BOGOR TRAVEL GUIDE AND TOURIST ATTRACTIONS FOR 2024

Welcome to Bogor. It has a listing in the Guinness Book of Records as the city with "the most days per year with thunder". In fact it is so wet that the locals call it "rain city" or "Kota Hujan". Bogor's Dutch colonial masters were a little more enamoured with it though. They christened it Buitenzong, without a care. Just an hour from Jakarta, Bogor used to be where the Dutch would go to set up post, when it was actually dry.

Located some 300 metres above sea level, Bogor is less muggy than Jakarta, and a very welcome respite for the Europeans from the oppressive humidity in the capital that made living there just barely tolerable.

A pleasant drive through soft hills laid with by tea plantations lead to the very highlight of the city. Kebun Raya Bogor. The Botanical Gardens. Before Sir Stamford Raffles went and founded Singapore, he spent five years here in Bogor, and was the one that created this world famous garden.

The botany enthusiast served as governor of Bogor for the British till it was taken over by the Dutch in 1817. The gardens were turned over to a German, Professor Reinhardt, who continued Raffles' work, studying the indigenous plants.

Nurtured by assistants from London's Kew Gardens, the Kebun Raya blossomed to hold more than 15,000 plants from all over the world. Its most famous resident is the Rafflesia, named after the man who created this oasis in the first place.

It reigns as the world's biggest flowers, able to grow to a diameter of a metre and a weight of 10 kg. Bogor is one of the few places to see the Rafflesia, a flower endemic to Southeast Asia. Since the colonial days, Bogor has been the retreat of choice for both the city's and the country's elite. It had been former president Sukarno's wish to be buried here, and remains one of the five presidential retreats. Take a drive or hop on a train to Bogor and find out why.