Things to Do in Indonesia (2026)

Indonesia · ID

Kwan Ti Miao Temple (Kelenteng Kwan Ti Miao), Keposang

On the quiet main track of Keposang, a small farming village a few kilometers outside the district seat of Toboali in southern Bangka, the Kwan Ti Miao temple rises as the spiritual and social heart of the local Chinese-Indonesian community. Dedicated to Kwan Tie (the deified Han-dynasty general Guan Yu, revered as a god of loyalty, righteousness and protection), this kelenteng is one of the older Chinese temples in South Bangka and a working place of worship where incense, prayers and village festivity go hand in hand. What draws visitors and pilgrims alike is less the architecture than the calendar. Each year the temple stages two big communal events — its own birthday festival (HUT Kelenteng) and the seventh-month rite known as Sembahyang Rebut or Chit Nyet Pan — both of which spill out from the courtyard into the village and attract crowds well beyond the worshipper community. Set against a backdrop of strong local tolerance, a visit offers a window into the living folk religion of Bangka's Chinese descendants.

Lake

Indonesia · ID

Lake Towuti

Lake Towuti is a vast, glassy inland sea in the highlands of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The largest lake in the province and the second-largest freshwater lake in the country after Lake Toba, it spreads across roughly 56,000 hectares at about 293 metres above sea level, its deep-blue water ringed by green hills and the distant Verbeek Mountains. Visitors come for a rare combination of scenery, solitude and science — a place where a single boat ride can take you past limestone cliffs, jungle-fringed islets and villages whose livelihoods are tied to the water. What makes Towuti exceptional is its age. Born from tectonic faulting during the Pleistocene some one to four million years ago, it belongs to the ancient Malili lake system and is counted among the oldest lakes on Earth. That long, isolated history turned the lake into a living evolutionary laboratory — a 'Galapagos of Indonesia' — where dozens of fish, shrimp and snails evolved that exist nowhere else. Set against its dramatic sunset views over Loeha Island, the result is one of eastern Indonesia's most rewarding destinations for travellers willing to venture off the beaten path.

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River

Indonesia · ID

Salu Uro

Salu Uro is a small river running through the hills of Kalumpang in Mamuju Regency, West Sulawesi—its name uses the local word salu, meaning river or stream. It belongs to the greater Karama River system, the longest river in the province and one of the most archaeologically important waterways in eastern Indonesia. As a quiet upland stream, Salu Uro offers no formal visitor facilities, but it sits within a river valley whose story reaches back to the earliest Austronesian-speaking settlers of the archipelago. For a traveller drawn to wild river country and the deep roots of Indonesian civilisation, the appeal lies less in a single viewpoint than in the setting itself: rainforest-fed channels, village life along the banks, and the proximity to the prehistoric sites of the Karama and Kalumpang district.

Shrine

Indonesia · ID

Makam Syech Nawawi dan Syech Dimyati

Makam Syech Nawawi dan Syech Dimyati is a small village shrine (a tempat ziarah, or pilgrimage tomb) resting in the hamlet of Menjangan, in the village of Gandusari, Kuwarasan district of Kebumen Regency on Java's south-central coast. It honours two respected Islamic scholars (ulama) named Syech Nawawi and Syech Dimyati, and is visited primarily by Muslim pilgrims who come to pray and pay their respects rather than by general sightseers. An important note for the curious traveler: the tombs here are not those of the world-famous Syekh Nawawi al-Bantani (who died and was buried in Mecca in 1897) or the celebrated Bantenese Abuya Dimyati. The names are common among Indonesian ulama, and this quiet Kebumen site belongs to local figures of the same name—an easy mix-up worth keeping in mind. Like many graves of early preachers and saints across Java, this shrine is part of a living devotional tradition rather than a curated tourist attraction. There is no published entry fee, ticket office, or fixed schedule; people come when they wish to pray, and the site is understood to be open to devoted visitors.

