Manado News 2007
When we visited Manado again in the end of 2006, we hardly recognized the capital of North Sulawesi. Since our last visit in spring of the same year the face of the city has changed a lot. You can find posters with the slogan "Manado Kota Pariwisata Dunia 2010" everywhere, meaning that the city wants to become a world-famous tourist destination until the year 2010. And this aim is obviously pursued with vigour.
Many things have improved in that way. Thus the whole city has clearly become cleaner and the chaotic traffic has been channelled a bit more orderly through a new one-way street system.
On the other hand Manado is increasingly losing its charm, which we learned to appreciate very much on our previous visits. The municipal authority is trying hard to drive the small traders in their stands covered with blue plastic tarpaulin out of the streets. Formerly there was a busy hustle and bustle in the whole harbour grounds, now all you can see is empty area. Some of the small stands have found a place in a big covered area next to the harbour, others have just disappeared.
... 2006 ...
... 2007 ...
In the evening a good many travelling hawkers still try to put up their provisional stands on a streetcorner. However, when the police comes along, the small sheds are dismantled in an instant and disappear in the nightly crowd along with their owners.
In contrast to that more and more bigger and bigger shopping centres are built overnight. From international cuisine, fast food restaurants and fashion boutiques to the most modern internet cafes you can truly find almost everything in these places, what you expect in a Central European shopping mall as well. Some things are distinctly cheaper than here, but many things are relatively expensive even in our opinion.
Was has surprised us most of all: Not the tourists are shopping there, but an obviously very prosperous Indonesian middle class. A pizza for converted four Euro per person - not a problem for some family of four. Imported (!) apples for converted two Euro per kilogram find their purchasers as well. And all that in a region, where a skilled manual worker in the countryside earns about five Euro per day, with which he mostly has to maintain a big family.
The gap between the poor and the rich is obviously widening more and more here as well. Many families earn good money in tourism, with huge estates or in trading, whereas in the northeast, for example, a lot of people without any future prospects invest their minimal income in alcohol to drown their frustration.
After extensive expropriations back in times of Soeharto many do not own more than those few square meters of land, which are covered by their - in many cases uncompleted - houses. To little, to be self-sufficient with at least a bit of cultivation of fruits and vegetables.
Whereas in the capital some families can afford to send their children to expensive schools abroad, the pupils in the remote countryside study in dilapidated school buildings with scanty documents and teaching materials.
However much Manado tries to become a tourist city which needs not shy away from international comparison within the next three years, so little the tourists seem to estimate this effort. If you ramble through the streets as a tourist, hang around in shops and restaurants - mostly you will be the only "white face" around. Most of the "bule" hardly see anything of the city, but are immediately after their arrival at the airport bundled off to the various resorts on the coasts or offshore islands.
Whether this will change until 2010, when Manado has won a place among the world-famous tourist cities?