Hello and welcome to my country! Or, as we say here, "Selamat datang di Indonesia!"

Some people are not quite sure where we are when I say where I'm from. We're a Southeast Asian country, and some of our closest neighboring countries are Singapore and Malaysia. We're right on top of Australia. Here is a handy map:


We are officially called the Republic of Indonesia. Our flag is simple and consists of two colors only; red which means courage, and white which means purity of intent.


As a country, we're still pretty young. We just celebrated our 71st year of independence this year, which means there has been pretty much only one to two generations so far that has enjoyed our independence. We declared our independence from the Netherlands back in August 17, 1945 (side note: that's the year my dad was born!). Aside from the Netherlands, the English and the Japanese also occupied us briefly. We were kind of a desired commodity, I guess. (Mainly because we're the source of some awesome spices they can't find in their own countries)

This is our awesome coat of arms/national emblem:


It's a Garuda, a mystical bird from Hindu and Buddhist mythology (yep, we have a mythical animal as our national symbol - cause we're cool). Interesting trivia: the number of its feathers (17 on each wing) represents our independence date. The tail feather number is 8, representing the month of independence, and there are 45 feathers on its neck to represent the year of independence. The shield represents our five principles of ideology, or Pancasila (in Sanskrit "pañca" means "five" and "sīla" means "principles"):

• The star means sacred divinity
  
• The chain means just and civilized humanity
  
• The tree means unity
  
• The buffalo head means democracy
  
• The rice and cotton means social justice
  

The scroll it's clutching shows our national motto, "Bhinneka Tunggal Ika". Derived from old Javanese language, it means "Unity in Diversity".

Here is our national anthem, complete with an English translation. It is called "Indonesia Raya" (Great Indonesia).


The name Indonesia derives from the Greek words Indós and nèsos, meaning "Indian island". The name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia.

Here is what our land looks like! As you can see, we are composed of many, many islands (13,466 according to Wiki). That's kind of what makes us unique. It's also why we've got such a huge diversity. There are hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups, and each of our big islands have their own native dialect. I could travel to one of our other islands and they'd be speaking a different language entirely. Of course, Indonesian is the national language, but there are so many others depending on where we come from, as well. (For example, my parents came from Java, and that's what they speak to each other - I've picked it up from listening to them since I was young but I can't really speak it, just understand what's being said. They also can speak Dutch since my grandparents lived during the Dutch occupation, but they never bothered to teach me, poo.)


We have 34 provinces and about over 260 million people (as of September 2016), making us the world's fourth most populous country and the number one most-populous Muslim-majority country. We share land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the eastern part of Malaysia. Indonesia is a founding member of ASEAN and a member of the G-20 major economies. The Indonesian economy is the world's 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP.

We're also sitting very close to the equator, which pretty much means it's ALWAYS SUMMER. Our temperature ranges between 20-30 Celsius on a good day and can reach 35 Celsius on a pretty sunny day. When I told my English friends about this, they were quite understandably horrified. Our weather isn't particularly... comfortable. There's a high humidity level as well. When it isn't sunny, it rains (we have to deal with flood a lot). That's about it. No four seasons, no spring or autumn, no snow. Ever. (It's very cruel and unfair.)

Our country is a republic with a presidential system. We have undergone some major reforms since the revolution that happened in 1998 following the 32 years long reign of our second president. That was a particularly difficult time as economic and political crises rose afterwards, but the change was necessary to achieve more democracy. In 2004 we had our first presidential election where the people directly elected the president and vice president. They can now only serve for a maximum of two consecutive five year terms.


Capital City: Jakarta (also where I live!)
Location: Java Island
Official Name: Special Capital Region of Jakarta (Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta)
Previous Names: Sunda Kelapa (397–1527), Jayakarta (1527–1619), Batavia (1619–1942), Djakarta (1942–1972), and Jakarta (1972–present)
Jakarta the only city that is also a province.

The official metropolitan area, known as Jabodetabek (a name formed by combining the initial syllables of the areas Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi), is the second largest in the world, yet the metropolis' suburbs still continue beyond it.

Its current name derives from the word Jayakarta. The origins of this word can be traced to the Old Javanese and ultimately to the Sanskrit language. "Jayakarta" translates as "victorious deed", "complete act", or "complete victory".

Jakarta is nicknamed the Big Durian, the thorny strongly-odored fruit native to the region, as the city is seen as the Indonesian equivalent of New York City (the Big Apple). Here is a picture of the most smelly fruit in the planet.


In the colonial era, the city was also known as Koningin van het Oosten (Queen of the Orient), initially in the 17th century for the urban beauty of downtown Batavia's canals, mansions and ordered city layout.

Jakarta is literally full of people. We have traffic almost everywhere we go because everyone prefers to drive their own cars and only the lower to middle class use public transport. This is largely because we still don't have good public transport. We're currently almost done building our underground rail system. (Our country as a whole is still considered a developing/third world country.) Jakarta is pretty modern, I suppose, compared to any of our other cities, but if you want to see the real beauty of our country, you'll have to go somewhere else.

If there are any questions you would like to ask, you can do so here! I will be putting up the other threads gradually over the next few days ^^