Shopping in Indonesia: Best Malls, Markets and What to Buy

Jakarta has more than 170 malls, and the half-dozen that matter sit along the Sudirman-Thamrin axis. Grand Indonesia on Jalan Thamrin is the biggest: two wings linked by a skybridge, a Seibu department store, a floor of Indonesian designers and, on level 3 of the West Mall, Alun Alun Indonesia, the best single shop in the capital for good crafts at fixed prices. Plaza Indonesia across the road is the luxury mall, and Sarinah, two blocks south, is the country’s first department store, rebuilt in 2022 as a showcase for Indonesian batik, textiles and food brands. Further south, Plaza Senayan and Senayan City in Senayan, Pacific Place in SCBD and Pondok Indah Mall in Pondok Indah are where Jakartans actually shop, and in the north PIK Avenue and the newer PIK 2 strip mix outlets with the Pantjoran PIK Chinese food street. All open 10am to 10pm daily; international brands cost about what they do in Singapore, so buy Indonesian labels instead.

The markets are the better story. Pasar Baru, a pedestrian street dating from 1820 beside the cathedral, sells shoes, fabric by the metre and sportswear, with Indian tailors who have cut suits there for generations. Tanah Abang is Southeast Asia’s largest textile market, a dozen tower blocks (Blok A and B are the main ones) wholesaling batik, Muslim fashion and cloth from about 8am to 5pm; go on a weekday morning with cash, and buy three of anything for a wholesale price. Jalan Surabaya in Menteng is the antiques street, 500m of brass, vinyl, ship’s lamps and “Dutch colonial” pieces that are nearly all reproductions, so bargain to a third. Pasar Santa in Kebayoran Baru is the weekend market of coffee roasters, vinyl and indie fashion. For electronics, Glodok in West Jakarta is the Chinatown of phone and component shops, and the Mangga Dua complex to its north is the capital of fakes (see below).

Bandung, three hours from Jakarta by road or 45 minutes on the Whoosh high-speed train from Halim to Padalarang (IDR 150,000-250,000, about $9-15, with a feeder train on to Bandung station), is where Jakartans go to shop at weekends. The city’s garment factories stitch for international brands, and the factory outlets (“FO”) sell surplus, seconds and cancelled orders at a third of the retail price. They cluster on Jalan Riau (officially Jalan RE Martadinata): Heritage, The Secret, Grande and a dozen others in old Dutch villas, open about 9am to 9pm, with Rumah Mode on Jalan Setiabudi the biggest. Check seams and labels; some stock is genuine surplus, some is local production made to look like it.

Jalan Cihampelas is the “jeans street”, a kilometre of denim shops with giant fibreglass superheroes on their roofs, anchored by the Cihampelas Walk mall. Jalan Trunojoyo and Jalan Sultan Agung are home to Bandung’s distros, the independent streetwear labels with T-shirts from IDR 100,000 that make the city Indonesia’s fashion incubator. Pasar Baru Trade Center on Jalan Otto Iskandardinata is the textile market, nine floors of fabric, Muslim wear and batik from about 9am to 5pm. Food souvenirs are Amanda’s steamed brownies, Kartika Sari’s pisang molen and dodol (sticky coconut toffee) from Garut an hour south.

Yogyakarta is the place to buy batik, and Jalan Malioboro is where to start: a kilometre of batik shops, souvenir stalls and the two Teras Malioboro halls where the pavement vendors were moved in 2022. Prices are low (printed batik shirts from IDR 60,000, about $4) and quality varies; the stalls are for fun, the shops behind for real cloth. At the south end, Pasar Beringharjo, the city’s main market since 1758, has a ground floor packed with batik from IDR 50,000 printed sarongs to IDR 1,000,000-plus hand-drawn pieces, with herbs, brassware and antiques upstairs; it opens about 8:30am and winds down by 5pm. Hamzah Batik opposite is a fixed-price department store of batik and crafts, open until 9pm and a good price benchmark before you bargain elsewhere. For workshop quality, the batik houses on Tirtodipuran (Winotosastro, Plentong) let you watch cloth being waxed and dyed and sell from IDR 300,000, and Kampung Batik Giriloyo near Imogiri is a village of hand-drawn, natural-dye batik with half-day courses.

Kotagede, 5km southeast of the centre, has been Java’s silver town since the 1930s. The workshops along Jalan Kemasan and Jalan Mondorakan, HS Silver and Ansor’s Silver the best known, specialise in filigree (trap): fine silver wire worked into brooches, earrings and miniature carriages. Rings and earrings run IDR 150,000-500,000, and you can watch the smiths work and commission pieces in a day or two. Yogyakarta’s edible souvenir is bakpia, mung-bean pastries sold warm by the box at Bakpia Pathok 25 for about IDR 50,000.

