INDONESIA

A country of incredible and divers beauty, Indonesia stretches across one-seventh of globe between Malaysia and Australia. Racially, cultural and geographically, INDONESIA is one of the most diverse nation in the world.

Like a string of jewels in a coral sea, the 17,000-plus island of the Indonesian archipelago stretch almost 500 km from the Asian mainland into the Pacific Ocean. This sprawling island chain encompasses mind-stupefying extremes: 5,000-meter high snow capped mountains of Papua, sweltering lowland swamps of eastern Sumatra, lush rainforest of West Java, with lava-spewing volcanoes the whole length. The most complex single nation on Earth, each of Indonesia 6,000-plus inhabited islands possesses some of the most remarkable sights in South East Asia, such as custom, native dress, architecture, dialects, ethnology, and geography all its own. Its wayang puppet, un earthly gamelan music, exquisite textile, matchless, and varied cuisine, hundreds of tribes, ancient ruins, and historical sites, wildlife and nature reserves and friendly people make INDONESIA one of the Asia’s last travel discoveries.

CLIMATE
Straddling the equator, Indonesia tends to have a fairly event climate all year round. There are no seasons comparable with the four that Westerner are familiar with. The east of monsoon from June to September brings dry weather while the west monsoon from December to March is moisture-laden bringing rain. The transitional period between these two are interposed by occasional rain showers, but even in the midst of the west monsoon season, temperatures range from 21 degrees C (70F) to 33 degrees C (90F) except at higher altitudes are much cooler. Heaviest rainfalls are recorded in December and January. Humidity is between 60 and 100 percent.

LANGUAGE
Such is the diversity of tongues in Indonesia (over 300 speech forms, each with its own regional dialect) that often the inhabitants of the same island do not speak the same native language. Fortunately, one language, Bahasa Indonesia, is taught in all schools from the elementary grades. Bahasa Indonesia is the only cultural element that unifies the entire population.
Bahasa Indonesia has been one of the main forces behind the democratization of all the different classes and races of Indonesia.