Java, meet
the Andes.

Java lands on the Colombian Andes. Jakarta comes down 8 km from Charalá, in Santander; Bogor, Depok and the rest of greater Jakarta across the same mountains of Santander; Bandung near Cubará on the Venezuelan border. Sumatra covers Ecuador and southern Colombia: Pekanbaru is 1 km from Machachi, just south of Quito, and Quito faces Pekanbaru in turn; Guayaquil lands in North Sumatra; Padang lands 1 km from Esmeraldas on the Ecuadorian coast.

Malaysia sits on the Amazon of Ecuador and Peru: Kuala Lumpur 23 km from General Leonidas Plaza Gutiérrez, in Morona-Santiago, and Singapore in the Ecuadorian Amazon near Tiputini. Borneo’s outline comes down on the Amazon upside down, Kuching and Pontianak in the Colombian Amazon near Tarapacá and Carurú, Bandar Seri Begawan in Brazil’s Amazonas state near Tefé; and Sulawesi lands in Roraima: Makassar near Uiramutã on the Guyana border, while Boa Vista faces the Sulawesi highlands near Mamasa. Surabaya and eastern Java face the llanos of Apure, in Venezuela.

The east misses. Papua and Timor face the Atlantic off north-east Brazil (Jayapura’s antipode is 603 km from land), and the northern tip of Sumatra faces the Pacific off Ecuador and Peru. Bogotá itself lands in the Java Sea, 2 km off the north coast of Java: a deli sandwich from the city centre, and an exact one 2 km away. Caracas and most of northern Venezuela face the Indian Ocean south of Java.

Every Indonesian city above half a million people and every provincial capital, every Malaysian city above 300,000 and every state capital, Singapore, Brunei and Dili. On the other side, the cities of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Peru above 150,000 to 250,000 people and every regional capital, the state capitals and larger cities of the Brazilian north, and the capitals of the Guianas, each listed if its other slice lands in or off Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei or Timor. Exact means land opposite land at the city’s own point; where the other slice would get wet, the table gives the nearest spot from which an exact sandwich is possible.

Of all the pairs of cities above 100,000 people on Earth, the three that come closest to being each other’s antipode are all on this corridor: Padang and Esmeraldas, 1 km apart; Batu, in East Java, and San Fernando de Apure, in Venezuela, 2 km; and Palembang and Neiva, the capital of Huila, 3 km. Stand in one and the other slice lands on the edge of the other.

Smaller places come closer still. These towns’ centres are less than a kilometre from each other’s antipode, so bread in the middle of each is an exact Earth sandwich. Two of them pair Peru’s north with Malaysia’s, which is Peru’s share of this corridor.

1. VetasSantander Department⇄AnkolaWest Java283 m
2. OllerosAmazonas, Peru⇄Kampong ChapKelantan, Malaysia486 m
3. Manuel Antonio Mesones MuroLambayeque, Peru⇄Kampung Titi TinggiPerlis, Malaysia711 m
4. BelalcázarCaldas Department⇄KenaliLampung752 m
5. YacopíCundinamarca⇄JabungLampung755 m

Distances are between the centre points GeoNames gives for each town. Sandwich Law measures from where the bread actually lies, plus both phones’ GPS accuracy, so check your two spots on the map before the day.

A sandwich’s elevation bonus is the height of one end plus the height of the other (Sandwich Law § 1.4). The Board scores it the way the map shows it: from the average height of the ground over cells about 20 km across, so every spot in a cell scores the same and you only need to be in the right cell, not on the summit. These are the corridor’s best cells, one per area, each with dry land at both ends.

1. +4,480 m18 km from Banjar (West Java)cell average 1,320 m6 km from Chitagá (Norte de Santander Department)cell average 3,160 m
2. +4,160 m10 km from Subang (West Java)cell average 40 m13 km from Güicán (Boyacá)cell average 4,120 m
3. +4,000 m11 km from Sedinginan (Riau)cell average 40 m14 km from Guanujo (Bolívar, Ecuador)cell average 3,960 m
4. +4,000 m35 km from Pekanbaru (Riau)cell average 40 m32 km from Mulaló (Cotopaxi, Ecuador)cell average 3,960 m
5. +4,000 m4 km from Oganlima (Lampung)cell average 200 m15 km from Murillo (Tolima Department)cell average 3,800 m

Colombia’s Eastern Cordillera does the work. The best cell pairs the hills of West Java near Banjar with the Andes of Norte de Santander near Chitagá, at an average of 3,160 m; the second puts one slice in the lowlands of Subang, 40 m above the sea, and the other near Güicán, the gateway to the Sierra Nevada del Cocuy, at 4,120 m.

The window. Both slices must go down within five minutes of the same UTC instant (Sandwich Law § 2.1). The sandwich lobby holds you to it: when the first slice lands, the other side has five minutes.

The clocks. Nobody here changes their clocks. Jakarta and Sumatra (UTC+7) are 12 hours ahead of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru (UTC−5); Malaysia and Singapore (UTC+8) are 13 hours ahead of Ecuador; central Indonesia, from Bali to Sulawesi and eastern Borneo (UTC+8), is 12 hours ahead of the Brazilian Amazon (UTC−4); Venezuela (UTC−4) is 11 hours behind Jakarta.

The light. Two exactly opposite points are never in daylight together: sunrise at one end is sunset at the other. Near the equator the atmosphere buys you about seven minutes, twice a day, when the sun is up at both ends at once, and because the days barely change length it happens at nearly the same clock time all year: around six in the evening in Bogotá, which is around six in the morning in Jakarta.

The seasons. There is no winter to speak of at either end. The rainy seasons are what matter, and the two sides do not share them, so check both before you pick a month.

The geometry is the easy part; the hard part is a person at the other end, and the site does not match strangers. Write in both languages, Spanish and Indonesian or Malay, with your town and its antipode. Java’s side is crowded farm country, and the Colombian towns in the tables are ordinary municipalities, each with a town hall.

Then open an attempt in the sandwich lobby. It gives you a code and a link to send through whatever channel you already share, shows both slices when they arrive, and runs the five-minute window. Much of the Amazonian side is forest reached by river, so for a first sandwich pick a pair of towns from the tables, not the middle of Borneo’s twin. The exact grade allows a kilometre of slack, which is usually enough to find somewhere you are allowed to stand.

Jakarta · Bogotá · Singapore · Surabaya · Caracas · Quito · Guayaquil · Bandung · Medan · Cali · Depok · Medellín · Tangerang · Palembang · Semarang · Valencia · Belém · Makassar · Kuala Lumpur · Batam · Jepara · Barquisimeto · Pekanbaru · Bandar Lampung · Bogor