An hour east by train, Solo (Surakarta) is arguably the better batik city: Pasar Klewer beside the Great Mosque is the biggest batik market in Java (9am to 4pm), the Laweyan and Kauman quarters are full of workshops in merchant houses, and Danar Hadi on Jalan Slamet Riyadi has a superb batik museum attached to its shop. Pekalongan on the north coast is “Batik City”, with the Setono wholesale market and the Museum Batik; Cirebon’s Trusmi village makes the mega mendung cloud-pattern batik; and Jepara carves teak furniture that it will ship anywhere by container.

Bali has its own shopping guide, so briefly: the Ubud Art Market opposite the palace in Ubud sells sarongs, baskets and carvings at tourist prices that bargain down by half; Sukawati art market, 20 minutes south, is where the Ubud stallholders buy and is cheaper for the same goods (8am to 6pm). Celuk is the silver village, Mas the woodcarving village, Batuan the painting village and the road through Tegallalang a kilometre of homeware wholesalers. Seminyak’s Jalan Kayu Aya has the island’s designer boutiques at Western prices, Kuta has the Beachwalk and Discovery malls plus Krisna, a fixed-price souvenir supermarket, and Pasar Badung in Denpasar is Bali’s biggest traditional market for spices, ceremonial textiles and snacks at local prices.

Lombok’s specialities are South Sea pearls, sold in the Sekarbela district of Mataram (freshwater strands from IDR 200,000; true South Sea pearls are priced per gram into the millions, so buy from a shop that certifies them), Sasak hand-woven cloth from Sukarara and pottery from Banyumulek. Further east, ikat is the thing: the weaving villages around Ende and Sikka in Flores sell blankets and shawls, Labuan Bajo’s shops stock Flores and Sumba cloth, and Kupang is the hub for Timorese ikat. A natural-dye Sumba hinggi (man’s blanket) that took months to weave costs IDR 2,000,000-10,000,000 ($120-600); chemical-dye tourist pieces are IDR 300,000-800,000.

Elsewhere: Bukittinggi’s Pasar Atas for Minang songket, Tomok market on Lake Toba for Batak ulos cloth, Jalan Somba Opu in Makassar for gold, Bugis silk sarongs and Toraja coffee, Banjarmasin for sasirangan tie-dye, and Ternate and Ambon, the original Spice Islands, for nutmeg and cloves by the kilo at a tenth of home prices.

• Batik: three grades, and the price gap is tenfold. Batik tulis is hand-drawn with a canting pen: equally sharp on both sides, slightly uneven lines, no exact repeats; a 2m kain (sarong length) costs IDR 500,000-5,000,000 and up, a shirt from IDR 700,000. Batik cap is stamped with a copper block: repeating pattern with visible joins, coloured through on both sides, IDR 150,000-500,000 a kain. Printed “batik” is a textile with a batik motif, pale on the back, IDR 30,000-100,000; fine for the beach, but not batik. Look at the reverse before you pay.
• Ikat and other weaving: Sumba, Flores, Timor and Toraja ikat, Palembang and Minang songket, Bali’s endek, Batak ulos. Natural dyes have soft, uneven colour; chemical dyes are brighter and cheaper.
• Silver: Kotagede and Celuk, stamped 925; price by weight plus workmanship, IDR 150,000-500,000 for rings and earrings. “German silver” is nickel alloy.
• Wood carving: Mas (Bali) masks and figures from IDR 100,000, Jepara teak, Toraja panels, Asmat carvings from Papua. Unseasoned wood cracks in dry climates, so check for splits; most “sandalwood” is scented softwood.
• Wayang puppets: wayang kulit shadow puppets of chiselled, painted buffalo hide, IDR 500,000-3,000,000 for performance quality and IDR 100,000-200,000 for tourist pieces; wayang golek wooden rod puppets from Bandung, IDR 150,000-1,000,000.
• Coffee: Gayo (Aceh), Mandheling (North Sumatra), Toraja, Kintamani (Bali), Bajawa (Flores), Wamena (Papua); 200g bags at IDR 60,000-150,000 from specialty roasters. Skip kopi luwak: most comes from civets caged and force-fed on Bali’s “agrotourism” plantations, much of it is blended or fake, and genuine wild-collected beans cost IDR 1,000,000-plus per 100g.
• Kretek clove cigarettes: Gudang Garam, Djarum and Dji Sam Soe at IDR 25,000-45,000 a pack; banned in the United States and the European Union, so do not take them there.
• Spices: Banda nutmeg and mace, Ternate cloves, Kerinci cinnamon, Lampung pepper, vanilla. Buy whole and sealed, and declare them in Australia, New Zealand and the US.
• Food gifts: kecap manis, jarred sambal, Indomie, bakpia (Yogyakarta), dodol (Garut), pie susu (Bali), Tolak Angin herbal sachets.
• Everything else: Papuan noken string bags, Dayak beadwork, Lombok pearls, keris daggers (fine to export, but check them into the hold), Balinese paintings from Batuan and Ubud.

