Customer Reviews

Indonesia (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Amazon has decided to combine reviews of both editions on this page, so I decided to add my thoughts on the 2010 edition to the end of this review, originally written for the previous one. I suggest that you read the whole thing if you are not familiar with the book yet, or scroll down towards the end if you just want to know what has changed in the latest edition.

The 2007 edition:

This is currently by default both the best overall guide to Indonesia for independent travellers, and the only one that is remotely up to date.
The competition (Moon, Footprint, Rough Guides) seems to have given up covering this vast archipelago years ago. For this reason alone, the book still gets 4 stars from me, despite some shortcomings and amusingly striking errors outlined later.
It definitely covers enough attractions to keep people occupied for months, and is more than enough for those with an average interest in the country.
As usual with this series, it covers practical details like prices, public transport and city maps, though unusually for Lonely Planet, many prices in this book (especially for public transport and guiding services) seem to be the result of guesswork by the authors, and even a year after the book was published, I found that they were actually considerably LOWER than those listed here!
There is also more than enough background information about culture and history for most readers, although unfortunately some useful things that were still present in the previous edition, like an overview of national parks and the longer lists of recommended books about various aspects and regions of the country have now been removed. Many less frequented islands, towns and areas that were still described in several previous editions have now been omitted, too.
On a brighter note, there is realistic, up to date assesment of the much-improved security situation in formerly strife-torn regions like Aceh and Maluku, encouraging tourists to return there.
Unfortunately, coverage of the remoter, less-visited regions remains poor.
The chapter on Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo) has finally seen some long overdue changes, with non-existing attractions removed and real ones added, but info on almost anything outside the big, boring, modern coastal cities (which are covered in masochistic detail) is so vague that it makes one wonder if the author has ever left the urban jungles at all. My impression is that if she did, she certainly didn't get far!
That is still better than the chapter on Papua (Indonesian New Guinea).
Long the weakest, nearly useless part of this guide, one gets the impression that the Japanese lady "updating" it for this edition has never set foot there, and thus simply lifted all content over from the previous guides, updating hotel and transport prices with the aid of her telephone. Her information about how to cross the border with Papua New Guinea is spectacularly wrong, and there is almost nothing in that chapter that hadn't been there in the previous editions.
There are also some striking errors in the general sections dealing with the whole country.
As in the previous edition, the color section on "Indonesian" fauna proudly includes a shot of a Green Iguana from South America, this time with the added caption "Iguanas can be found in parks such as Taman Nasional Bali Barat" - in reality there are no iguanas anywhere in Asia. Similarly, the "Beguiling Beasties" itinerary recommended for wildlife fans says "you can try spotting the rare bird of paradise on the islands around Pulau Biak". Ironically, Biak and its neighbouring islands happen to be the ONLY part of Papua where there are NO birds of paradise! ;-) Plus covering that entire itinerary would take you several months (which your visa won't allow), and even then you would still have to skip the Foja Mountains of Papua (highly recommended by the author based on news reports) which are in reality so remote and inaccessible that even well-supported scientific expeditions have only made it there a few times.
But my favourite blunder is in the Getting there & Away chapter at the back of the book, listing international border crossings, where the author says "...there are two boats a week between Dili in East Timor and Oecussi in [Indonesian] West Timor." A boat on that route does exist, the only slight difference being that both of those towns are in independent East Timor, outside the borders of Indonesia!
Couldn't LP get authors who at least know where Indonesia ends and its neighbours start this time??? :-)
So those with a deeper interest in Indonesia, or with an interest in a particular region, might prefer more detailed, regional guides to those areas - there are several covering Bali & Lombok to choose from, Lonely Planet has great (if ageing) guides to Java and Nusa Tenggara, while Periplus has eight separate ones to all parts of the country, though the Periplus ones are best backed up with this book for practical details.
Those who have already been to Indonesia and own the previous edition of this book, might as well just keep it instead of investing into this new effort. Most of the content is exactly the same (or missing), with only the layout and prices changed - and the prices will have changed again by the time you get to Indonesia anyway.
For first-timers, this remains the best single-volume guide to buy though - even if only by default.

