Indonesian Arts and Culture

Intertwined with religion and age-old traditions from the time of early migrants the art and culture of Indonesia is rich in itself with Western thoughts brought by Portuguese traders and Dutch colonists. The art and culture of Indonesia has been shaped around its hundreds of ethnic groups, each with cultural differences that have shifted over the centuries. Modern-day Indonesian culture is a fusion of cultural aspects from Arabic, Chinese, Malay and European sources. Indonesian art and culture has also been influenced from the ancient trading routes between the Far East and the Middle East leading to many cultural practices being strongly influenced by a multitude of religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism and Islam.


Language

The official language of Indonesia is 'Indonesian' or 'Bahasa Indonesia'. It's universally taught in schools and is spoken by nearly every Indonesian in business, politics, national media, education and academia. The Indonesians also speak several hundreds of local languages like 'bahasa daerah' as their first language. Javanese is also widely used besides other Papuan or Austronesian languages in a region of just 2.7 million people.

Heritage
 
Indonesia covering a total area of 1,919,440 sq km in approximately 17,508 islands offers wonderful places of interests to all its tourist's including few extraordinary heritage of Indonesia. Besides cultural heritage sites, Indonesia also has few natural places in the world heritage sites of Indonesia.

The world famous World Heritage list in Indonesia consists of the following:

• Borobudur Temple Compounds
• Prambanan Temple Compounds
• Sangiran Early Man Site
• Komodo National Park
• Lorentz National Park
• Tropical Rainforest Heritage of Sumatra
• Ujung Kulon National Park