Indonesia is a country that sees steady tourism increase in the past decade and more. Despite being the largest island country in the world, many people have never heard of the country at all. And some others had only ever heard about some parts of Indonesia. Let’s scratch a bit of the surface when it comes to some of the most interesting things this country is apparently known for.
Indonesia is the producer of the most expensive coffee in the world
The famed Luwak Coffee is a type of coffee that comes from poop. Civet’s poop, to be exact. This coffee comes from the fermented process it had gone through the civet’s digestive system. This type of coffee is thought to have “special” qualities to it and have been “improved” by these civets thanks to the selection process of the civets and the chemical and biological alterations of the coffee bean because of the civets’ digestion.
However, there has been some environmental concerns when it comes to the farming of these coffee beans. Some coffee plantations are found to be treating the civets badly. They don’t have optimum welfare. For instance, the diets of civets are highly varied. They are omnivores that eat insects and small mammals, mangoes, berries, and rambutan, among other things. However, in the coffee plantation, they are only fed coffee fruits. This is highly detrimental to their health as coffee fruits alone will not be able to meet their nutritional needs.
The average Indonesians are bilingual and multi-lingual
Indonesia consists of hundreds of different ethnicities that have their very own distinct culture and languages that come with it. Let’s take Bali as an example. Most of the Balinese are bilingual, with Balinese and Bahasa Indonesia being the two languages taught simultaneously at home. Those from Java would speak Javanese, the people of Flores would speak their own ethnic language, and so on.
Indonesia has the most impressive marine biodiversity in the world
While the Amazon forest topped the terrestrial biodiversity in the world, the marine biodiversity in Indonesia is unrivaled. Indonesia is a part of the legendary Coral Triangle. Coral Triangle is the term of only roughly 30% of the ocean area that has over 75% of the entire world’s underwater population. The seas of West Papua, Papua New Guinea, and Raja Ampat regency are included in the impressive marine biodiversity of the coral triangle.
Bali is an exception in so many ways
If you’ve only ever visited Bali, then you haven’t experienced Indonesia just yet. But then again, the same can be said with other islands. Java is an experience on its own, which is vastly different compared to the many highly populated island in Indonesia. Bali is going to be very different than, say, Lombok, even though the two are basically neighbors and they share the same ancestry and ethnicities.
Bali’s religious majority is Hindu, which is a huge exception from the rest of the country, which has a predominantly Muslim population. Your experience in Bali is going to be vastly different when it comes to virtually everything, especially concerning cultural aspects and ways of life.
Indonesia is the largest archipelagic country in the world
Indonesia inhibits such a large space, with thousands of islands that no one actually knows the exact count of. And we really don’t several studies done on how many islands in Indonesia led to several different results as well. Numbers that showed a large difference of results to each other.