Thousand Islands

Coral Islands An Hour Or Two North Of A City Of Thirty Million, Holding The Ruins Of The Dutch Quarantine Station Where Pilgrims Bound For Mecca Were Held · Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta

Jakarta has thirty million people and almost no way out, and THE THOUSAND ISLANDS ARE THE WAY OUT - a scatter of low coral islands in the Java Sea, an hour or two by fast boat from Ancol or Muara Angke, where there are beaches, reefs and no traffic. The nearer ones are day-trip crowded and the further ones are genuinely quiet. WHAT ALMOST NOBODY GOES FOR IS ONRUST. THE DUTCH HAD A SHIPYARD THERE, AND LATER A QUARANTINE STATION, AND FOR DECADES INDONESIAN PILGRIMS BOUND FOR MECCA WERE HELD ON THAT ISLAND before sailing and again on return - tens of thousands of people processed through barracks whose foundations are still in the grass, beside a cemetery. It is a strange, heavy, half-forgotten place forty minutes from a shopping mall. THE WATER NEAR JAKARTA IS NOT CLEAN and the reefs improve sharply with distance from the city. Boats run morning-weighted from Ancol and Muara Angke and come back in the afternoon, weekends bring the capital out in force, and there are no cars on the inhabited islands at all - which after Jakarta is most of the point.

Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta, Kepulauan Seribu, Jakarta, Indonesia

FAST BOATS RUN FROM ANCOL AND MUARA ANGKE, taking roughly an hour to the nearer islands and TWO OR MORE TO THE FAR NORTHERN ONES; schedules are MORNING-WEIGHTED AND RETURN IN THE AFTERNOON, and CROSSINGS ARE CANCELLED IN ROUGH WEATHER. THE ISLANDS DIVIDE SHARPLY: PRAMUKA, TIDUNG, HARAPAN AND PARI are inhabited, cheap and reachable by public boat, while several others are PRIVATE RESORT ISLANDS with their own transfers and prices. ONRUST AND THE NEIGHBOURING ISLANDS are an archaeological park with daytime hours and a small fee, reached by chartered boat. A NATIONAL PARK FEE applies in the northern section. WATER QUALITY IMPROVES WITH DISTANCE FROM JAKARTA and the nearest islands are not worth swimming off. Weekends are extremely busy; midweek is a different place.

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