Indonesia - Archipelago Adventure
Where Tradition Is Still Alive
After a month in China, three weeks among the islands of the Philippines and two muddy weeks searching for wildlife in Borneo, we arrived in Indonesia ready for something different. We found it in a country where music, art, food, farming and religion remain woven into everyday life.
Indonesia is difficult to comprehend on a map. The world’s largest archipelago stretches roughly 3,200 miles between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and includes more than 17,000 islands. We would see only a tiny part of it, traveling from Jakarta across Java to Bali and then east to Flores and the Komodo Islands. For the Java and Bali portion, we joined an Intrepid small-group tour with eight other travelers.
Jakarta: The Doorway
Jakarta greeted us with horrific traffic. Even a short trip across the city seemed to take forever, but our visit to Istiqlal Mosque was well worth it. An imam met us and gave us a tour of the largest mosque in Southeast Asia, with room for some 200,000 worshipers. Its name means “independence,” and that history is built into the architecture: the main dome is 45 meters across, representing 1945, the year Indonesia declared independence. The mosque was designed by a Christian architect and inaugurated in 1978. Hearing its story from the imam made its scale more meaningful to us.
Next door, we visited Jakarta’s Catholic cathedral, Paroki Katedral. Completed in 1901, the neo-Gothic church has iron spires, a lighter choice than stone for this earthquake-prone region. We learned that an interfaith Tunnel of Friendship had been built in 2021 to connect the mosque and cathedral, though we did not see it. Standing beside one another, the two buildings gave us a more memorable picture of Jakarta than its traffic. With our eight fellow travelers, we settled into a comfortable van for the roughly seven-hour journey to Yogyakarta.
Yogyakarta: Where the Past Still Performs
After the long drive, Yogyakarta quickly offered the Indonesia we had hoped to experience. The city was busy, but its history felt close to the surface. Horse-drawn carriages still moved through the streets, market stalls overflowed with vegetables and fruit, and small workshops continued producing crafts by hand.
Prambanan’s stone towers rose above us in sharp, intricate layers. Begun in the ninth century, this UNESCO World Heritage site is Indonesia’s largest Hindu temple complex and one of the largest in Southeast Asia. Its three principal temples honor Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma; the original complex included 240 temple structures. Time and earthquakes have taken their toll, leaving many smaller shrines in ruins. Mark climbed into the elevated inner chambers to see the statues dedicated to the gods, but mostly we wandered through the vast complex, admiring the thousand-year-old reliefs carved into the stone blocks. We would see many temples on this trip, each with its own character.
We stayed until after sunset, then took our seats in an outdoor amphitheater for the Ramayana ballet, with the illuminated temples rising behind the stage. We had no idea what stories the dancers were trying to convey, but their beautiful costumes and precise movements held our attention. A gamelan orchestra accompanied the dancers. Musicians struck shimmering bronze bars, large hanging gongs and rows of small kettle gongs, while drums drove the rhythm. The music could sound delicate one moment and powerful the next, and we would hear gamelan several more times as we traveled through Indonesia. Afterwards, we met some of the performers, still dressed as princes, warriors and mythical characters. We may not have understood the plot, but against the illuminated temples, the music and dancing made for a memorable evening.
We saw the same connection between art and daily life in Yogyakarta’s workshops. Batik uses wax to resist dye, allowing intricate designs to emerge as the cloth is colored. The craftspeople drew fine lines with a canting, a delicate pen that holds hot wax. We tried it ourselves, dipping the pen back into the wax whenever it needed refilling and concentrating on simple designs while watching the experts work. We told a craftsman which colors we wanted in each area; after the cloth was dyed and boiled to remove the wax, our pictures came back to us. The results amazed us. They were basic compared with the intricate fabrics in the workshop, but they were a lovely way to remember the day.
At another workshop, we watched craftsmen coil and twist fine silver filigree wire by hand. Intricate designs gradually took shape as jewelry and other small works of art. We admired their skill and left that craft to the experts.
History here was not silent. It was played on instruments, danced beneath ancient temples, painted onto cloth and carried through crowded markets.
Bali: Traditions Renewed Every Day
Flying into Bali, we left Java’s great stone temples behind for an island of volcanoes, brilliant green rice fields and thousands of small shrines. One morning we left our hotel at 4:30 and drove to a restaurant high on a ridge to watch the sunrise over Mount Batur, Lake Batur and Mount Agung. Before dawn, with the wind blowing and no sun to warm us, it was surprisingly chilly; we were glad we had been reminded to bundle up. Clouds flowed in layers over the ridge and into the valley, hiding the mountains one minute and revealing them the next. When the sun finally crested Mount Batur’s peak, the scene was spectacular.
Away from the busy tourist areas, we walked through the rice fields around Undisan and learned about the plants growing beside the paths. Palms rose above intensely green paddies, while herbs, fruits and spices appeared in gardens that initially looked wild to us. The landscape was beautiful, but it was also practical: cultivated, shared and tended as part of village life.
That connection between landscape and food continued during our cooking class in an open-air kitchen overlooking the fields. Everyone pitched in: Betsey chopped, Mark peeled, Betsey chopped some more, and others ground the spices. Mark grilled the fish satay. We sat down together to chicken and fish satay, rice, carrot soup and cooked vegetables. Everything was delicious, made even better by having prepared it together.
Religion was visibly woven into daily life. We learned to make a small offering from woven palm fronds, flowers, nuts and other natural materials. Afterwards, we began noticing similar offerings everywhere—outside shops, hotels, homes, offices and temples. They were simple and often beautiful, but what impressed us most was that they were renewed every day. These were not decorations placed for tourists; they were small, repeated acts of devotion.
