Send a letter to Indonesia from Sweden

Start with the recipient's name, followed by the street address using 'Jl.' (short for Jalan, meaning street) before the street name.

The house number is written as 'No. 45' after the street name.

RT and RW codes are essential: RT is the neighbourhood number (Rukun Tetangga) and RW is the hamlet number (Rukun Warga). These help the postal carrier locate the correct household within densely populated areas.

After the RT/RW codes, write the subdistrict (kelurahan), district (kecamatan), city, and the five-digit postal code.

The final line must read INDONESIEN in uppercase—this is the Swedish name for Indonesia, required because your letter is sorted in Sweden before leaving the country, even though you're writing the rest of the address in English.

The last line is always the country name in Swedish: INDONESIEN. This surprises people who write the rest of the address in English, but the letter is sorted in Sweden before it leaves the country, and Swedish sorting reads Swedish. Everything above that line should look exactly as it would if the letter had been posted inside Indonesia, because a postal worker there is the one who has to read it.

Almost every letter that fails to arrive has an address problem, not a transport problem. These are the mistakes that keep coming back on mail posted from Sweden to Indonesia:

Always add a sender address. A letter with a correct sender comes back to you if the address is wrong, and you can then send it again. Without one, the letter is simply gone.

Normal delivery is 12–25 vardagar, counted from the moment we hand the letter to PostNord — not from the moment you order. Order before 11:45 on a weekday and the letter is handed in the same day.

Most of the variation comes from distribution inside Indonesia rather than from the flight. A letter to a major city arrives faster than one to a rural address in the same country.

A standard letter to Indonesia costs 88 SEK and an express letter 128 SEK. Printing, paper, envelope, postage and hand-in to PostNord are all included. The price is the same to every country, so you never need to know which postal zone Indonesia belongs to.

PostNord divides the world into seven zones if you buy stamps and post the letter yourself, which is why other services charge different amounts for different countries. The table below shows both options.

Pos Indonesia operates one of the world's most challenging postal networks, serving an archipelago of over 17,000 islands spread across three time zones. The company maintains post offices and delivery routes across thousands of inhabited islands, from densely populated Java to remote villages in Papua and the eastern provinces.

Delivery speed varies dramatically by geography. Letters to Java and Bali—where the majority of Indonesia's population lives—typically arrive within the faster end of the 12–25 working day window. Mail to outer islands such as Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and especially Maluku and Nusa Tenggara takes longer, as it must be flown to regional hubs then distributed by local carriers, sometimes involving boat transfers to smaller islands.

The RT/RW system is critical to Indonesia's postal infrastructure. In cities like Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung, where streets may have hundreds of houses and informal addressing is common, these neighbourhood codes allow postal workers to navigate directly to the correct household. Without RT/RW information, carriers must guess or make enquiries, significantly delaying delivery.

Registered international mail (Rek utrikes) may contain documents only, weighs no more than 2 kg and carries liability up to 2,000 SEK. It can be tracked to most countries, and only one recipient may be named.

It is the right service for notices of termination, powers of attorney and legal documents where you need proof that the letter was sent. The country name still has to be written in Swedish on a registered letter — INDONESIEN on the last line.

Banknotes and coins may not be sent in an international letter, in any currency and for any amount. Dangerous goods are prohibited. Goods sent in a letter to a country outside the EU require a customs declaration and a barcode that an ordinary letter does not carry.

We therefore send documents and personal letters only. That is also what keeps the service simple: no customs forms, no weighing and no questions about the contents.

You need no printer, no envelope and no international stamps. Everything happens in your browser, and the letter is handed to PostNord in Sweden by us.