Roadside strangers shook our hands to welcome us to Flores. Kids called out “Bule, bule!” as we passed. In Ruteng, a small highland town in the shadow of Mandosawu Mountain, nothing was staged for visitors — because almost no visitors come. What I found instead was a place moving at its own unhurried pace, and, thanks to an illness that slowed me down further, the time to actually notice it.
“Come quickly. It’s a …,” shouted the snorkel guide, the name of the creature swallowed by the wind and waves. Not that it would have meant anything to me. I didn’t know the names of anything nor what they looked like. Dutifully, I put my head in the water and started stroking toward him.
I’ve been visiting Bali since 1976, when Kuta was a handful of guesthouses and electricity only reached the airport. Fifty years and millions of visitors later, the island has changed — more traffic, more crowds. But the gamelan still plays, offerings still appear each morning, and the sunset still draws everyone to the beach. Here’s how I navigate it now.
The train swayed and the wheels clacked as we pulled out of Gambir Station in central Jakarta. Gradually, the gloss of prosperous commercial buildings gave way to a lower profile, both in form and affluence. Structures flattened and paint peeled as vendors shouted and vehicles pressed forward with all the speed of a tortoise in …
Jakarta surprised us. After decades away, I expected a chaotic megacity to endure before the “real” Indonesia began. Instead, we found world-class museums, a walkable neighborhood, excellent food, and a city that had quietly transformed itself. Two days turned three skeptics into Jakarta fans.
Bali is just the beginning. After nearly 50 years exploring Indonesia’s 17,000 islands, here’s my practical guide to Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Flores, and beyond — plus real itinerary combinations for one week, two weeks, or longer.