The Rain City of Indonesia

                                BOGOR

Bogor is known as the Rain City of Indonesia. The nickname is attached to the city as it has the highest level of rainfall. In average , daily, the city is poured by 454 mm of water. Rain also comes more than 320 days in a year.

The level of rain in Bogor is not the highest in the world. It is not even considered as the top ten of the rain cities on earth. The city ranked first is Chilaos in Reunion Island which reaches 1,870 mm.

However, the nickname was already given long time ago even before the rain city rank was ever made.

Weather of the Rain City

The city is surrounded by three mountains i.e. Mount Salak (The Silver Mount), Mount Gede (The Big/Tall Mountain and Mount Pangrango. All are actually still active but they have slept for quite long . The last eruption happened was when Mount Salak erupted in 1938.

Being located more between 150 m-330 M from the sea level, also its position that is on the foot of three mountains, Bogor has a cool weather and the humidity is quite high. It is also quite wet due to the rain.

Short history of the Rain city

Bogor’s founding date, formally is June the 3rd, 1482. The date was not actually the date when Bogor was established. The date was taken from the coronation of Prabu Siliwangi (The King of Siliwangi) , the King of Sunda Kingdom that had a capital in currently known as Bogor. His decision to move the capital of his kingdom to this city made his coronation date used as the founding date of the rain city.

Area and Population of the Rain city

Bogor has been divided into a Regency and Municipalities (City). The city is independent from the Regency and under separate government. The Regency leader is called Bupati (Regent) and the city’s is Walikota (Mayor)

The area of Bogor city is only 118.8 square km and the regency is more than 2,000 square km. If both are combined, it forms the 14th largest city in Indonesia.

The city has almost one million people and its population density , varies among its sub-districts, is between 5,000 people/square km upto 11,000 people/square km. It’s quite a crowded city. The Regency is much less, its density is around 1,100-1,300 people/square kilometer.

                                                    The view of Bogor Palace 

 

Language and culture

The culture in Bogor are mostly dominated by Sundanese culture. It is something that cause no wonder because not only Bogor but almost all West Java in the medieval era were under the sovereignty of Sunda Kingdom.

However due to the rapid growth and development of Jakarta, the now Capital of Indonesia, Bogor in parallel also changes. The migration of people from the crowded capital has been affecting the cultural situation of Bogor. People from various ethnic in Indonesia has entered and resided in this rain city. As a consequence the balance of cultural situation is also different from it used to be ten or twenty years ago.
The change of the cultural environment in the rain city, Bogor, also has affected the usage of the language. The current main language in Bogor now is Indonesian and the second is Sundanese. Some other ethnic languages like Javanese , Batak and Padang language can be found.

International languages like English will surely become more and more popular in Bogor. Other languages such as Japanese, Chinese, Mandarin are being learned by many Bogor people.

Tourism

Bogor, the Rain City was quite old. As it was above mentioned , it was considered to be founded in 1482. This is a very old city. There are many historical places around the city.

Besides being located among three mountains, Bogor has been fortunate to be given by the nature quite lots of area containing beautiful landscape and panorama.

There are many lovely places to visit but among those, the most important and attractive tourism places are Bogor Palace and Bogor Botanical Garden.

In the year of 2013, 3 millions domestic tourists and 150 thousands people from overseas visited Bogor and the numbers grows yearly.

Travel and places

Lily pond in the Bogor Botanical Garden.

On a national tourism exhibition of 2010 in Jakarta, Bogor was recognized as the most attractive tourist city of Indonesia.The city and its surrounding area are visited by about 1.8 million people per year, of whom more than 60,000 are foreigners. The main tourist attraction is the Bogor Botanical Garden. Founded in 1817, it contains more than 6,000 species of tropical plants. Besides, about 42 bird species breed within the garden, although this number is declining and was 62 before 1952. The garden's 87-hectare area within the city was supplemented in 1866 by a 120-hectare park in suburban town of Cibodas. Much of the original rainforest was preserved within the garden providing specimens for scientific studes. Besides, the garden was enriched by collections of palms, bamboos, cacti, orchids and ornamental trees. It became famous in the late 19th century and was visited by naturalists from abroad to conduct scientific research. For example, the Russian St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences had a Buitenzorg scholarship for young scientists to work at Bogor.The staff of Bogor garden also administer three other major gardens of Iindonesia: the Cibodas Botanical Garden founded 1862 in West Java, the Purwodadi Botanical Garden in East Java and the Bali Botanic Garden founded in 1959 on Bali island.

Another tourist attraction is the presidential palace with the total area of 28 hectares, including 1.8492 hectares of the palace buildings. The palace is surrounded by a park with a small pond. The park is home to a herd of tame deer and is open to the public most of the year. The palace is accessible during holidays, such as the City Day and Independence Day; it has a collection of 450 paintings and 360 sculptures.
The city and its suburbs contain dozens of medieval stone stelae (prasasti). Fifteen prasasti of the greatest historical and cultural value are collected in a special pavilion in the district of Batutulis. In the western part of Bogor there is a large lake Gede (area 6 hectares) surrounded by the reserved forest area and a forest park. In the protected area there are several research facilities, and the recreation areas host sports activities, boating and fishing.
On the territory of the botanic garden, there is a cemetery established in 1784. It contains 42 historical graves of the Dutch colonial officials, military officers and scientists, who served in Bogor, Jakarta and other cities in West Java from the late 18th to early 20th centuries. Nearby, there are three graves of the early Sunda Kingdom (15th century): the wife of the founder of Bogor Silivangi, Galuh Mangku Alam, vizier Ba'ul and commander Japra. The locals regard these individuals as the city's patrons. Other historical places are the Bogor Cathedral – built in 1750, it is one of the oldest operational Catholic Churches in Indonesia, and the Buddhist temple Hok Tek Bio, built in 1672 in the classical South Chinese style. It is the first Buddhist temple of Bogor and one of the oldest in Indonesia.
Nearby is the Jaksa Waterfall.

Traffic

 

Recently the Bogor City has been awarded by the Indonesia Transportation Department as “The most jammed city in Indonesia”. Their research showed that average vehicles speed in this city was only 15 kilometer per hour.

This new title should have shown how bad the traffic situation in the city.