and excretes the beans; demand grew so large that a 2013 BBC investigation found civets held in battery cages on farms whose coffee was sold as wild.

The Wallace Line runs through the deep strait separating Bali from which neighbouring island?

Lombok is only about 35 km from Bali, but the strait between them is so deep that it stayed open water even when ice-age seas fell, stopping the Asian animals that had walked as far as Bali.

As of 2024, the oldest known figurative cave painting, a pig with human-like figures, was found on which Indonesian island?

Sulawesi's Karampuang cave scene is at least 51,200 years old, and because its figures seem to act together around the pig, researchers call it the oldest known evidence of storytelling.

The name 'orangutan' comes from the words 'orang hutan', which mean what?

Person of the forest: 'orang' means person and 'hutan' forest. The phrase may first have described forest-dwelling people, with European visitors applying it to the ape by mistake.

A third orangutan species, described in 2017 near Lake Toba, is named after which region?

Tapanuli orangutans, fewer than 800 in all, were told apart after scientists studied the skeleton of a male fatally wounded by villagers in 2013 and found its skull unlike other orangutans'.

Rafflesia arnoldii, the Indonesian plant with the largest single bloom on Earth, goes by what nickname?

Corpse flower: the bloom reeks of rotting meat to lure the carrion flies that pollinate it, and the plant has no leaves, stems or roots, living as a parasite inside a jungle vine.

Indonesia's Ujung Kulon National Park shelters the world's last wild population of which animal?

The Javan rhinoceros once ranged across Southeast Asia, but since Vietnam's last one was killed in 2010, apparently by poachers, the fewer than 100 animals in this single park are all that remain; no zoo holds any.

The tiny extinct human nicknamed the 'Hobbit', unearthed in Liang Bua cave, lived on which Indonesian island?

Flores gave the species its name, Homo floresiensis; adults stood only about 1.1 m tall, which is thought to be because animals cut off on an island can evolve smaller bodies over time.

Which maritime empire, based near modern Palembang, dominated western Maritime Southeast Asia from the 600s?

Srivijaya grew rich by controlling the Strait of Malacca, the sea lane between China and India, and Chinese monks sailing to India broke their journey there for months to study.

Indonesia's red and white flag is said to derive from the banner of which 13th-century Javanese empire?

Majapahit, founded in the 1290s, is where the red-and-white pairing is usually traced; in 1945 youths in Surabaya made the flag on the spot by tearing the blue stripe off a Dutch tricolour flying over a hotel.

Which prime minister's conquests took Hayam Wuruk's Javanese empire to its peak?

Gajah Mada swore the Palapa oath, vowing to give up 'palapa', read by some as spices and by others as the perks of office, until he had conquered the whole archipelago; modern Indonesia named its first satellite Palapa.

Indonesia's national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, is usually translated as what?

Unity in Diversity comes from a 14th-century Javanese poem, where the line argued that two rival faiths were at heart one; modern Indonesia stretched it to cover hundreds of ethnic groups.

Which Indonesian city hosted the 1955 conference where 29 Asian and African countries met without the Western powers?

Bandung drew delegates speaking for more than half the world's people; its sponsors called the meeting because they were tired of Western powers deciding Asia's affairs without consulting them.

Under colonial rule before 1942, present-day Jakarta was known by what name?

Batavia was named for the Batavi, an ancient tribe the Dutch claimed as ancestors, and was built on the ruins of Jayakarta, a port they destroyed in 1619; today's name is a short form of that older one.

Which US president spent part of his childhood living in Jakarta?

Barack Obama lived in Jakarta from age six to ten with his mother and Indonesian stepfather; returning as president in 2010, he began a speech there in Indonesian by saying 'Indonesia is a part of me'.

Indonesia declared independence in 1945, just two days after which country announced its surrender?

Japan had occupied the islands since 1942, and when it gave up, impatient young activists kidnapped the two leading nationalists to make them declare independence at once.

Who read the 1945 proclamation of independence and became Indonesia's first president?

Sukarno led Indonesia for two decades until the army pushed him aside in 1966; the man who had proclaimed independence spent his last years under house arrest and died in 1970.

Which president ruled Indonesia from 1967 to 1998 under the military-backed 'New Order'?

Suharto, who like many Javanese used a single name, held power for three decades until the 1998 financial crash brought rioting to Jakarta; abandoned by the military, he resigned that May.

Which city became Indonesia's capital in 1946, when the Dutch retook Jakarta during the war of independence?

Yogyakarta's sultan backed the new republic and gave it a home; in return his realm became a special region where, to this day, the reigning sultan is also the governor.

What is the name of the capital city Indonesia began building in East Kalimantan in 2022?

Nusantara, an old Javanese word for 'archipelago', is meant to replace Jakarta, which is sinking so fast that researchers have warned much of its northern half could be under water by 2050.

Bali is Indonesia's only province where the majority of people follow which religion?

Hinduism held on in Bali because, when Muslim kingdoms took over neighbouring Java in the 16th century, many Hindu nobles, priests and scholars took refuge on the island.

Bali's international airport shuts for a full day each year for which festival, known as the 'Day of Silence'?

Nyepi is the Balinese new year: for 24 hours no one may travel, work or light a fire, tourists must stay inside their hotels, and even the ferries to neighbouring islands stop.

Indonesia's red-over-white flag is almost identical to the flag of which European country?

Monaco's flag is a coincidence, not a copy: its red and white are the Grimaldi family's heraldic colours, used since at least 1339, and its squarer shape is the surest way to tell the two flags apart.

Indonesia's national emblem shows which mythical bird bearing a shield on its chest?

