The Best Place in Indonesia : Where is it ? - Part One

This year I will turn 23, on 1st May 2017. For all this time, I am really a nomadent person. My family made it possible for me to experienced different kind of culture in Indonesia. If I were to break down to numbers, the longest city I have ever lived is Manokwari for about 8 years. Manokwari located in West Papua Province (once at my time we called it Irian Jaya), at the head of bird like island of Papua.

My first ability to retain memory is from this city (re: Manokwari), I remember draging plastic bathtub and asking for a bath to the Priest who take care of me. Maybe you are all gonna ask why Priest ? well I don't really care actually, he was such a good and nice person (Even my father asked me if I ever had assigned back to manokwari, pay a visit). But eventually, the city (well is not categorized a City yet that time) also had problems like most other city in papua. I will not elaborate more since it can be found in News, but one thing for sure as a kid I learned a lot on how to 'survive' living in conflict area. 

Manokwari is practically small, even today I could draw the exact map of the city. The city arterial roads is like alphabet T and J combined, with J is in the southern and T in the northern area. During that 8 years I have moved 4 times, the last one is in Kampung Makassar. We live in 'rumah dinas' (what's called in english?), our home is in between of local people home and the so called 'pendatang' who mostly from bugis ethnic.

I was searching in the internet and found one picture of kampung makassar and here it is

If you saw the Mosque, it is the same Mosque that I went to shalat jumat during my childhood. The Mosque, well it doesn't have that much parking lot as I used to see in nowadays Mosque. If you see there is kind of 'forest' full of trees on the background, I tell you it's not forest haha. That is actually a trees covering a down-slope road (because there is a higher ground). In normal days, I would take that road (the down slope road) from my school and then take a short cut into my home. But when the day was so peace, my friends were busy in their own, and I had plenty of time I would take the bigger road (as you seen in the pic), where I could enjoy 'good' cars passing by and saw the sea (Oh I forget, we lived near the coast line).

If you are witty enough, you could understand why I actually avoid bigger road. You never know when conflict break out, and the chance of getting hit by flame arrow (I mean it) is bigger in the main roads (I remember in early 2000s, regional police office was totally burned down in Manokwari). 

Despite the fact that Manokwari has dynamic situation, there are a lot other of its beautiful side. Want to know more ?

I will write soon :)