Air Manis is the most popular beach near Padang in West Sumatra. Although there are beaches in the city centre, too, Air Manis is by far the beach of choice for families for a weekend excursion. The beach is famous for a rock formation regarded to be Malin Kundang who turned into stone, and also for Banana Island (Pulau Pisang), where you can walk from the mainland during low tide.
1. Getting to Air Manis from Padang centre
Air Manis means “sweet water” in Indonesian (air = water), and is pronounced something like “ah-eer mah-nees”. It is a little further away from Padang city proper. My guesthouse staff said the only way to get there was using private transport. This is hard to believe, because there are a lot of people living next to the beach, so there must be some public transport too, but it would be hard to find for a tourist anyway.
I called a Grab bike (motorbike) from the centre of Padang, which costs 25.000 IDR. Grab shows the wrong route – there is a much shorter way, which drivers will know, but you pay for the longer route anyway, but even this way, the cost is very reasonable. If you prefer a car, it would cost 60-70k. Getting back to Padang was a little more difficult. It is impossible to call Grab (no cars or motorbikes available, it said), but Gojek was available, and cheaper, too: 20k only. Mobile signal was very poor, and I could luckily connect eventually.
The road to Air Manis from Padang, if you choose the one that is not recommended by Grab (i.e. the road on the hillside near the coastline), will be very beautiful.
2. What is the beach like at Air Manis?
Beaches in Indonesia (and in neighbouring countries, too) are very different from what Europeans are used to. If beach time for you means sunbathing and swimming in the ocean, beaches over here may be a little disappointing: no local is doing that. Instead, they will walk along the beach, sit in a chair, as long as it is cloudy – the perfect beach weather here. The moment the sun appears, everyone will escape to the shade.
And that is because people here, with their beautiful brown skin, don’t want to be sun-tanned: white skin is preferable. In fact, you can find various whitening creams and soaps in the supermarkets everywhere.
Even if you wanted to, sunbathing would be rather difficult here, because the beach is covered with mud and rocks rather than sand. But should you be insisting on a little sunbathing anyway, I’m sure you will be able to find a few good sports for that. The beach is quite dirty though. I was shocked to see that there are an awful lot of plastic bottles and every kind of other rubbish everywhere.
There are quite a lot of simple restaurants and food stalls around, all of them serving very simple food. I only had coffee in one of them. For some reason, there are a lot of goats roaming freely everywhere which is fun – especially if you have kids with you.
3. Malin Kundang and his ship, turned to stone at Air Manis
The story of Malin Kundang is very well-known all over Southeast Asia. There are various versions, but it basically goes like this.
Once upon a time, there was a small boy, Malin Kundang, who was brought up by his mother. The father either died or disappeared in the different versions. They were very poor. When Malin Kundang rew up, he decided to go and try his luck somewhere, and earn some money. And this is what he did. After many years, a big, beautiful ship appeared in the old village. It belonged to Malin Kundang, who now had a pretty wife, too, and they were very rich.
His mother rushed to the ship immediately, but Malin Kundang would not recognise her, and he even said nasty things to her. Then her mother asked cursed him or asked god to punish him for this. The next day, the whole village was shocked to see, that the ship fell into pieces, and Malin Kundang himself turned to stone, lying on the beach.
And indeed, you can see Malin Kundang and his ship here, in Air Manis beach.
During low tide, the stones are on dry land, but otherwise, they will be in the water. I suppose, some parts of the ship rocks are man-made, because you can see the ropes nicely carved, but the Malin Kundang stone is natural. I was surprised to see that people step on this stone, and don’t care much about saving it for future generations. Yes, stone is hard, but if hundreds of people stand on it every day, it will wear off after some time.
4. Banana Island
There is a tiny island very near the coast in Air Manis. During low tide, you can actually walk to the island, but there are a lot of little cars that you can rent, should you be too lazy. There are hundreds of such lazy people – therese cars are everywhere along the beach. During high tide, you can get to the island by boat.
The island itself is nothing special, but it has nice views – the ubiquitous goats (and rubbish).
