Islands

   According to the CIA factbook, Indonesia has 17,508 islands.  According to a 2002 survey by the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space, the Indonesian archipelago has 18,307 islands.  Some people say that 1,000 islands are inhabited, others say that around 6,000 islands are inhabited. 

   Why all the confusion?  Some of those islands are very small, and some islands are temporarily inhabited depending on the time of year.  It can all get very complicated...

   On our recent trip to visit former coworkers in Flores, we snapped this quick photo out of the airplane window.  This might give you a better idea of how small many of those islands are.