Dominique, the concept of "remote" is one of perspective.
Here in Australia there is a little saying that Aboriginal people will sometimes use:-
"Whitefeller's wilderness, Blackfeller's backyard"
this points up the difference in the way different people can think about the same place. It was/is the same in SE Asia.
Before the Dutch occupied Jawa it was covered in dense forest with isolated settlements joined by poorly maintained tracks. The only slightly better tracks were where important people needed to pass from time to time. Transport wherever possible was by water. The Bengawan Solo, the major river joining the interior with the coast was navigable from Surabaya all the way up to Solo.
Indonesian peoples never have, and do not now, think of water as a barrier, they think of it as a highway. They do not speak of their "Motherland", or "Fatherland", they speak of "Tanah Air Kita":- "Our Land and Water".
All of those places scattered across the Archipelago, and the adjacent mainland, were not remote, they were within sailing distance and were no problem at all to get to.
Long before the Dutch touched on Australia, long before Captain Cook claimed it for the British, fishermen from what we now know as the Indonesian Archipelago were visiting Northern Australia for trepang fishing. They would sail down and spend a few months there, when the boats were full, they would sail home again.
They took wives from the indigenous people, and sometimes these wives would return north with them when they sailed home, so that now there are recognised blood ties and family ties between Australian indigenous people from the north coast of Australia, and people living in Sulawesi and other islands.
Makassar is usually thought of as the centre of this contact, but in fact there was contact with people from other islands as well, usually Bugis people. The Bugis went everywhere --- and very probably other cultural groups of the Archipelago were not far behind them.
Nothing in SE Asia was remote for the people living there.
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