North Sulawesi's spice-fired dive capital
Manado is the gateway to Bunaken National Marine Park — 8 square kilometres of the most biodiverse coral reef in the world, where the wall drops 1,500 metres and the visibility exceeds 30 metres. On land, the city runs on Minahasan cuisine: RW (dog stew), paniki (flying fox in coconut sambal), and tinutuan, a vegetable porridge eaten at every breakfast warung. It's the most Christian city in Indonesia, which means the nightlife is loud, the pork is unapologetic, and the beer is cold.
The Minahasa people of North Sulawesi had their first contact with Portuguese traders in the early 1500s, and the Dutch established Fort Amsterdam at Manado Bay in 1658. The city became an important spice-trade hub, and Christian missionaries converted the majority Minahasan population during the Dutch colonial period — making Manado one of the few majority-Christian cities in Southeast Asia. During World War II, Japanese forces occupied the city from 1942–1945; today it's the fastest-growing city in Eastern Indonesia.