Indonesia.

Indonesia is one of the cheapest, most different places you can pick for an exchange, a tropical archipelago where your euro stretches absurdly far and almost nothing works the way it does at home. It's for the student who wants the deep-end version of study abroad: warm people, chaotic street food, volcanoes on the weekend and a language you can start speaking in weeks.

Spend a semester in Bandung or Jakarta and you'll collect culture shock, cheap living and stories nobody will quite believe. It's not the pick if you want everything smooth and in English, but if you're up for the friction, few places give you this much for so little.

Indonesian campuses are social in a group-hangout way more than a big-party way. You'll get adopted fast, students are genuinely curious about foreigners and will invite you to eat, to their hometown, to whatever's happening. Expect endless coffee (the cafe scene is huge, especially in Bandung), late-night warung food and student-org events.

Nightlife exists, Jakarta has proper clubs and rooftop bars, but it's pricier and less central to student life than in a European city. A lot of the bonding happens over €1.50 plates of food and bottomless kopi. One heads-up: during Ramadan the daily rhythm shifts for a month, and daytime eating goes low-key.

Indonesia is the kind of cheap that resets your sense of money. On roughly €400-800 a month you live well, the low end is a frugal semester in Bandung, the high end is Jakarta with regular outings. Your biggest cost is rent; after that, day-to-day spending is tiny because street food, transport and phone data cost almost nothing.

Where prices jump toward European levels is imported stuff, cheese, wine, foreign brands, fancy gyms. Live local and you'll save a fortune and probably eat better. Keep some cash on you, because plenty of warungs and boarding houses still don't take cards.

• Kos (student boarding room): €80-200/mo
• Warung / street-food meal: €1-2
• Grab or Gojek ride across town: €1-2
• Monthly phone data: €4-6/mo
• Big bottle of Bintang beer: €2-3

Most students live in a kos, a boarding house of single rooms, often a short walk from campus, sometimes with breakfast, a cleaner and a curfew. They're the cheap, social, normal option (€80-200/mo). Pricier 'kos eksklusif' add AC and en-suite; full apartments exist mainly in Jakarta and cost a lot more.

Search on Mamikos and Cove, lean on your host university's buddy/mentor scheme, and join the incoming-exchange WhatsApp groups. Scam rule: never pay a deposit before seeing the room in person or on a live video call, be wary of listings that are too cheap, and pay the owner directly, not a random middleman.

• Basic kos room: €80-150/mo
• Kos eksklusif (AC, en-suite): €150-300/mo
• Shared apartment, Jakarta: €300-500/mo
• Search on Mamikos or Cove, verify before you pay

Forget trains-and-trams thinking: Indonesia runs on apps. Gojek and Grab give you motorbike taxis (ojek), cars and food delivery for near-nothing, a cross-town ojek is €1-2 and it's how everyone gets to class. Jakarta now has real public transport too: the MRT, KRL commuter trains and the TransJakarta busway, all cheap. Bandung is smaller and more ojek-dependent.

There's no real student travel pass; you just top up an e-wallet (GoPay or OVO) and go. Intercity on Java is easy and scenic by train (book on the KAI Access app), and for other islands budget airlines like Lion, Citilink and AirAsia are dirt cheap.

• Ojek (motorbike taxi) across town: €1-2
• Jakarta MRT / commuter train ride, under €0.50
• Bandung↔Jakarta: 45min on the Whoosh fast train (~€12)
• Domestic flight (e.g. to Bali), from €30

Teaching leans formal and lecture-heavy, with a lot of respect for the dosen (lecturer) and more group presentations and continuous assessment than you might expect. Attendance is often mandatory and taken seriously. Grading runs on a 0-4 GPA scale (A=4), and Indonesia counts credits in SKS, not ECTS, a full semester of roughly 20 SKS lines up with the standard 30 ECTS, but confirm the exact mapping with your home coordinator before you commit.

English-taught courses exist but are limited; your best bet is the 'international class' programs at top universities. Standouts: Universitas Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta/Depok, Bandung's ITB (engineering and tech) and Universitas Padjadjaran (Unpad), plus UGM over in Yogyakarta.

It depends heavily on your nationality, but for a full semester almost everyone needs a proper study visa, not a tourist stamp. Your host university acts as sponsor: they arrange a study permit and a VITAS (limited-stay visa), which you convert to a KITAS residence permit after you land.

Start early, this goes through the immigration system and can take one to two months, so chase your Indonesian coordinator for documents well before you fly. Short programs under 60 days can sometimes run on a visa-on-arrival or a B211 visit visa, but don't assume it: get written confirmation of exactly which visa your program uses.

• Full semester: university-sponsored VITAS → KITAS permit
• Start the paperwork 2-3 months ahead
• Bring a passport valid 12+ months, spare photos, proof of funds
• Short (<60 day) programs may use a visit visa, confirm first

You'll eat incredibly well for almost nothing: nasi goreng, mie goreng, gado-gado, sate and rice with whatever you point at in a warteg, usually €1-2 a plate. Food is often eaten with the right hand or a spoon-and-fork combo (no knife), and the left hand is considered unclean, small stuff that trips students up.

It's a Muslim-majority country, so dress modestly on campus and around mosques, keep alcohol low-key (it's pricey anyway), and during Ramadan expect many places to close in daylight while you eat discreetly out of respect. Learn a few words of Bahasa and people light up. Festivals to catch: Idul Fitri, Nyepi in Bali and Independence Day on 17 August.

Studcasa's Indonesian exchanges centre on two very different cities on Java: one the huge, hectic capital, the other the cool, creative student town up in the hills. Pick by the kind of semester you want.

• Jakarta, the megacity: best for internships, nightlife, MRT and real big-city buzz, if you can handle the traffic and higher rents
• Bandung, cooler climate, cafe and campus culture, cheaper and more laid-back; the classic student pick

This is half the reason to come. You're sitting on a country of 17,000 islands with budget flights and cheap trains, so weekend trips are the whole point. Java alone hands you volcanoes, temples and old cities within a train ride, while the wider archipelago is a few cheap flight-hours away.

Travel light, book trains and buses on apps, and expect journeys to take longer than the map suggests, Indonesian distances are deceptive and 'on time' is flexible.

• Yogyakarta, Java's culture capital: Borobudur, Prambanan, cheap and studenty (train from Bandung/Jakarta)
• Mount Bromo / Ijen, sunrise volcano hikes in East Java
• Bali, beaches, waterfalls and nightlife, from ~€30 return by air
• Gili Islands / Lombok, snorkelling, no cars, backpacker heaven
• Komodo (Flores), dragons and world-class diving, the splurge trip

The mistakes here are almost never about danger, they're about doing local life the hard way. Get an e-wallet and the ride apps on day one, keep cash for warungs, and slow down: 'jam karet' (rubber time) means things start late, and that's completely normal.

• Install Gojek/Grab + GoPay/OVO before you even leave the airport
• Grab a local SIM (Telkomsel) at arrivals, data is €4-6/mo
• Carry small cash; many warungs and kos don't take cards
• Drink only bottled or filtered water and ease into street food
• Dress modestly on campus; pack a light rain jacket for wet season
• Learn 20 words of Bahasa, 'terima kasih', 'berapa?', locals love it