The 2010 edition:

Most of the comments on the previous edition remain valid, though in general, prices seem to have been updated more carefully for this edition.
The best thing about it is that the the chapters on the long-ignored regions of Kalimantan and Papua have finally been much improved, though it is quite obvious that much of the new info was collected online (eg on LP's very own Thorn Tree travel forum) or from tour-operators, rather than on the ground. Still, coverage of those 2 regions is now much better than it had ever been before!
Coverage of another 2 regions has also improved.
The Maluku chapter once again contains separate entries on the more remote Aru, Tanimbar and Sula Islands and is probably the best part of the whole book now.
The Sumatra chapter has finally added some long-popular destinations that had before been mysteriously missing from the book, such as Tangkahan and Kedah in the north, though it continues to ignore very popular Pulau Belitung down south.
As for the rest, there seem to be very few changes - perhaps due to lack of criticizm, the publisher thought they are fine as they are. Not quite - much of the info in the chapter on Java, Indonesia's 2nd most visited island, is something like a decade out of date now, with national parks like Ujung Kulon and Gunung Halimun remaining poorly and errorously described, others ignored altogether. There has been very little changed about Nusa Tenggara or Sulawesi, either...
The recommended special interest itineraries at the beginning of the book remain as unrealistic as in the previous edition. They recommend touring places widely scattered all over the whole archipelago - you'd need several months! I also find the featured color "Highlights" poorly selected - Papua's Baliem Valley is listed twice, while there's nothing recommended from Sumatra at all!

Conclusion: If you are planning your first trip to Indonesia, get this book by all means. If you already have the previous edition, you can just stick with that, though for Kalimantan and Papua the separate chapters from the new edition are worth having - and can be downoaded separately from the publisher's website! ;-)

I'm at the end of my 4 months living in Jakarta. I bought this book in the states before going but when I arrived in Jakarta, i was originally very disappointed by the thinness of the jakarta section. The lack of depth was a problem throughout the book. However, I later traveled to Yogjakarta, Bandung, Bogor, Bali, Lombok, and the Gili Islands, making this book actually pretty useful. Although it doesn't have extensive information on each area, it does cover a lot of areas in a good-enough way.

However.. since the vast majority of people who come to Indonesia do not actually travel to many different places (usually just around Bali, or Java), I would recommend a book which focuses more on the place you will actually go, since you are otherwise paying for and carrying around a lot more bulk than is necessary.

(Update 2009): Last summer, i spent another 2 months in Indonesia during which I was based in Yogyakarta. I again had the great opportunity of doing a lot of internal traveling, particularly within Java. I would like to again say that this book has a huge breadth of knowledge about soo many different amazing places way off of the beaten track of Bali. My indonesian girlfriend had not even heard of many of them... i was able to really get in touch - a deep touch - with indonesia.

I am specifically commenting on the Kindle edition. In one word: unusable.

The Kindle might work for books that one reads from start to finish, but it does not work with a very large book that one browses through and where one jumps from one part (where one currently is) to a vastly different part of the book (where one plans to go next).

First of all, it lacks a table of contents, so you have no clue what is actually where in the book. I had to look into a printed copy to get an idea of the rough outline of the book.

There is no usable index either and even when using one of the hyperlinks they only take to a Kindle page in the approximate region. If you try to search for, let's say 'Bali' it will take you to all mentions of Bali in the book, which are hundreds. You can then skip through every single one of them to get to where you want to get. Then you have lost the page you came from and start searching for that.

The maps are, while blown up 4 times (and thus spread over four Kindle pages), are still too small to read and with legend separated on another page really cannot be read. Some of the smaller maps have not been enlarged and are totally useless.

The printed LP benefit from a very careful layout which gives you an idea where you are. In the Kindle edition, you never have a clue where the next bit of important information could be found.

Lonely Planets on Kindle need a lot of work to be of any use. I would not buy one again.

Actually it was so bad, I would like to get my money back.

