Climbing in Indonesia

Useful Tips for Climbing and Travelling in South East Asia

TheCragJournal12 Comments

South East Asia is a fantastic region to visit as a travelling climber. The rock is amazing quality, there are areas to suit everyones taste, there is a never-ending amount of culture to learn about & experience and the food is delicious! We decided to write this article to help give climbers an idea of what to expect and how to make the most of their trip. The planning stage of a trip to South East Asia can be quite time consuming. Hopefully the many hours we spent planning before our trip, as well as our experiences on the trip, will yield some useful information and tips for other climbers.

Climber deep water soloing, hanging from only their arms on a steep overhanging roof section of limestone high above the turquoise blue sea.
Fantastic deep water soloing at Koh Poda, Thailand

Below is a map of all the different crags we visited during our 6 months in South East Asia. If you would like to read more about specific areas, please visit our individual posts on Malaysia, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and The Philippines.

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Climbing in Indonesia: A Journey through South East Asia

TheCragJournal19 Comments

Indonesia is a prodigious country, with an extraordinary amount of records to its name. Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country, the world’s largest archipelagic state and is home to over 700 languages. Choosing where to go in somewhere so vast is tricky, but we settled on Java as it has by far the most documented climbing areas. We spent a month on Java and it flew by, trying to visit anywhere else on top of that would have spread us too thin. Java is the world’s most populous island with over 145 million people, bigger than the population of the UK and France put together! It is an exceptional place, the people are great, the culture is captivating and the geography is fantastic.

Climber on a slightly overhanging wall looking for the next move. The rock is pocketed pink and grey andesite. Below are the flat green rice fields and small villages. Behind these are more jungle covered mountains in the haze.
Beautiful scenery and rock at Bongkok, on ‘Letjen of the Fall’, 6b
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