Bogor Botanical Gardens

The garden was laid out in 1817 on ground belonging to the palace beside it, and it is one of the oldest tropical botanical collections anywhere, running to roughly eighty-seven hectares in the middle of a busy city. Paths lead through an avenue of enormous canarium trees, a palm collection, a bamboo section, a pond of giant waterlilies and an orchid house. Fruit bats hang in daytime colonies over some of the walks. A zoological museum at the north end holds a blue whale skeleton and a large old stuffed collection. The lawns in front of the white palace are grazed by spotted deer and closed to the public.

What you actually see

• The canarium avenue - a corridor of huge buttressed trees near the main gate.
• The orchid house - the glasshouse collection, with a separate entrance fee.
• Bat colonies - fruit bats hanging in daylight above several of the paths.
• The zoological museum - a blue whale skeleton and old natural history cases.

When to go

Bogor is one of the wettest cities in Java and afternoon thunderstorms are close to a daily event, so go in the morning and plan to be out by two. The dry months, May to September, are less reliable here than elsewhere on the island. Weekdays are quiet; Sunday brings large family crowds and the paths near the entrance fill up.

Honest expectations

It rains hard and often, and there is little shelter once you are deep into the garden. Labelling is patchy and many trees carry only a Latin name on a faded plate. The corpse flower and rafflesia are almost never in bloom, despite the signs pointing to them. The palace lawns are fenced off, and the train from Jakarta is crowded at both ends of the day.

Nearby

Tea estates and the Puncak pass road climb into the hills south of the city.