Most reviews concentrate on the main tourist attractions. I will concentrate on the capital - Jakarta. Sure, it's a concrete jungle of 9 million (and 11 million more in the suburbs), but it's also a place that has such a negative and undeserved image in the media, that this guide is a must read if you want the real picture.

1) Jakarta is SAFE. Asian megalopolises are amazingly safe by western standards (like Bangkok or Seoul) and Muslim megalopolises are also amazingly safe by western standards (as Cairo). Jakarta combines both of these in one. It's a city of 20 million with a crime rate that must be multiplied by a two digit number to reach that of London, Paris or New York, not to mention Johannesburg or Mexico City. Violent crime is virtually non-existent when compared to the above cities. Yet in the media, two bombings (of 2003 and 2009) get a lot of press time, but the everyday truth gets almost none. And the truth is that you are more likely to encounter violent crime in even a mid-sized city or many small towns in the USA & Europe then in Jakarta! For a city with such a population and so much poverty this is a true miracle.

2) Jakarta does have good shopping, very cheap prices for hotels and a fast and uncrowded system of public transportation. These things are omitted by many guides, especially the last one. And the Transjakarta buses are a true miracle. Many people don't spare them a glance as they are no metro or rail system, but they are ingenious (as experts say). They have their own lanes along the roads and stops every 1 km or so. And the system covers most of the city today, but is still planned to grow almost double in size. The 2010 edition of LP Indonesia in the moving around section (and a boxed text) gives justice to Transjakarta. Another first as publications are concerned (as with crime).

This may not be much if you need a guidebook to Bali, but as you already know from the other reviews that the book is comprehensive and covers all of Indonesia (as almost no other does), the fact that it gives justice to a place with bad and undeserved reputation should also count for something. Most of you readers come from a country that shares the same problem. As many due. Think about what the Europeans thing of the USA or the French of the UK. All the negative stereotypes. Wouldn't you like a book that truthfully challenges all the lies about your country? Well this book battles such stereotypes on Indonesia and yet doesn't give ANY propaganda, just the bare truth. That's one more reason to buy it!

I used this on a 5 week trip through 4 islands of Indonesia, about a year after this was released. While the transportation costs seemed to be accurate, the guesthouse (cheaper end) and food was not. For example, it might say a single is 80,000rph when in fact it was 120. And I was in about as low season as you can go. This extra 50% was very common. Therefore, my budget was nowhere what I needed. I'm not saying I wouldn't have gone, but Indo is NOT one of the cheapy destinations that you think it should be. Also, if you are vegetarian be prepared for a LOT of the same flavor over and over. Still there are some amazing things to see.

love the ebook except for the fact that it is missing ALL the pictures that are in print. sure the ebook has the maps but give me all the pretty pictures too!!

Ryan Ver Berkmoes' INDONESIA, offers detailed itineraries, updated information, maps and more on all areas of the vast Indonesian archipelago. A 'must take-along tote'.

Just received this brand new 8th edition of Lonely Planet's Indonesia. In one word: perfect! I read some chapters about Bali and Moluccan islands and every page is really filled with recent information, completely rewritten in the second part of 2006 by a professional team of specialized authors. Besides the wealth of practical travel information, much effort is taken to write about political en geographical backgrounds. Short paragraphs deal with the dramatic developments of the last few years, like those in the Moluccan and North-Sumatran regions and disasters like tsunami in the west and earthquakes on Java. The people who wrote this fine edition of Lonely Planet's Indonesia did their job with enthusiasm and give the best up-to-date travel information you can get!

We spent a month in Indonesia and found this book to be up to date and thorough.

Highlights of disappointment - The review of Pasar Seni (art/handicraft market) doesn't tell you it's in the middle of some kind of disneyland that you have to pay admission to get into and, once there, has very little of interest. Also, I want to go to the Textile Museum but it doesn't even receive a mention in the book. The hotel front desk says it doesn't open until 2 on Sundays and one website says it opens at 9:30 so I need a tie-breaker. This book weighs a ton but lacks a lot.