INDONESIA

Indonesia is an Archipelago in the southern part of South East Asia said to comprise of more than 16,000 islands. The larger islands of Indonesia include Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, Kalimantan (which is a large part of the island of Borneo) and Irian Jaya (which is a large part of Papua New Guinea). Smaller islands include Bali, Lombok and the Riau islands, including Bintan and Batam.

The total population of Indonesia is estimated to be almost 250 million people. Indonesia is well known for it's rice, coffee, hard wood products, oil and minerals. A large part of the population is Muslim.

Rice cultivation between Jakarta and Bandung

Indonesia was progressively colonised by the Dutch, and became the main supply source for the spice trade. Indonesia declared independence in 1945.

There is a very strong arts and crafts culture in Indonesia, which is well known for it's batik printed fabrics as well as other items such as wood and stone carvings. Many of the finest quality carvings come from Bali.

Much of Indonesia sits on the "ring of fire", so active volcanoes are numerous, earthquakes frequent and the danger of Tsunamis high.

USA
Teach Yourself Indonesian
UK

The Teach Yourself courses are among the best for getting started in any language. Be careful when you follow the links to amazon which I have provided (follow them by clicking on the pictures). In some cases the link will take you to just the book, in other cases it will take you to the book plus CDs. That was because at the time I set this up, I could not find the book plus CDs in all instances.

The CONTENT index on the left of this page lists the topics, which interest me about Indonesia. Click on any of them which also interest you.