Palembang

Brief information about the Palembang

Palembang Palembang (Indonesian pronunciation: [palɛmˈbaŋ]) is the capital city of the Indonesian province of South Sumatra. The city proper covers 369.22 square kilometres (142.56 square miles) of land on both banks of Musi River on the eastern lowland of southern Sumatra, with an estimated population of 1,708,413 in 2014. Palembang is the second most populous city in Sumatra, after Medan, the ninth most populous city in Indonesia, and the nineteenth most populous city in Southeast Asia.

The Palembang metropolitan area comprises part of regencies surrounding the city such as Banyuasin, Ogan Ilir, and Ogan Komering Ilir, with a total estimated population of more than 3.5 million in 2015.Palembang is the one of the oldest cities in Southeast Asia.

It was once the capital city of Srivijaya, a powerful Buddhist kingdom that ruled many parts of the western Indonesian Archipelago and controlled many maritime trade routes, especially in the Strait of Malacca. The earliest evidence of the city's existence dates from the 7th century; a Chinese monk, Yijing, wrote that he visited Srivijaya in the year 671 for 6 months.

The first inscription in which Srivijaya was mentioned, Kedukan Bukit Inscription which was found in the city also dates from the 7th century. Palembang was incorporated into the Dutch East Indies in 1825 after the abolishment of the Palembang Sultanate. It was chartered as a city on 1 April 1906.

Palembang is mostly known by many Indonesians for Ampera Bridge, the city main landmark and pempek, one of Indonesian famous snack hailed from the city. Palembang is the host city of the 2011 Southeast Asian Games and 2018 Asian Games along with Jakarta. The first light rail system in Indonesia was operated in Palembang in July 2018.

Despite these, Palembang is still not among the most favorite tourist destinations in Indonesia. The city is also not well known in the world and has poor number of foreign tourists as it attracted only 9,850 foreign tourists of the 2,011,417 tourists who visited Palembang in 2017.

Traffic jams, floods, slums, pollution, and peatland fire are the most well known problems in Palembang.