Bargaining is expected at markets, street stalls and craft villages and not in malls, supermarkets, department stores or fixed-price shops like Hamzah Batik, Krisna and Alun Alun Indonesia. Ask “berapa?” (how much), counter at 40-50% of the first price and expect to settle at 60-70%; walking away slowly is the most effective move, and buying several items earns a discount. Keep it good-humoured; a hard bargain over IDR 10,000 ($0.60) is not a win. In Bali, the first sale of the day is thought to bring luck (penglaris), so morning buyers get the best prices. Carry cash in small notes; the QRIS QR codes most traders now display work with Indonesian e-wallets and some foreign banking apps, not with Western cards.

Malls open 10am to 10pm every day, later during the pre-Lebaran “midnight sales”. Traditional markets start around 6am and are best before 10am; Beringharjo closes about 5pm and Klewer about 4pm. Craft workshops keep roughly 9am to 5pm hours and many close on Sunday; night markets run 5pm to 11pm. On Nyepi, the Balinese Day of Silence in March, every shop in Bali shuts for 24 hours. Visa and Mastercard work in malls and larger shops (American Express less so); choose to pay in rupiah if the terminal offers your home currency. ATMs dispense a maximum of IDR 2,500,000-3,000,000 per withdrawal, and the money changers to trust are the licensed ones with the PVA Berizin sign.

Indonesia charges 11% VAT (PPN) and refunds it to foreign passport holders who are not Indonesian citizens or permanent residents and stay no more than 60 days. Shop only at stores displaying the “Tax Refund for Tourists” logo and ask for a tax invoice (faktur pajak) with your passport details. Each invoice must carry at least IDR 50,000 of VAT (a purchase of roughly IDR 500,000), and your combined invoices at least IDR 500,000 of VAT, so about IDR 4.5-5 million ($270-300) of shopping, all bought within one month of departure and carried out with you. At the airport, go to the VAT Refund counter before you check your bags, with passport, invoices and receipts, boarding pass and the goods. Refunds up to IDR 5,000,000 are paid in cash in rupiah; larger amounts go by bank transfer. Counters are at Soekarno-Hatta (Jakarta), Ngurah Rai (Bali), Juanda (Surabaya), Kualanamu (Medan) and Yogyakarta International Airport. Participating shops are mostly department stores and brand boutiques in the big malls, Sarinah and some batik houses; market purchases do not qualify. Rules change, so check the tax office’s VAT refund page before you go.

Indonesia manufactures a lot of the world’s counterfeits, and Mangga Dua in north Jakarta is their capital: ITC Mangga Dua, Mangga Dua Square and the Pasar Pagi wholesale market sell bags, watches, football shirts and sneakers graded “KW Super” and “KW 1” by closeness to the original, and Kuta’s Jalan Legian stalls and the ITC malls in every city do the same. Customs in the EU, US and Australia seize counterfeits and can fine you.

On the way home, standard allowances apply: roughly EUR 430 of goods, 200 cigarettes and 1 litre of spirits into the EU; GBP 390 into the UK; USD 800 into the US (but no kretek); AUD 900 and only 25 cigarettes into Australia, which also inspects wooden items for bark and borer holes and requires spices, seeds and food to be declared. Leaving Indonesia, the Cultural Heritage Law requires a permit to export heritage objects more than 50 years old; genuine antiques are rare in tourist shops, but get a receipt that says “reproduction” for anything that looks old. Wildlife products are the real trap: hawksbill turtle-shell jewellery (sold in Bali and Lombok), coral, giant-clam shells, bird-of-paradise and cassowary feathers, ivory and seahorses are illegal to export under CITES and are seized and prosecuted at home. Declare more than IDR 100,000,000 in cash on departure and pack keris and other blades in checked luggage.

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