My travel destination this year is Indonesia. With more than six UNESCO designations it has the highest of any Asian country, and manages to provide a year’s worth of highlights in one trip.

Here are some of the places and activities I would like to see once international travel is possible in Indonesia.

Bali/Lombok

Known as a tropical paradise around the world, Bali is the most visited part of Indonesia. In fact, Bali is one of two islands that are considered to be world class – Lombok is the quieter one. People go to Bali for all kinds of purposes. Watesports and scuba diving are some of the most popular pastimes. Famous TV chef Anthony Bourdain made a documentary about the food, see picture below.

Ubud in Bali is known as a home to several famous yoga retreats and upscale resorts, in fact the whole island is home to some incredible hotels such as The Legian in Seminyak.

You can also stay very reasonably in a villa for 20 dollars a night. as well as the luxury and splendour of the resorts you can find centres of spirituality, such as the famous Uluwata Temple.

Komodo Island

Home to the biggest lizard’s in the world. Komodo Island can only be visited with a tour guide, and its very dangerous to get to close to the man-eating dragons.

Mount Merapi

The still active volcano erupted last year.

Jakarta

The bustling city is home to more than eight million people and would be a good place to start your trip, assuming you don’t mind heavy traffic and crowds. You can find some great food here.

People

“The friendliest people you can ever meet” according to Trevor Noah, who visited Bali in 2018. Indonesians are a diverse mix of ethnicities and cultures: the national language is Bahasa but Javanese is spoken in Java. There are Chinese Indonesians, moslems, Christians and Buddhists.

Music and culture

The Raid made a big impression five years ago, and the music of Indonesia that is most common is gamelan.