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The islands of Indonesia spread in a wide arc, more than 5,000 kilometers long, from mainland Southeast Asia to Papua New Guinea. Dotted with volcanoes, covered with thick tropical vegetation and bright green rice fields, and surrounded by coral reefs, the Indonesian archipelago is one of the world's most beautiful places.

The most reliable figure offered for the number of islands in Indonesia is 17, 508, including rocks and sandbanks exposed by the tides. Some 6,000 of these are important enough to have names, and perhaps 1,000 are inhabited.

Indonesia is the largest archipelagic nation in the world, with at least 80,000 kilometers of coastline. Some estimates run as high as 200,000 kilometers, but even the lower figure makes Indonesia's coastline longer than that of any other nation. The territorial waters of Indonesia include 3.1 million square kilometers of tropical seas.

Indonesia is the world's fourth-largest country, with 204 million inhabitants. Most are Muslims, but there are significant Christian and Hindu minorities. Racially the majority of Indonesians are Malayo-Polynesian, with Chinese and Papuan minorities. The capital and largest city is Jakarta.