Best Time To Visit Jakarta

July and August are the driest months of the year. August is the driest of all, getting roughly a seventh of the rain that falls in February.

Book these two months early. They overlap the Indian summer holidays and the Indonesian domestic peak, so flights and city hotels fill well in advance.

September is the last reliably dry month and the best value in the window. The school holidays are over, so rates soften while the weather still holds.

October is the turn of the season, with showers getting heavier as the month goes on. Early October usually still works; late October does not.

November and December are wet, and the rain builds through both. Downpours are heavy enough to stall traffic across the city for hours at a time.

If December is fixed and you want dry weather, Hua Hin in Thailand is close to rainless that month, while Thailand's Gulf islands are at their wettest.

January and February are the two months to avoid. February is Jakarta's wettest month by a wide margin, and these are the months when the city's flooding is at its worst.

For fixed dates in this window, Kota Kinabalu is at its driest in February and Phu Quoc is in the middle of its dry season.

March and April are still wet, but the trend is downward. Rain falls away from February's peak through both months, and the flood risk goes with it.

Late April is a fair compromise if you want lower rates before dry-season pricing starts in May.

For Kota Tua, the National Monument and the museums, travel between June and September, when you can be outside all day without planning around rain.

For shopping, food and business, any month works. The malls, Sudirman and the convention venues are indoors, so the wet season costs you traffic rather than the trip.