--- title: Village Painted Rainbow Colors, See Kampung Pelangi Photos description: Indonesia's Kampung Pelangi has bedecked itself in rainbow-colored stripes to attract tourists — and it's working canonical: https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/ author: Raisa Bruner article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-05-18T21:16:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:43:46.787Z og:title: This Eye-Popping Village Painted Itself Like a Rainbow og:description: The Indonesian village of Kampung Pelangi is covered in rainbow stripes og:url: https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Eye-Popping Village Painted Itself Like a Rainbow twitter:description: The Indonesian village of Kampung Pelangi is covered in rainbow stripes twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # See This Eye-Popping Village That Painted Itself Like a Rainbow  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner May 18, 2017 9:16 PM UTC  by [Raisa Bruner](https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/)  ## Raisa Bruner May 18, 2017 9:16 PM UTC If you’re curious what it would be like to live at the end of — or in the midst of — the rainbow, look no further than this village [in Indonesia](http://time.com/4635994/leuser-national-park-unesco-sumatra-aceh/), which has gamely decided to paint itself in bright, eye-catching rainbow stripes. Kampung Pelangi, a hillside collection of a few hundred homes about 300 miles east of Jakarta on the island of Java, chose to go all-in on colorful exteriors for the town-wide facelift, hoping to improve local tourism. The project has worked a charm; the distinctive stripes make it ideal as Instagram bait and photography backdrops for visitors from all over, as evidenced in the thousands of images tourists are putting up on social media from the unusual locale. Local government had set aside just more than $20,000 to spiff up the town,[ the _Jakarta Post_ reports](http://www.thejakartapost.com/travel/2017/05/09/colorful-kampung-becomes-new-tourist-attraction-in-semarang.html), and ended up accepting the proposal of a junior high school principal to go in the direction of rainbow paint. The inspiration came from other Indonesian towns who had pursued similar, colorful schemes. The picturesque result looks a bit like a riff on some of the bright [Brazilian favelas](https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/nov/04/rio-de-janeiro-brazil-favela-tourism) of Rio de Janeiro, or that Spanish town that painted itself [entirely in Smurf blue](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spanish-village-happy-to-be-left-feeling-blue-by-smurfs-6279106.html) — but, you know, better. Because rainbows. Take a look below. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/"},"headline":"See This Eye-Popping Village That Painted Itself Like a Rainbow","datePublished":"2017-05-18T21:16:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:43:46.787Z","description":"Indonesia's Kampung Pelangi has bedecked itself in rainbow-colored stripes to attract tourists — and it's working","url":"https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/","keywords":["Newsfeed","viral","indonesia","Bizarre","Travel","photography"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Raisa Bruner","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/raisa-bruner/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4784813/indonesia-rainbow-village/","name":"See This Eye-Popping Village That Painted Itself Like a Rainbow"}}]}] ```