Gateway to Raja Ampat — the world's richest coral triangle and bird of paradise forests
Sorong is a bustling port city on the northwestern tip of Indonesian Papua and the sole gateway to Raja Ampat — the underwater crown jewel of the Coral Triangle, where 75% of all known coral species and over 1,000 species of reef fish have been recorded. Most visitors pass through quickly en route to the islands, but Sorong itself has its own appeal: a frontier energy, fresh fish markets, and access to Waigeo Island's bird of paradise forests where Wilson's and Red Bird of Paradise display in the canopy. The city is a melting pot of Papuan, Malukan, and Javanese communities.
Sorong developed as a Dutch colonial oil-prospecting base in the late 19th century — the first oil wells in the Dutch East Indies were drilled here in 1908. During World War II the Japanese occupied Sorong from 1942; the Allied invasion of 1944 used it as a staging post for the recapture of the Pacific. Under Indonesian sovereignty since 1963 (when the Netherlands ceded West Irian), Sorong became the administrative centre for West Papua. The Raja Ampat archipelago was virtually unknown to Western divers until the late 1990s; the dive industry it now supports has become the region's economic l…