On Sorong

Now let’s talk about the town where I’m living now, Sorong. The town lies at the “mouth” of the Bird Head of Papua Island. There are many other small islands surrounding the town. It’s a small town with around 160.000 – 170.000 people. Nevertheless, it’s already considered a big town in Papua that has only about 3 million people living in the whole island. In the past, Pertamina owned most parts of the town. Sorong has everything that a small town normally has: shops, supermarkets, banks, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, etc. And as I said earlier, you could find almost everything here.

But honestly, nothing is really interesting or beautiful about the town. Rain that has been pouring the town everyday over the past 3 months has destroyed most of the low-quality streets and has created so many potholes. The rutted sidewalk and the front yard of most buildings or houses look dreadful. I really think that the municipal government should work harder on the cleanliness of the town. There is no sin in making a town clean, pretty and in order, isn’t it? They don’t have to evict anyone to do that, do they ;-)?

The landmark of the town I guess is what they call “tembok” (wall). Some of them call it “tembok Berlin” which I find it bizarre since there is no resemblance whatsoever either in shape, meaning or history with that historical wall in Berlin. Anyway, it’s not an official name so let’s leave it there. Tembok is a hangout place. As the name suggested, it is the wall or fence around 1-2 meters high that is built along the coastline from Lido to the harbor which is about 2-3 km long. It’s painted blue. And I find it ugly.


But that’s the only place where you could sit to watch sunset because there is practically no sand beach in town. In fact, it might be specifically built for that purpose because it looks more like a bench. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a spectacular sunset since my arrival. Probably it’s because of the weather. Young people who don’t bother with sunset could just hang out there with some friends to watch the passersby. The main attraction of the wall is probably “the food court” that is some warung tegal (hawkers) at the one end of the wall that open at night and sell variety of food like ayam bakar, bakso, soto, nasi goreng, cap cay, coto makassar, pisang epe, etc. Not the typical local food, for sure.

One thing I like about the town though is its public transport. You could get around the places by “taksi” as the locals call it though it is actually a yellow minibus (or “angkot” as known by other Indonesians). The fare is Rp 2.000 to anywhere plus some loud, very loud, music ;-). There’s no “kenek” (assistant to the driver). So, to get the door closed every time a passenger gets off, the driver pulls a rope which its other end tied to the door. Convenient! Unlike Jakarta in where everything seems to be in a rush, here you could actually take your time to get in or get off the taksi. The driver or other passengers will wait for you patiently and won’t slam the door behind you. That is never going to happen in Jakarta where the bus is already taking off before your feet even touch the ground.

But you know what the biggest problem that this town has? No teh botol here ;-). Damn! In Jakarta or other cities in Indonesia, one can easily find teh botol in every corner. I feel like I was in a foreign country … Hiks!