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Thoughts and observations about Indonesia, by Shailendra Halbe People, sorry for the borrowed images. I would update the blog with my own images as soon as I find what I click acceptable! It may be interesting to know that by population, Indonesia has 88% muslims and 6% christians. Hindus account for 4% of the total population of 245 million. This is world's 4th largest country by population. The country has more than 13000 islands out of which about 5000 islands are inhabited. This country is spread horizontally and has 3 time zones ! On west, it is just 60 miles from Andaman and Nicobar while the southern point is just 100 miles from Australia. On North, it extends beyond Malaysia and on west, it reaches upto Philippines. To keep these 13000 islands united as a country and run efficient govt administration for such a widely spread, multi cultural, multi religious country is really a difficult task. Indonesia had visionary leaders during 60s and 70s, who have built excelle...

For those who are looking for relevant information to travel to Bandung, please scroll down to the end of the post. Feel free to email me, and I can share whatever limited knowledge I have. Last weekend, we went to Bandung , a city about 120 km. from Jakarta. This was our first outing since we came to Jakarta, and we were really excited about it. The plan was to start at about 6am and be back by 10pm. We had gathered a list of places to visit in Bandung, a pretty long one :). Then as friends suggested, we had to choose only 3 or 4 as that was all that we could have done justice to, in a span of 8-9 hours. The travel started along the crowded toll road, as we navigated through the traffic leading to Bekasi and  Chikampek (Industrial settlements outside of Jakrta). As we moved ahead, the traffic started reducing, the road getting more and more beautiful. This country seems to be blessed with each and every colour of green that is possible. Hill slope farming could be seen along...