The prospect of visiting a destination such as Indonesia is definitely an exciting one, with a number of exotic experiences of culture, food and activities lying in wait.
Since considerable parts of Indonesia are indeed made up of a number of tourist-friendly islands, perhaps the experience or even the purchase of a luxury yacht may be on the cards for your next planned visit, in a bid to easily explore some of the more intricately located destinations of the land.
With that in mind, along with a number of other considerations, the small matter of choosing from the list of designated entry points into Indonesia should be paid close attention to. This list of entry points includes Bali (Denpasar by air and Benoa by land), Java, Nusa Tenggara, Sumatra, Riau Islands, Pinang, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua.
These are essentially the entry points at which a visa on arrival can be attained, for those arriving from listed qualifying countries, with the other entry gateways requiring advance visas.
Getting back to the matter of choosing the best of these entry points, if you are the typical tourist who communicates in English, requires international-standard facilities and amenities and would like to get straight into all which Indonesia has to offer by way of something like a boat charter, Bali is the entry point to best suit your arrival.
Bali makes for the best gateway into Indonesia mostly because of its authentically “international feel”, where one can easily communicate and understand what is required of them in English, avoiding any possible misunderstandings and misinterpretations, as is the case with most of the other entry points.
At the very least, Bali is a gateway for all internationals entering to familiarise themselves with all that Indonesia has to offer, since this is indeed the most tourist-friendly of entry gateways.
Indonesia is indeed a huge country in terms of population size, but any objective visitor cannot help but be amazed at how harmonious everything seems to be in terms of how the locals interact with each other and with visitors. For instance, they make no secret about the fact that it is indeed a Muslim country, but as long as you’re not intentionally going out of your way to disrespect the local laws, customs and regulations, something like using publically available Wi-Fi to redeem your £10 no deposit bonus won’t land you in the sort of trouble worthy of an appearance in a documentary.
Visitors who go before others tend to blow things way out of proportion and this permeates all kinds of scenarios. For instance, there’s a popular story about how a blogger used a bowl of water to take a picture of a temple in a way that made it look like there’s a natural body of water there. When other travellers subsequently went looking for that body of water, all they found was the rather unspectacular temple with not much else around to make for a so-called “Insta-perfect” shot.
The point is you should go and find out for yourself just how much of a great destination it is, with Bali serving as the ideal gateway, of course.