Manado

The name Manado is thought to come from a Minahasan word for the island now called Manado Tua, which closes the bay to the west. Long before a town stood here, the Minahasa peoples of the surrounding hills lived in scattered villages bound by a council tradition, and Spanish and Portuguese ships called on the coast during the 16th century, leaving loanwords and Catholic converts behind them. The Dutch East India Company displaced them in the 17th century and built Fort Amsterdam at the river mouth in 1658; the settlement that grew around it became the seat of Dutch power in the north.

Minahasan leaders allied with the Dutch rather than resisting them, and the relationship shaped everything that followed. Protestant missionaries arrived in the early 19th century and converted most of the region within a few decades, schools spread early and in Dutch, and Minahasans went on to fill posts in the colonial army and administration across the Indies, which earned the area the nickname of the twelfth province of the Netherlands. Coffee, copra and cloves moved out through the port.

The 20th century brought harder times. Japanese forces landed in January 1942, taking the town in a landing supported by the first use of paratroops in Japanese military history. In 1958, during the Permesta rebellion against the central government, whose headquarters moved to the city that year, Manado was bombed in February and taken by government forces after an invasion in June. Since the 1990s the city has grown along the bay on reclaimed land, filling with malls, hotels and churches, while diving at Bunaken turned it into the tourism centre of eastern Sulawesi. Flash floods after sustained rain have repeatedly damaged low-lying districts, a reminder of how the rivers behave in the wet season.

Manado is the urban face of Minahasan culture: Protestant, outspoken, musical and fond of a party. Churches are everywhere and well attended, choirs are a serious business, and the calendar peaks at Christmas, when decorations go up early and the whole month is given over to services and family visits. The harvest thanksgiving, Pengucapan Syukur, is the other great occasion, with villages taking turns so that people can visit each other in succession.

Music runs through it. The kolintang, a set of tuned wooden bars played in ensembles, is the region's own instrument and is taught in schools; brass bands, choirs and karaoke all thrive, and North Sulawesi has sent a steady supply of singers to the national stage. The maengket dance, performed in rows by women in traditional dress, and the cakalele war dance of the coasts both survive as performance. The local language of daily life is Manado Malay, a relaxed dialect sprinkled with Portuguese, Dutch and Minahasan words, spoken loudly and with affection for nicknames.

The city has long had a mixed population: Minahasans from the hill districts, Sangirese from the islands to the north, Gorontalese and Bugis traders, and a Chinese community established for centuries around the Ban Hin Kiong temple, whose Cap Go Meh procession draws crowds of all faiths. Relations between Christians and Muslims are generally easy, and the phrase torang samua basudara — we are all family — is used so often that it functions as a civic motto.

About 460,000 people live in the city proper and some 1.4 million in the wider metropolitan area, which takes in Tomohon, Bitung and the Minahasa districts that the city effectively serves. It is the provincial capital, so government, education and health account for a great deal of employment, alongside trade, transport and a large informal economy of market stalls, drivers and food carts. Bitung, half an hour away, handles the heavy shipping and the tuna canneries; Manado keeps the offices, the malls and the university.

The day begins early. Markets open before dawn, tinutuan is eaten for breakfast standing up or sitting down, and the mikrolet minibuses fill with school children and office workers before the heat arrives. Traffic on the coast road and the few routes up the hills is slow at both ends of the day. Afternoons are quiet, and the city comes out again in the evening along the Boulevard, where families eat, teenagers gather and the malls stay busy until late.

Growth has come at a cost. Reclamation has walled off parts of the bay from the old town, the rivers that run through the city flood after sustained rain, and hillside building has made landslides more common. Tourism is now a significant employer, but it is concentrated on the islands and the dive boats rather than in the city, and many residents also work seasonally in Java or abroad as sailors, nurses and domestic staff — a Minahasan habit of travel that goes back generations.

Minahasan cooking is among the spiciest in Indonesia, built on chilli, ginger, lemongrass, turmeric leaf and the scented lemon basil called kemangi. Rica-rica, meaning chilli, describes any dish cooked in a fierce paste of ground chillies and shallots; woku is its herb-heavy cousin, usually made with fish; and dabu-dabu, a raw relish of chopped chilli, tomato, shallot and lime, is spooned over everything grilled. The everyday fish is cakalang, skipjack tuna, eaten fresh or as cakalang fufu, split, cured and smoked over a fire until it keeps for days.

The city's signature is tinutuan, also called bubur Manado — a thick porridge of rice cooked down with pumpkin, sweet corn, cassava leaves and basil, served with salted fish, sambal, and a fritter of some kind on the side. It is breakfast, hangover cure and comfort food at once. Snacks are taken seriously: panada, pasties filled with spiced cakalang; lalampa, sticky rice with fish grilled in banana leaf; biapong, steamed buns of Chinese descent; and brenebon, a bean and pork soup whose name comes straight from the Dutch. Klappertaart, a soft coconut and custard tart, is the classic thing to carry home.

Drinking is open here in a way it is not in much of the country. Hot ginger with palm sugar is sold at roadside stalls; cap tikus, a spirit distilled from palm wine, is a Minahasan institution and, made at home and unregulated, the cause of many warnings about untested alcohol. Some Minahasan dishes use meats that outsiders find difficult — fruit bat, rats and snake are sold at the Tomohon market and eaten at feasts, and the sale of dog and cat meat there was banned in 2023 — and visitors are best advised simply to ask what they are being offered.