Island

Indonesia · ID

Moro Tengah

Moro Tengah is a small island in the Moro archipelago, part of Karimun Regency in Indonesia's Riau Islands province. It sits within a maze of mangrove-fringed landmasses in the eastern Karimun islands, a short hop from the bustling fishing town of Moro, and only some forty nautical miles south of Singapore. The name itself appears on nineteenth-century Dutch charts, which marked the cluster as Moro Laut, Moro Tengah and Moro Darat. There is no resort or ticketed attraction to point at here; the island's appeal is the wider Moro world around it—quiet white-sand beaches, clear shallow water, working fishing villages and the slow rhythms of a community that still looks across the strait to Batam and Karimun for its daily supplies. For a certain kind of traveller, that unhurried maritime fringe, long described as beautiful 'unknown islands' just beyond Singapore, is precisely the point.

Indonesia · ID

Bendungan Tambak Bayan

Bendungan Tambak Bayan is a small working river weir on the Tambakbayan (also called Klanduhan) River, set in the green residential and university belt of Caturtunggal in Depok, just north of central Yogyakarta. Rather than a ticketed attraction, it is an everyday local river spot: a low concrete crossing where the water backs up, its banks ringed by trees, houses and the chatter of a village that has grown up around the nearby campus. The weir sits right on the edge between Tambakbayan hamlet in Caturtunggal and Corongan in neighbouring Maguwoharjo, one of several rivers—including the Code and the Gajah Wong—that thread through this lowland Sleman village. It is a quiet, free place to linger by the water, watch the current spill over the weir wall, and see how local residents use the riverbank, before moving on to the bigger Tambakboyo reservoir a couple of kilometres north.

Beach

Indonesia · ID

Ancol beach

Ancol Beach—Pantai Ancol—is Jakarta's answer to the seaside without leaving the city. Set along Jakarta Bay inside the 550-hectare Ancol Dreamland (Taman Impian Jaya Ancol) recreation estate in North Jakarta, it is the most popular urban beach in a metropolis of more than ten million, reachable in roughly half an hour from the centre. It is less a swimming beach than a long, lively waterfront promenade with sand: a place for sunset strolls, kites overhead, kids paddling at the calm waterline, and seafood dinners that stretch into the evening under string lights. What makes Ancol worth a visit is its double nature. The open beachfront and its pathways are yours simply for the modest gate entry, free to walk, jog and watch the sun drop into the bay. Step past that and the same estate packs in a real theme park, a large aquarium, a water park, a handicraft art market and a marina that serves as the jumping-off point for Jakarta's coral-ringed Thousand Islands—so a single afternoon can be as relaxed or as busy as you like.

Hindu temple

Indonesia · ID

Pura Penataran Kacang Paos

Pura Penataran Kacang Paos is a Hindu temple set in the low-lying villages just east of Semarapura, on the Kamasan–Tangkas border of Klungkung Regency in Bali. Small in scale and rooted in local memory rather than tourist guidebooks, it carries real weight for one of Bali's old noble lineages: it is revered as the pura kawitan, the spiritual point of origin, of the Arya Wang Bang Sidemen (AWBS) community, whose members trace their ancestral name back to this very site. For a visitor, the temple offers something the big coastal attractions rarely do: a glimpse of living Balinese ritual tied to genealogy and place. Its courtyards fill with worshippers during the piodalan anniversary festivals, and on occasion with thousands of scattered descendants returning for lineage assemblies. It is a quiet, earnest shrine, and its interest lies less in monuments than in the people who keep it alive.

Beach

Indonesia · ID

Pantai Medewi

Medewi Beach is a laid-back stretch on Bali's remote west coast in Jembrana Regency, best known for the island's longest left-hand point break — a slow, peeling wave that can deliver rides of over 300 metres. Far from the crowds of Canggu and Uluwatu, it offers a rare glimpse of rural Bali: black-sand shores lined with warungs, traditional fishing boats launching at dawn, rice paddies pressing close to the road, and sunsets that set the Indian Ocean ablaze. Whether you're a longboarder chasing that endlessly peeling wall, a traveller who simply wants to eat grilled fish on the beach and watch the surf, or a seeker of waterfalls and sea temples hidden in Bali's overlooked northwest corner, Medewi rewards the journey with an unhurried authenticity you won't find anywhere else on the island.

