Indonesia in celebrity travel pics

Celebrities love to visit beautiful Indonesia. This actors' couple, living in Australia, has been to the country several times. Here they are in 2023 in Bali, enjoying a well-deserved holiday.

Image: Elsa Pataky / Instagram

Among the many famous people visiting Indonesia were King Willem Alexander and Queen Máxima of The Netherlands in March 2020. President Joko Widodo received them with a traditional salute.

Awed and inspired. That is how foreign visitors often react to the wonders of Indonesia. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway was one of them during his state visit to the country in 2012.

Let's explore the 4th-biggest nation in the world and see its people, monuments, and nature through the eyes of illustrious foreign visitors. One of them is Paris Hilton, who loves to visit the island of Bali.

Picture: parishilton/ Instagram

Or football star David Beckham. He visited the country as a UN Ambassador but also in his free time with the Beckham family.

Photo: UNICEF/UN0188666/Modola

A visit to Indonesia often starts in Jakarta. A metropolis with 10 million inhabitants, Jakarta appears to be the most Instagrammed city in the world. Or at least, that's what The Telegraph says.

In Jakarta many businesses are setting up, like the delivery and ride-hailing service Gojek, to build the country's technological growth. According to the IMF, Indonesia is the 7th largest economy (in GDP) in the world.

From Jakarta, the journey can continue in all directions. Indonesia is expansive and consists of 18,307 islands, according to a recent count in The Telegraph.

When traveling to Yogyakarta on the island of Java, it is impossible o ignore the Prambanan Temple complex. Denmark's Queen Margrethe II and Prince Henrik visited the monumental wonder in 2015.

Prambanan is a group of Hindu temples from the 9th century AD. The name 'Prambanan' means 'many priests.' Hinduism is one of Indonesia's six official religions, mostly practiced on the island of Bali.

Queen Máxima would also take her husband Willem Alexander to the monumental religious complex of Prambanan in 2020.

Prambanan was hidden for nearly a thousand years. The complex lay partly under the ground when people started digging it up in 1895. Reconstruction of the site began in 1918 and still continues in the 21st century.

The largest Hindu temple complex in Indonesia, Prambanan has been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Former US President Obama visited the monument in 2017, as well as the nearby Borobudur complex.

Image: Getty / BorobudurPark, X

Much more than Hindu, Indonesia is a Muslim country. It has the largest Muslim population in the world: 225 million out of its total of 261.1 million inhabitants. To get to know the country is to see its mosques, like the Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta.

Back in 2010, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited Istiqlal Mosque with Grand Imam Yaqub.

Istiqlal Mosque is immense and serves as a national place of worship. The word 'Istiqlal' is Arab for 'independence.' It took 17 years to build the mosque which was finally opened in 1978.

Barack Obama always had a good relationship with the leaders of Indonesia. After retiring as president, he returned to Indonesia in 2017 and met with Joko Widodo, his wife Iriana, and his youngest son Kaesang Pangarep. Widodo had become president of Indonesia during the second term of Obama's presidency, in 2014.

Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, is an esteemed host. He is a moderate Muslim who went on a pilgrimage to Mekka at the time of his campaign for the presidency. Here he is receiving the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud.

The president, here with Queen Margrethe of Denmark at Merdeka Palace, is a fan of heavy metal. He managed to bring Metallica to Indonesia and got a bass guitar from band member Robert Trujillo. The latter caused some awkwardness because it could be seen as a sort of bribe by the rockstar.

Widodo doesn't mind acting as a chauffeur for his foreign visitors. He drove around the Saudi King Salman when meeting at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta in 2017, and then they planted a tree.

Apart from its culture, Indonesia's big attractions are its natural wonders. Tourists are especially drawn to the beaches which amount to 57,716 kilometers (35,500 miles) of coastline. Here's an example: Jimbaran Beach in Bali.

Bali, more centrally located on the eastern tip of Java, is a major tourist hub in Indonesia. The Ujung Water Palace and the Sukadasa Park on Bali are among the island's highlights.

Bali draws international travelers for its weather, beaches, culture, and wildlife.

When filming 'Spider-Man: Far from Home,' Tom Holland took a break on a Bali beach. Of course, he was recognized and Indonesian fans took photos with him.

Image: DC / Swagmastaloux, X

Indonesia is does not just consist of beaches and temples. It is known for its many volcanoes. There's no less than 139 of them and many are active, too.

Toba Lake on Northern Sumatra is the largest volcanic lake in the world. It was created during a volcanic eruption between 69,000 and 77,000 thousands of years ago.

Apart from cities, beaches, and mountains, the Indonesian archipelago consists of a large part of rice fields. The agricultural landscape is spectacular.

Picture: Geio Tischler / Unsplash

Queen Máxima visited a small farm in Lampung in her role as UN Ambassador for Inclusive Finance for Development.

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As many other guests, football coach (and former world champion with France) Zinédine Zidane got to wear a traditional ikat shirt during his visit to Indonesia. He is standing next to president Susilo in Jakarta in 2007.

The streets of Jakarta are not all of the skyline type from the Instagram posts. There are many crowded neighbourhoods like this one, with children dreaming of becoming football pros.

In 2007, they got to play with Zidane and compare their Keepie Uppie skills with his.

The children got to play football and have some laughs with the famous international.

Leonardo DiCaprio went to Indonesia for a serious cause. He visited Gunung Leuser National Park in Aceh in 2016 to help preserve its wildlife.

Photo: leonardodicaprio/ Instagram

Orangutangs, the famous great apes of the Sumatra and Borneo rain forests, are considered critically endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

A more modest posture, so it seems, was taken by DiCaprio's colleague from the silver screen, Richard Gere. He put his palms together for a sacred and deferential hello.

Gere was visiting the famous Borobudur temple complex in Magelang, Central Java. It's a World Heritage Site, just like the Prambanan temples.

Borobudur is a Buddhist monument. Its name probably comes from the Sankrit words for 'Buddhist temple on the mountain.'

Borobudur is an architectural masterpiece from around 800 AD. It contains about 55,000 cubic meters of stone and must have cost at least 75 years to build.

Crown Prince Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway visited the Borobudur complex in 2012. They explored it while wearing traditional sarongs and, in the case of Haakon, a blue ikat shirt.

The 2,672 relief panels of the Borobudur complex portray scenes from daily life in 8th-century Java as well as religious figures and stories.

As the sun set over majestic Borobudur, the royal visitors from Norway said their goodbyes.

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