We were also invited to participate rather than merely watch. The most personal ceremony took place on a beach with a Hindu high priest. He blessed each participant individually, but blessed us together as a couple. As part of the cleansing ritual, we drank coconut water directly from a coconut, and the priest then anointed us with more. We followed his instructions without knowing exactly what conclusion he might reach. Happily, he finally declared that Betsey and Mark’s chakras were connected—which, after all these years together, was reassuring news.
We dressed respectfully to enter temple grounds, heard the now-familiar shimmer of gamelan beneath elaborate decorations, and watched dancers whose precise gestures and expressive faces told stories without words. At Ubud Palace, the setting, costumes and music combined to make the evening feel less like a show added for our itinerary and more like part of the island’s cultural rhythm.
One of our most memorable evenings was a dinner with a Balinese prince, accompanied by music and dancing. The performances were beautiful, but the highlight was our frank conversation with him. He seemed to be in his early sixties and spoke openly about his ceremonial role, Bali today, his youth and the grandfather who had shaped his understanding of family and responsibility. He also loved motorcycles, owned several street and dirt bikes, and rode whenever he had the chance. We enjoyed hearing about his life and the place of a prince in modern Bali.
Not every Bali encounter was quite so contemplative. At the Ubud Monkey Forest, which dates back to the 14th century, more than 1,000 long-tailed macaques live among ancient temples and huge tropical trees. There were monkeys everywhere—adults lounging along the paths, mothers with tiny newborns clinging to them, youngsters playing and monkeys watching visitors with the confidence of residents who knew exactly who controlled the neighborhood. Some inspected bags and anything else that looked promising. The monkeys weren't confined to the forest either; we saw them out on the surrounding streets. Their expressions often suggested that we were the attraction and they were conducting the tour.
Our final days brought us to Sanur and the sea. After volcanoes, rice fields, temples and ceremonies, the coast offered a gentler rhythm: walking the beach, watching the light change over the water and enjoying a sunset outing by boat.
Komodo Islands: There Will Be Dragons
From Bali we flew east to Labuan Bajo on the island of Flores. The town was only an overnight stop, but the view from our hotel explained why so many journeys into Komodo begin there. Boats filled the harbor, backed by small rugged islands that seemed to rise directly from the sea. By the next morning, we were leaving the town behind and boarding the Derya, the traditional-style wooden boat that would be our home for the next four days.
The Derya was small and comfortable, with four cabins, a dining room, a large shaded deck and a rooftop lounge. Our captain and crew took care of us as we traveled between the islands. Sharing the boat with us were a family of four from the Netherlands and two young women from Spain. It wasn't long before we all became family, laughing together, watching out for one another, snorkeling and trading stories and pictures. Much of our time was spent on deck, watching the islands slip past and enjoying meals together.
Our boat was just one among many cruising through the islands. Komodo Island lies within the Lesser Sunda Islands of eastern Indonesia and is at the heart of Komodo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known for its dramatic landscapes, rich marine ecosystems and, of course, the Komodo dragon. The scenery was completely different from Bali. Instead of wet green rice fields, dry folded hills rose above clear blue water. At Kelor Island we climbed for a view over a curved bay dotted with boats. The path was hot and exposed, but the panorama from above made the effort worthwhile.
Some of the best experiences were below the surface. We snorkeled over beautiful coral teeming with marine life—mandarin fish, clownfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, parrotfish and so many, many more. We swam with sea turtles, watched reef sharks cruise through the water and encountered magnificent manta rays. Every time we slipped into the water there seemed to be something new to see. Back aboard the Derya, we compared sightings and pictures before heading toward another island, beach or snorkeling spot.
Then came the creatures for which the islands are famous. The Komodo dragon is the largest and heaviest living lizard on Earth, an apex predator found naturally on only a few Indonesian islands in this region. Prehistoric looking, it moves through the landscape flicking its forked tongue to pick up scents. It feeds on surprisingly large prey, including deer, wild pigs and even water buffalo, and its bite delivers venom that helps to quickly subdue its prey.
Following the rangers along the dry trails, we finally saw these extraordinary creatures for ourselves. Even knowing how large they could become did not prepare us for seeing one stretched across the ground at close range—heavy-bodied, watchful and unmistakably powerful. Seeing a Komodo dragon in the wild definitely gives you chills. There is something about standing only a short distance from this prehistoric-looking predator that no photograph can quite capture.
After the heat and dust of the dragon trails, Mawan Beach offered a complete change of mood. Pale sand met shallow turquoise water, with dry hills forming a backdrop beyond the bay. We swam, snorkeled, walked the beach and returned to the boat for another slow passage between islands. From the deck of the Derya, surrounded by new friends and open water, the crowds and traffic of Jakarta felt very far away.
Some of our favorite memories of Indonesia were the human moments in between: listening to an imam explain his mosque, laughing over our first attempts at batik, chopping and grilling together in a village kitchen, being blessed as a couple by a Hindu high priest, talking motorcycles and modern Bali with a prince, and becoming friends with people from three countries aboard a little wooden boat. Indonesia gave us ancient temples and volcanoes, rice fields and coral reefs, monkeys and dragons—but it was often these encounters that stayed with us most.
From Komodo we returned briefly to Bali before continuing south. Australia would be only a short stop before another complete change of pace. In New Zealand, we would exchange tropical islands and wooden boats for winter roads, a motorhome and several weeks of mountains, glaciers, vineyards and unpredictable weather.
