For more than three decades, this 1.28-hectare patch of sand and pine trees belonged, in practice if not entirely on paper, to Indonesia's most powerful family. Today its villas stand roofless, its swimming pool has turned the color of tar, and the only permanent resident is a caretaker who mostly keeps the jungle from swallowing what is left.
A Private Kingdom Hidden in Plain Sight
Pulau Bulat sits in the Kepulauan Seribu Utara area, administratively part of Kelurahan Pulau Harapan, in waters that belong to the DKI Jakarta provincial government. Local knowledge and Indonesia's own Wikipedia entry for the island describe it the same way: a private island belonging to the Cendana family, the household of President Suharto. Tour guides in the area still pass the story down almost word for word: this was the Cendana family's own island, closed to the public for as long as Suharto held power.
The family's use of the island is documented at least as far back as the mid-1980s. In a photograph his daughter Siti Hardiyanti "Tutut" Rukmana later posted to social media, the extended Suharto family is shown gathered on Pulau Bulat to celebrate New Year's Eve in 1986, with Suharto and his wife Ibu Tien embracing in matching batik, according to an account of the image published on Kompasiana. Suharto was known as an avid angler, and colleagues who fished with him in the Kepulauan Seribu, including former Information Minister Harmoko, later recalled the trips in the memoir "Pak Harto: The Untold Stories."
The island's most internationally visible moment came in October 1996, when German Chancellor Helmut Kohl visited Indonesia. According to the Indonesian Presidential Museum (Balai Kirti), Suharto brought Kohl fishing in the waters of the Kepulauan Seribu as an informal way to deepen economic ties between the two countries; the museum's own account places that specific outing at the nearby Pulau Bira rather than Pulau Bulat itself, a reminder that the archipelago held several such retreats and that not every detail of this history has settled into one clean version. What is consistent across sources is the pattern: this stretch of the Kepulauan Seribu was where Suharto did diplomacy without a necktie, far from the cameras of Jakarta.
Inside the Walls: Villas, Helipads, and a World Built for Privacy
What made Pulau Bulat different from the dozens of other islands scattered across the Java Sea wasn't its size. At 1.28 hectares, it is small enough to circle on foot in roughly twenty minutes. What made it different was what had been built there, and who was allowed to use it.
Visitors who have been granted access over the years describe a private villa, a large open-sided pendopo (pavilion), staff quarters, a small mosque, a generator building, a water tank, a jetty, and a helicopter landing pad, all connected by shaded pathways under tall pine trees. That helipad mattered: it meant the island could be reached quickly and quietly from Jakarta, without the hour-long boat trip that ordinary visitors still have to make from Pulau Panggang today.
The setup reflected the reality of Suharto's 32 years in power. Indonesia in the New Order era had a tightly controlled press and a political system with almost no independent oversight of the presidency. A private island used exclusively by one family for three decades, without meaningful public scrutiny of how it was obtained or governed, was a fairly ordinary feature of how that era worked. The island functioned as an extension of the presidential residence on Jalan Cendana in Menteng, just moved a few hours out to sea.
For guests, the appeal was obvious. There were no reporters, no motorcades, no fixed schedule. A president who spent his working life surrounded by ceremony could sit on a jetty with a fishing rod and, for a few hours, just be a man with a hobby. It is worth noting that this kind of informal access was itself a form of political capital: being invited to Pulau Bulat meant you were close to power in a way that no formal meeting could confirm.
When the Party Ended: Silence After 1998
Suharto resigned the presidency in May 1998, after weeks of mass protests and an economic crisis that had gutted the rupiah. The New Order government he had led for three decades collapsed within days. Pulau Bulat's transformation was slower, but just as complete.
Without a president to host, without a family actively maintaining the property, and without the administrative structure that had quietly supported the island for years, the buildings began to fail one piece at a time. Today the roofs of the main structures are corroded through in places, and creeping vegetation has taken hold of walls that once kept out nothing more threatening than sea air. The swimming pool, once chlorinated and cared for, now holds water that has gone completely black. Scattered trash collects in corners of the grounds that no one is paid to clean anymore.
