Surabaya

A tower shaped like an upturned nail, raised for the 1945 battle, with the museum buried underground beside it. A glass pyramid at one corner of the square leads down to recordings of the independence speeches and battle dioramas.

The old building of a clove-cigarette works that has been rolling since the 1930s, opened as a museum with no admission charge. Upstairs windows look down on the floor where women roll the cigarettes by hand, though that work happens on weekdays only.

The submarine Pasopati, bought from the Soviet Union and serving the Indonesian navy from 1962, hauled ashore as a memorial. Visitors file single line from bow to stern through cramped cabins and the torpedo room; it sits by the river beside a shopping mall.

Built by Chinese Indonesian Muslims to honour Zheng He, the Ming admiral, with a red-tiled roof that recalls a Chinese temple. It is small, so Friday prayers overflow into the yard; for a look around, time the visit away from prayer hours.

The mosque where Sunan Ampel lies, one of the nine saints who spread Islam across Java, ringed by lanes that form the Arab traders' market. Dates, scented oils and prayer goods start at the lane mouths, and pilgrims keep arriving late into the night.

A colonial hotel opened in 1910, where in September 1945 young men climbed the roof and tore the blue stripe off the Dutch flag to leave the Indonesian red and white. Non-guests may walk into the lobby and the garden arcades.

A street of old Chinese shophouses with a red gateway at its head. Wholesalers and gold shops trade by day, and a block over on Jalan Coklat the Hok An Kiong temple tends the sea goddess through a haze of incense.

A bridge of just over 5km between Surabaya and Madura, opened in 2009. Nobody may pull over on the deck, so the full span is taken in from the rest area at the Madura end or from the Surabaya shore.

A Chinese temple on reclaimed ground along the Kenjeran shore, a towering Guanyin statue rising beside the waves. A walkway leads out over the sea, and many visitors aim for sunset, when the sky over Madura turns red.

The site of the 14th-century Majapahit capital, where red-brick gateways and bathing pools lie scattered among rice fields. Bajang Ratu and Wringin Lawang gates are far apart, so a motorbike taxi hired in Mojokerto takes you round them one by one.

A red bridge over the Kalimas. In the 1945 Battle of Surabaya, British Brigadier Mallaby was killed near here and the fighting escalated. Old Dutch trading houses fill the district around it, and a mall right beside it means many see only the bridge.

A central park beside Jalan Raya Darmo, with the tomb of the 15th-century Islamic preacher Sunan Bungkul at the back. In the evening food stalls ring the park and young people skate. Sunday mornings, cars are barred from Darmo and walkers take it over.

Opened in 1916, one of the oldest zoos in Indonesia. Native species such as Komodo dragons and orangutans make up much of the collection. Out front stands the city's emblem, a statue of a shark and crocodile locked in a fight, so people see the two together.

A red-brick neo-Gothic church from around 1900, Surabaya's oldest Catholic church. Formally the Church of the Birth of the Virgin Mary, it lifts two tall spires over the old town by the Red Bridge. Between Masses, stained-glass light falls on the nave.

A national mosque beside the highway on the southern edge of town, under a big blue dome ringed by four small ones. Its minaret has a lift up to a viewing deck over Surabaya. Avoid wandering the prayer hall during prayers and go in once they finish.

Boardwalks run through coastal mangroves east of the centre, and boats follow the channel out to the river mouth on the Madura Strait. Waterbirds and monkeys show up often. The open boats get hot, so a late afternoon ride with the sun low is better.

In 2006 mud burst from the ground after gas drilling at Porong in Sidoarjo, to the south, and buried several villages whole. You walk the embankment built around the grey mud plain, still steaming. Motorbike drivers on the dyke offer themselves as guides.