Island

Indonesia · ID

Pulau Kepala

Pulau Kepala — literally "Head Island," in English often called Kepala Island — is one of Indonesia's outermost frontier islands, a sliver of land in the Natuna Sea that forms part of the South China Sea and lies off Serasan, near Sarawak in East Malaysia. Administratively it belongs to Nusa village, Serasan district, Natuna Regency in the Riau Islands province, marking the eastern edge of that province and sitting northwest of West Kalimantan. Tiny, low and uninhabited, it draws visitors less for facilities than for the rare feeling of standing on a far-out line of the Indonesian archipelago. The island reads as a hump of white sand and reef rock crowned with coconut palms, and at its centre rises a 30-metre lighthouse that doubles as a statement of sovereignty. Its clear, shallow waters hide coral reefs and abundant fish, and the simple wooden jetty and passing fishing boats give it an unpolished, working-sea charm. There is no resort here and no regular ferry — reaching Pulau Kepala is a deliberate charter expedition by boat, best suited to anglers, island-hoppers and travellers chasing Indonesia's edge rather than a beach holiday.

Merajan Alit Dalem Keramas, Sri Aji Kresna Kepakisan

Hindu temple

Indonesia · ID

Merajan Alit Dalem Keramas, Sri Aji Kresna Kepakisan

In the quiet lowlands of Bebandem, in east Bali's Karangasem Regency, the Merajan Alit Dalem Keramas is a small family shrine rather than a grand public temple—but it is exactly that intimacy that makes it quietly fascinating. The Balinese word *merajan* names the ancestral shrine a lineage keeps for its own forebears, and *alit* simply means "small." This one belongs to the *Dalem Keramas*, a branch of Bali's Kepakisan royal line, and its full dedication names that line's founding ancestor, Sri Aji Kresna Kepakisan. So the shrine is less a monument to be toured than a working house of memory, tended by descendants who still honour their kawitan—the shared root from which a Balinese noble family traces itself. For a visitor, its interest lies in what it reveals about Bali's living ancestor religion, set in the un-touristed countryside of eastern Bali.

Hindu temple

Indonesia · ID

Pura melanting Banjar adat angntiga

Pura Melanting Banjar Adat Angantiga is a small Hindu village temple set in the green, hilly interior of Petang, in the Badung Regency of Bali. Unlike the busy tourist shrines of the island's south, this is a working place of worship belonging to a single traditional community (banjar adat), dedicated to Dewi Melanting—the Balinese goddess of prosperity, markets and the rice harvest. Temples of this kind sit at the heart of everyday village life: they are where local families and traders give thanks for good fortune and ask for blessing over their livelihoods. Angantiga's Pura Melanting is best understood not as a sight to tick off, but as an intimate window into how rural Balinese communities still weave devotion into farming, trade and the rhythm of the ritual calendar.

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A little more
of Indonesia.

Kwan Ti Miao Temple (Kelenteng Kwan Ti Miao), Keposang

Lake Towuti

Salu Uro

Makam Syech Nawawi dan Syech Dimyati

Moro Tengah

Bendungan Tambak Bayan

Ancol beach

Pura Penataran Kacang Paos

Pantai Medewi

Pulau Kepala

Merajan Alit Dalem Keramas, Sri Aji Kresna Kepakisan

Pura melanting Banjar adat angntiga

Finding your next place…

A little more
of Indonesia.

Kwan Ti Miao Temple (Kelenteng Kwan Ti Miao), Keposang

Lake Towuti

Salu Uro

Makam Syech Nawawi dan Syech Dimyati

Moro Tengah

Bendungan Tambak Bayan

Ancol beach

Pura Penataran Kacang Paos

Pantai Medewi

Pulau Kepala

Merajan Alit Dalem Keramas, Sri Aji Kresna Kepakisan

Pura melanting Banjar adat angntiga