At weekend Sep 2016 I explored Tomohon, North Sulawesi with one of my colleague accompanied by a local friend to drive us around. Tomohon was around 2 hours drive from Manado. Actually you also could find the Tomohon Traditional Market full with many kind of meat to eat such as bat, dog, rat, snake, monkey etc. In Manado people eat all animals, which is uncommon in other area. I don't dare to see the poor living dogs in the cage waiting for his fate next to his dead friends to be sold. I'm a dog lover, so I would never eat them.
On the way we stopped by at Citra Land Manado, city of blessings, built since 2003 for middle to high class property. With concept "state of the art features" the property build a giant "Tuhan Memberkati" (God blessing) statue which is now popular as one of Manado icon. Manado scenery is beautiful, it's the capital city of North Sulawesi province with airport and harbour where we could find beautiful beaches and mountains. We went to the higher part, there's an open space where we could sit on the bench and enjoy the scenery. It's shading by trees and we could see the house on the slope of the hill with the Manado Tua mountain as the background, at that time the cloud was covering part of the top mountain, it looked like snow so it seems like Fujiyama, the clean blue sky made the scenery more beautiful, peaceful and amazing. At the right side we could see the white flying Christ statue with His open arms as if protecting the houses. It's located on the hill with some big houses beside the monument. We're not allowed to park in front of the area, one of the security officer asked us to move to park further, as I had taken many pictures, we decided to continue our journey to the next destination.
The road to "Bukit Doa" was winding and quite high, the vehicle must be in good condition. Our driver was kind enough to stop for a while on the way as I was interested in the scenery, where I could see both lakes and mountain from the street. Actually we could walk from lower part of the hill to the top following the path of cross prayer with 14 statues of the Way of the Cross depicting the misery of Jesus Christ when he carried the wooden cross while climbing Golgotha hill. We were too lazy to walk a long way, so we asked the driver to go directly to the top place where there was a unique chapel called "Chapel of Mother Mary". It looked like a long tube facing to the mountain. Some couple prefer to have wedding ceremony here, they could provide catering and decoration for party.
The altar background was a big window with beautiful scenery to the trees and mountain, the chapel was not too big, just 2 columns of around 10 rows of long wooden benches next to the wall for praying. There's stairs to go down to the basement, I don't know what it is for, but the wall was decorated with angel sculptures. The path brought us to the open flat space which has already created cement swath. The field below the church where we could see clearer the trees and Lokon mountain as the magnificent background, it's a very magnificent scenery. The weather was nice, it's mild although the sun shone. I took a panorama photo to record the beautiful scenery as God's creation. Unfortunately there was no bench here, you could sit on the cement if you're tired.
We went back to the church area, at the right side there was an amphitheater that could be used for art performance or mass celebration. The half circle seat surrounding the stage made from cement with grass between the levels. Nobody there at that time, I took some pictures and asked my friend to take my picture while sitting there. We had difficulty to find the restroom, no signage for it. We kept walking, finally we found some restrooms near restaurant area. It's clean unfortunately there was no tissue paper.
Our driver told us that there was another area to be explored, Grotto of Mother Mary facing to the fish pool, unfortunately the water was not clear, it seemed it's not maintained well. There was a wooden bridge to cross the pool to the last station of cross prayer where you could find a tomb. A tomb depicted the place where Jesus had risen after died. It's very quiet and quite creepy if you go alone here. The aisle directed us to the previous station where Maria was very sad carrying Jesus on her lap after crucified. The statue made from stone as big as human.
As we still had other destination to visit, we decided to go back to the parking lot. Driving down to the entrance gate, I asked the driver to stop by a small building which was hanging on the cliff, it looked beautiful, although the building was modern style, not a traditional one. It seemed that it was used for restaurant, looking it's facilitated with washing basin to clean our hand, stove and tables to serve foods. It's still functioning well when we tried to turn on the tap water. From the building, we could see a beautiful scenery.
Across the building we could see outbound facility where you could use the rope bridge, flying fox, etc. It seems they were building a complete facility for people entertainment during prayer or any religion activity. We saw many construction still happened in some areas. They had a huge area on the hill, it would be good if it could become one of the tourism place. Don't miss to visit "Bukit Doa" when you go to Tomohon.
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