Garuda, the eagle-like mount of the god Vishnu, carries the independence date in its plumage: by law it has 17 feathers on each wing, 8 on the tail and 45 on the neck, for 17 August 1945.

Bahasa Indonesia, the official language, is a standardised form of which language?

Malay was already the islands' trade lingua franca, understood from port to port, so nationalists made it the national language in 1928 even though Javanese had far more native speakers.

The name of Indonesia's currency, the rupiah, comes from a Sanskrit word meaning what?

Wrought silver, or a stamped silver coin, is the sense of the Sanskrit root it shares with India's rupee; today's rupiah is worth so little that one US dollar buys well over 10,000 of them.

In a 2011 CNN poll of the world's 50 best foods, which Indonesian dish was voted number one?

Rendang, beef simmered for hours in coconut milk and spices, won on reader votes: CNN's own editors had ranked Thailand's massaman curry first until more than 35,000 Facebook voters overruled them.

The Indonesian staple nasi goreng literally translates as what?

Fried rice it is: the idea came from China, but Indonesia's version turns out darker and sweeter thanks to kecap manis, a soy sauce thickened with palm sugar.

Tempeh, a traditional protein food native to Java, is made by fermenting what?

Soybeans are bound into a firm cake by a mould that also makes them easier to digest; unlike tofu, which came from China, tempeh began in Java.

Indonesian batik, recognised by UNESCO in 2009, uses what to block the dye?

Wax drawn on in dots and lines keeps dye off the cloth, then is boiled away, once for every colour; batik follows Indonesians through life, from the slings that carry babies to the shrouds for the dead.

Wayang, the Javanese puppet theatre on UNESCO's heritage list, takes its name from a word meaning what?

Shadow: in wayang kulit, flat leather puppets are worked against a backlit screen by a single master puppeteer, whose clown characters have long been a licensed way to mock the powerful.

A gamelan, the traditional orchestra of Java and Bali, is made up mainly of which type of instrument?

Percussion: the name is usually traced to a Javanese word for striking such instruments, and each set of gongs and metal keys is tuned only to itself, so no two gamelans sound alike or can swap instruments.

The vast stepped monument of Borobudur in Central Java was built as what kind of temple?

A Buddhist monument that outlived its faith's hold on Java, Borobudur lay under volcanic ash and jungle for centuries until 1814, when the island's British governor, Stamford Raffles, was told of the ruin and had it cleared.

The tallest tower at Java's Prambanan temple compound is dedicated to which god?

Shiva's 47 m tower stands between smaller ones for Brahma and Vishnu; legend says a prince had to raise a thousand temples in one night to win a princess, who faked the dawn to stop him one short.

Which regional bloc, co-founded by Indonesia in 1967, has its permanent secretariat in Jakarta?

ASEAN was founded by five neighbours in August 1967, a year after Indonesia made peace with one of them, Malaysia, ending an undeclared three-year border war.

Susi Susanti won Indonesia's first Olympic gold medal in 1992, the year which sport joined the Games?

Badminton made its Olympic debut in Barcelona and Indonesia took both singles titles: Susanti's gold was followed by Alan Budikusuma's in the men's event, and the two champions later married.

Indonesia's first Olympic medal, a 1988 silver, was won by three women in which sport?

Archery: the trio finished level with a rival team on 952 points, then won a shoot-off 72 to 67 to take second place; a 2016 Indonesian film, 3 Srikandi, retells the story.

Which spiky fruit, widely grown in Indonesia, is banned from some hotels and public transport because of its smell?

Durian's smell put off the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace at first, but once he tried one he called eating it 'a new sensation, worth a voyage to the East to experience'.

Which creatures of eastern Indonesia did Europeans long believe had no feet, because their trade skins arrived without them?

Birds-of-paradise were said to float in the air all their lives, landing only when they died, and the myth stuck: Linnaeus gave one species the scientific name apoda, 'footless'.

Under which name did Indonesia become the first Asian team to appear at the FIFA World Cup, in 1938?

Dutch East Indies was the name on the team sheet: the side lost 6-0 to Hungary, the eventual runners-up, and because the 1938 tournament was a straight knockout, that single match was its whole World Cup.

Indonesia's first high-speed rail line, opened in 2023 with Chinese backing, is called what?

Whoosh doubles as an acronym for an Indonesian slogan meaning 'time saving, optimal operation, reliable system', and the saving is real: the trains cut a three-hour trip out of Jakarta to under one.

The angklung, an Indonesian instrument that sounds when it is shaken, is made of what?

Bamboo tubes hang in a bamboo frame, and each angklung sounds only one note or chord, so playing a tune takes a group, each player shaking theirs at the right moment.

Which faith, long shut out, is again one of Indonesia's six official religions?

Confucianism is followed mainly by Chinese Indonesians, and its fortunes turned with theirs: until 2000 even celebrating Chinese New Year in public was banned, and the festival has since become a national holiday.

At night, burning sulphur gas lights the crater of Indonesia's Kawah Ijen volcano with flames of which colour?

Blue: the crater is also a working mine, where men break up cooled sulphur by hand and carry loads of up to 90 kg up and out of the volcano.

Which Indonesian province may implement aspects of Islamic law under its special arrangements?

Aceh won that right in autonomy deals meant to end a long separatist war; peace finally came in 2005, months after the tsunami that killed well over 100,000 people in the province.

Which 2011 Indonesian action film, set inside a Jakarta apartment block, made an international star of Iko Uwais?

The Raid was written and directed by a Welshman, Gareth Evans, who met Uwais in 2007 while filming a documentary on the martial art silat; Uwais was then a driver for a phone company.