The Abandonment of Tenggarong City

Have you ever gone to Samarinda before?

Samarinda is located in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. It is very very humid and hot, to be honest. I recommend you to go there, to see all the beautiful sides, yet all the abandonment places there.

Actually, my mom and I decided to go to Samarinda to see a wedding whom my dad's friend invited us. That was the only reason we went to Samarinda. As day by day passing by there, we asked ourselves, "why did we waste so much time here (5 days) without seeing the city, sight seeing and having little tour about it?" So, that's why we started to plan spontaneously to have sight seeing around Samarinda the day right after we went to a wedding of my dad's friend's daughter.

The next day, we went to Tenggarong City. It is located not to far from Samarinda, it'll take about an hour to go there from Samarainda. I personally think that Tenggarong is a very lonely city, because there are less people and activities in this city. Local people said (I read some news also) there was a governor named Rita Widyasari. She was famous for her role as a good governor, but live luxuriously. She is now in jail because of her corruption case. Oh, Mrs. Rita, how could you take money from your own people?

We were happy, though, to see Mulawarman Museum. There were a lot of strong histories explained in this museum. 

The center room of Mulawarman Museum.

Closer look of local governor(s) of East Kalimantan.

After the visit of this museum, we went to Kumala Island which is located across Tenggarong City. It is a small island, built to be a tourism place for public. We had wanted to go to Kumala Island right after we prayed Duhur at 12:00 PM. But the sun directly stroke so harsh, so we decided to go to the island later (at about 3:00 PM). The weather at 3:00 PM was not so great, because it was raining hard earlier. Honestly, my impression to Kumala Island is very very disappointed. As a visitor, my expectation to a place for tourism was at least being maintained well. But this was... really shocking me. 

This place is the only thing that was good enough in this island.

There were flood everywhere in the island because of raining. There were children playing around the island with bikes. But there was FLOOD, come on. I expect that every place in the city should have at least a good irrigation. I saw with my own eyes that this island, and even this City of Tenggarong, have been ignored because of the case of Rita Widyasari. Again, I'm going to talk about Mrs. Rita Widyasari. She was one of the supervisor of this tourism place. She had a lot of great programs to improve Tenggarong City back then. But, news on the internet said that she took more than a hundred billions with two other suspects, along the way while she was building up Tenggarong City; starting from building schools, infrastructures, tourism places, and a lot more. She took the money from her own people. She took it when she impressed her people with her programs as a governor. That's basically ironic. Now, the city looks like a dead city with no improvement. I really don't like corrupt, and this case, with real evidence I saw (while I expected to have a great holiday), makes me both sad and angry. 

On the other day, we went spontaneously to Aji Imbut Stadium in Tenggarong too.

And, another disappointment I've got here in the stadium. The stadium is big: it has a very spacious parking lot, a great site to visit. But, again, it is being abandoned because there is no people who wants to take care of it! Oh my, I was upset seeing this. I mean, the government agreed to build something, and it was used once or twice, then what? Nothing happened again after that. The people agreed to the government decision on building this stadium. But, no one takes an act for this case. A building costs A LOT of money, effort, human resources, and of course giant equipment. The money comes from the people who live there and pay taxes. Don't they think that they deserve to have more than just some abandonment buildings? If you think about it, it has the other side to see. I know that making a good maintenance of a building or a public place needs a lot of money to pay human resources and more equipment. But, it's getting on my nerves, really. They should be more aware of what's happening in their own region, and I speak this to both the people and the government. 

I'm here just to say what I have read and have experienced. So, in my point of view, I'm blaming the corrupts who couldn't think clearly before they did something that was really horrible to imagine. Tenggarong City should be a worth city to live in again, without any corrupts inside of the government's organization structures. The people deserve it. I realize, as a true citizen of Indonesia, that I need to do something about it. Starting from little thing I should do, be more aware of my surroundings, whether it's my neighborhood, environment, region, or my people. We should at least BE AWARE. Being aware makes you want to do something, to care about what is happening in our country, our world. From caring, you will feel within your heart you have to do something about it, make a change, a good change. I don't quite understand politics, but I can tell, everybody can tell, that corruption is unacceptable in any kind of situation.

Before I end this post, let me show you some food I ate in East Kalimatan to make me (and you) feel better, lol.

Curry Martabak by the river. It was GOOD I can tell you.

This isn't Durian, it's Lai Fruit. The taste is great, Durian's still the winner, though.

All photos were taken by Yashica fx super 2000 and film Portra 160, except for the food pictures I took with my iPhone 6s.