What You Need to Know Before Traveling to Indonesia

Keep in mind that Indonesia covers thousands of square kilometers, so it will depend on the area you want to visit.

Broadly speaking, the country's tropical climate can be divided into 2 seasons: the dry season and the wet season. The dry season is the best time to visit.

Dry season: May to October

Wet season: November to April

Now, let's look at the best time to travel by island:

Bali: May to September. Peak tourist season is July and August. If you can, we recommend avoiding those months, since there are far too many tourists and prices tend to go up a bit.

Java: April to November

Lombok: May to September

Maluku and Papua: September to April

Borneo: All year round

Sulawesi: May, June and September

Sumatra: February and March, June and July

Fortunately, Argentine citizens don't need a visa to visit Indonesia, as long as the trip lasts less than 30 days. You're often asked for your departure flight to prove it.

If you're an Argentine citizen and plan to stay in the country for more than 30 days, you need to get a visa that lets you stay for up to 60 days.

This visa is called on arrival because you get it when you land at the airport. The process can take between 4 days and a week.

To do this, you pay US$35 when you arrive at the airport, and they give you a slip of paper showing you're entitled to apply for the 60-day visa. You then have to go to an immigration office (careful: not every city has one) with a photocopy of your departure flight, a photocopy of your passport and the slip of paper from the airport. You have to pay US$35 again. A few days later your visa will be ready.

• If you've lived in South America or Africa during the 6 months before you enter, you need to be vaccinated against yellow fever and show the vaccination certificate.
• Vaccination against hepatitis A and B and tetanus is recommended.
• There's no malaria risk in the main cities, but if you're traveling to rural areas, it's advisable to take Malarone and always wear mosquito repellent.

It's a country with several climates, so it depends on your route.

If you're going to the volcanoes, it's a good idea to bring warm clothes, since it's usually about 8°C up on the mountain. We brought warm leggings, wool socks, sweaters and our Uniqlo jackets, and we were perfectly fine. We tried to bring warm clothes that took up little room, since we'd only wear them on 2 of the trip's 20 days.

It's usually very hot at the beaches and in the cities.

As always, you don't need many clothes to travel around Southeast Asia. Besides, the less you bring, the more comfortable you'll be. If you're wondering whether to bring something or not, don't ;).

If you're going in the wet season, it's a good idea to bring a rain jacket, thin but enough to keep the rain off.

Very few places accept cards as payment. It even happened to us at hotels, which wouldn't take them.

There are ATMs for withdrawing money, but always find out beforehand what fee your bank charges, since sometimes it isn't worth it.

Since our bank charged us a fee, we decided to bring cash and change it there as we needed it.

WATCH OUT WHEN YOU CHANGE MONEY ON THE STREET

Here's a bad experience we had changing money in Bali, which turns out to be something that happens a lot.

We needed to change money, so after comparing the different stalls we went to the one with the best rate. The man worked out how much we should get, counted the bills, handed them to us to count, and everything was fine. He wouldn't stop talking and asking us questions, which struck us as a little odd, as if he was trying to distract us. Then he asked for the bills back to count them again. While he recounted them, he asked if I had change in rupiah, because he didn't. I looked in my wallet and gave him the rupiah and the dollars, he gave me the rupiah we'd bought, and we left happy.

We were almost at the corner when Marcos told me he felt the man had been trying to distract us so he could slip bills out of the wad (keep in mind that US$100 is 1,400,000 rupiah). I suddenly felt the same way, so I got the money out of my wallet. Since I was used to it by then, I could tell the wad was smaller than the other times we'd changed money, so I counted it as fast as I could and realized about 600,000 rupiah were missing.

We ran back to the stall to ask the man for the money he'd taken when he recounted the bills, since what we'd been given wasn't what we were owed. At first he tried to defend himself by saying he charged a 7% commission, something he had never told us and that wasn't written anywhere. Angry, we told him to give us the rest of the bills. He refused and offered to give us back the dollars in exchange for the rupiah. Our answer was a firm no, because we didn't know if he'd try to give us fake bills, and by then we didn't trust anything. We made a huge scene, and little by little he handed over 50,000-rupiah bills until he'd made up what he owed us.

So be careful when you change money at street stalls. We changed money at places like this throughout the trip and had only one bad experience. We're telling you so you stay alert and nothing like this happens to you.

• It's the country with the most Muslims in the world: 83.99% of the population practices Islam. On Gili T we'd often wake up to the sound of prayers being sung over loudspeakers, which we found really curious.
• Bali is the country's only Hindu island. If your trip includes Bali and another island, you'll be surprised by how visible the cultural and architectural change is.
• It's the largest archipelago on the planet, with approximately 17,508 islands, of which only a few are inhabited.
• With 250 million people, it's the fourth most populated country in the world. They're spread across 5,000 km from east to west and 3 different time zones.
• It's home to 360 ethnic groups, who speak 719 different languages and officially practice 5 religions.
• It sits on the Ring of Fire, which is why earthquakes are very common in this part of the planet. It's also the country with the most active volcanoes in the world.
• Especially in Java, people are very surprised to see Western tourists. We felt famous during our days on the island. People kept asking us for photos with them, nudging each other whenever we walked by and secretly taking pictures of us!
• People are super friendly! Everyone smiles at you and is willing to help however they can.
• As in almost all of Asia, the streets tend to be dirty and people throw everything on the ground. It's really sad, given the paradise they live in.