The mosque, the staff quarters, and the pendopo are still standing, according to visitors who have documented the site in recent years, but standing is a generous word for structures that are closer to ruins than buildings. One visitor described a mix of amazement and sadness watching facilities that were once so grand slowly age and fade, even as the main lodging building and the large pendopo remained upright, still surrounded by pine trees.
There is a quieter irony here too. The isolation that once made Pulau Bulat valuable, the same distance and difficulty of access that kept reporters and rivals away, is now what has protected it from redevelopment. Nobody has bulldozed the ruins and built a resort. The island simply sits there, decomposing at its own pace, eight nautical miles from the nearest inhabited neighbor.
What the Ruins Still Won't Answer
Indonesian law has never recognized full private ownership of an island. Islands, like beaches, fall under state authority, and what individuals or families can hold is typically some form of long-term use right, not outright title. That raises a question that outlives Suharto himself: under what legal basis did one family control Pulau Bulat, uncontested, for more than 30 years?
Nobody has produced a clear public answer. Which office issued permission, through what mechanism, and why oversight never surfaced for three decades are all still open questions, according to reporting that has examined the island's murky legal status. What is documented is that Pulau Bulat and several other islands historically associated with the Cendana family do appear in Jakarta's regional planning records: Gubernatorial Regulation (Pergub) Number 31 of 2022 lists a number of Kepulauan Seribu islands connected to the family, effectively acknowledging in an official document a history that was, for decades, never formally explained.
This matters beyond one abandoned swimming pool. Pulau Bulat is a small, physical example of a much larger pattern from the New Order period: state assets and public land that functioned, in practice, as private family property, with no legal record clean enough to say precisely how that happened. The island's decay does not resolve that question. It just makes it easier to walk past without noticing it is still there.
For anyone visiting the Kepulauan Seribu today, that unresolved history is worth carrying along. If your boat happens to stop near Pulau Bulat, look past the pretty sunset the island is now mostly known for. Ask the guide who really owned it, and how. Read the buildings the way you would read a document: what they include, what condition they're in, and what a government chose to record or leave unrecorded about them. A ruin is still a primary source.
A Small Island, A Big Question
Pulau Bulat never had monuments or plaques. It had a helipad, a pool, and a family that used both without needing anyone's permission for three decades. Now it has neither guests nor guards worth mentioning, just a caretaker, a lot of pine trees, and buildings that are losing their fight with the tide and the vines one monsoon season at a time.
Key takeaway: The most revealing ruins aren't the grand ones built to be remembered. They're the quiet ones, like a blackened swimming pool on a forgotten island, that were never meant to be seen at all.
Referensi & Resources:
Museum Kepresidenan Republik Indonesia (Balai Kirti), "Memancing Ikan Ala Presiden Soeharto: Dari Hobi Hingga Diplomasi" — https://museumkepresidenan.id/artikel/memancing-ikan-ala-presiden-soeharto-dari-hobi-hingga-diplomasi/
Wikipedia Bahasa Indonesia, "Pulau Bulat" — https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulau_Bulat
Kompasiana, "Pulau Pak Harto, Keliling Pulau Bulat di Teluk Jakarta" — https://www.kompasiana.com/issonkhairul/6110d42101019004e32721e3/pulau-pak-harto-keliling-pulau-bulat-di-teluk-jakarta
Okezone Travel, "Mengenal Pulau Pribadi Keluarga Cendana di Kepulauan Seribu" — https://travel.okezone.com/amp/2023/05/05/406/2808977/mengenal-pulau-pribadi-keluarga-cendana-di-kepulauan-seribu
Poros Jakarta, "Pulau Pribadi Keluarga Cendana di Kepulauan Seribu dalam Pergub No. 31 Tahun 2022" — https://www.porosjakarta.com/kepulauan-seribu/064911850/pulau-pribadi-keluarga-cendana-di-kepulauan-seribu-dalam-pergub-no-31-tahun-2022
Jelajah Nusantara, "Pulau Bulat, Pulau Pak Harto" — https://www.jelajah-nusantara.com/2023/01/pulau-bulat-wisata-pulau-harapan.html
Mentor Politik, "Ditemukan Istana Rahasia Soeharto di Pulau Pribadi yang Telah Terbengkalai" — https://www.mentorpolitik.id/p/ditemukan-istana-rahasia-suharto-di-pulau-pribadi