Visiting Indonesia
For travel guide for Indonesia and practical advice regarding eating, drinking, shopping, how to get around, price levels on lodging and holiday accomodation (e.g. hotels, vacation rentals by owner, b&b's, vacation rental homes, holiday villas, condos, cabins, hostels, self-catering cottages) and safety hints please click here.

Indonesia facts, geography & history

Facts
Government: Republic.
Population (est.): 245,452,739.
Capital, population (est.): Jakarta, 13,195,000 (metro. area), 8,390,000 (city proper).
Language: Bahasa Indonesia (official), English, Dutch, Javanese, and more than 580 other languages and dialects.
Monetary unit: Rupiah.

Geography
Indonesia's 17,508 islands, about 6,000 of which are inhabited, are scattered over both sides of the equator. By land area, the five largest islands are Java, Sumatra, Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo), New Guinea (shared with Papua New Guinea) and Sulawesi (not in that order). Indonesia borders Malaysia on the island of Borneo, Papua New Guinea on the island of New Guinea, and East Timor on the island of Timor. The capital, Jakarta, is on Java and is the nation's largest city, followed by Surabaya, Bandung, Medan, and Semarang.
At 1,919,440 km² (741,050 mi²), Indonesia is the world's sixteenth-largest country in terms of land area. Its average population density is 134.39 people per square kilometer, 79th in the world, although Java, the world's most populous island, has a population density of 940 people per km². At 4,884 meters (12,405 feet), Puncak Jaya in Papua is Indonesia's highest peak and Lake Toba in Sumatra its largest lake with an area of 1,145 km² (442 mi²). The country's largest rivers are in Kalimantan and include the Mahakam, and Barito. With their sources in the island's central massif, they meander through swamps to the sea allowing communication and transport between settlements built along their edges.

Indonesia's location on the edges of three tectonic plates—the Pacific, Eurasian, and Australian plates—makes it the site of numerous volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Indonesia has at least 150 active volcanoes, including Krakatoa and Tambora, both famous for their devastating eruptions in the nineteenth century. The eruption of the Toba supervolcano approximately 70,000 years ago was one of the largest eruptions known and a global catastrophe. Recent disasters due to seismic activity include the 2004 tsunami which killed an estimated 167,736 in northern Sumatra[70] and the Yogyakarta earthquake in 2006. Volcanic ash, however, is a major contributor to the high agricultural fertility that has historically sustained the high population densities of Java and Bali.
Equatorial Indonesia has a tropical climate with two distinct monsoonal wet and dry seasons. Average annual rainfall in the lowlands varies from 1,780 to 3,175 millimetres (70 to 125 inches), and up to 6,100 millimetres (240 inches) in mountainous regions. Mountainous areas—particularly in the west coast of Sumatra, West Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Papua—receive the highest rainfall. Humidity is generally high, averaging about 80%. Temperatures vary little over the year; the average daily temperature range of Jakarta is 26° to 30° Celsius (79° to 86° Fahrenheit)............
Adopted from and read more at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia

History
If you are interested in this country's history, please take a look here.