The Prettiest Town in the East

It is Saturday and I'm surfing from the Internet cafe. I try to blog on slightly "lighter" topics on weekends: things I'm going to do, movies I'm planning to watch and even what I am going to eat.

I have a wedding dinner to attend tonight: My colleague Edwin is getting married to Debby, a pretty girl from Manado. But I'm a bit disappointed that it is not going to be a colourful Javanese wedding (Edwin is Javanese) but a Western one instead. I expect to see all my colleagues there tonight.

Manado, like Bandung is well-known for her pretty girls. The women are mostly Catholic, fair-skinned and friendly. The frequent night-clubbers will tell you that Manado girls also make the best striptease dancers.

I myself have never set foot on Manado before, even though I have been to Makassar in Sulawesi -- Manado is located on the northern tip of the Sulawesi island. The great biologist Alfred Russel Wallace wrote in his seminal work, The Malay Archipelago, that Manado is "the prettiest town in the East".

My Indonesian friends tell me otherwise. They say Manado is a very dirty place today. But I am still keen to visit it anyhow before I leave Indonesia (if I do leave Indonesia). The resort of Bunaken near Manado is a very popular diving site.

Alfred Russel Wallace discovered the theory of evolution independently of Charles Darwin at almost exactly the same time. Though Darwin did acknowledge Wallace's contribution, history has given more recognition to Darwin, probably because Wallace was a low-profile and shy person who preferred to spend his time collecting animal specimens in the remote tropical rain forests of South East Asia.

As this is a weekend entry, I'll save the story of Alfred Russel Wallace for some future weekday posting. As for today, I plan to relax, eat my favourite soto sulung later and enjoy myself at Edwin's wedding dinner. I'm sure he will be feeling like he is marrying the "prettiest girl in the East" tonight.