Palembang, Venice of The South East Asia

Most of the tourist attraction in Palembang is related to the history of ancient Srivijaya Kingdom and Palembang Sultanate. Here are some of the tourist attractions.

What’s most popular keywords when someone speak about Palembang? River Musi, Bridge Ampera, Sriwijaya, pempek, and fish crackers. Established in 682 AD (according to Kedukan Bukit inscription), Palembang is the oldest city of Indonesia, and the second biggest city of Sumatera Island. The city was split by River Musi, the longest river in Sumatera Island. The 750 km river is still use for transportation, that’s why Palembang is nicknamed as Venice of The South East Asia.

Balaputradewa Museum
Balaputradewa Museum located at Jl. Srijaya Negara I No. 288, Palembang. Established in 1978, the museum’s building was designed with Palembang traditional architecture style. Museum’s collection are dominated with artifacts from Srivijaya Kingdom, Palembang Sultanate, and cultural artifacts of South Sumatera.

From the museum collection, we can conclude that at their heyday, Srivijaya was well known center of Buddhism. The most popular collection is megalithic statue depicting a person riding elephant. But people thought the statue was part of legendary figure called Si Pahit Lidah (“The Bitter Tongue”),  which anyone curse by him would turned into stone.

Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Museum
Second museum in Palembang is Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II (SMB II) Museum. The museum located near Ampera Bridge, in front of Benteng Kuto Besak (BKB) pier, on the side of old Kuto Besak Fort. Building use for museum was a resident office in colonial era. Historians believe the site of the museum was used for Kuto Lamo fort of Palembang Sultanate which destroyed by the Dutch.

Eventhought SMB II Museum ini much smaller than Balaputradewa Museum, but they preserved similar colections: replica of inscription, South Sumatera cultural collection, and artifacts from Palembang Sultanate. For the record, althought this museum inhabit an old building, the ambience inside the museum is not that spooky, since they installed the lighting good enough.

River Musi and Ampera Bridge
Ampera Bridge is the icon of Palembang, lied accros River Musi, connecting Seberang Ulu and Seberang Ilir regions. The bridge was built in 1962 by the order of Bung Karno, the first president of Indonesia. At that time, the red bridge was the longest bridge in South East Asia. Althought the bridge designed as vertical-lift bridge to allow big ships passed, since 1970 the beam was no longer lifted caused it made unacceptable delay in traffic.

Tourists can rent boat from BKB pier and take a trip throughout River Musi. We can see tradisional house, port of Palembang, fertilizer factory, and also the Temple of Pulo Kemaro. Across the river, we can see traditional boat used for transporting food and household supplies. In some special event, we can see decorated boat passing across the river.