Manado

Manado is quite far from the rest of Indonesia and most visitors arrive by plane.

By plane

Manado's Sam Ratulangi Airport IATA: MDC An airy, modern facility last expanded in 2001. The airport fields some international flights to Singapore Silk Air, 4x weekly, 3h with visa on arrival possible, but Air Asia no longer operates.

If you want to make a call in the airport, please have your cell phone ready, don't count on the public phone.

There are also frequent flights to Jakarta Batavia Air, Garuda, Lion Air 3h, 600,000+Rp and Makassar 1.5h. Other flights include SurabayaEast Java, Balikpapan Kalimantan, Denpasar Bali, Ternate North Maluku, and Sorong Papua. A taxi from the airport to central Manado takes about 30 minutes and costs Rp 70,000 bargaining may be necessary. There are also frequent mikrolets leaving from Terminal Paal 2 [paal doo-ah] costing 2,300 Rp that take about the same amount of time.

Departure tax from Manado is Rp 100.000 for international flights and Rp 30,000 for domestic flights. The terminal has an Internet cafe in the public area and the standard array of restaurants KFC, Es Teler 77 and gift shops inside, but note that there is nothing once past immigration.

Telco : Cell, Net

There are 3 main providers of GSM cellular services in Manado : Telkomsel, Indosat / Satelindo and XL Axiata co. As per November 2010, Telkomsel provides EDGE, 3G WCDMA, 3.5G HSDPA. Indosat only GPRS,EDGE. XL up to 3G. Please note that high bandwidth cell service mainly works in downtown area of Manado. All 3 of them carries Blackberry services.

Prepaid GSM SIM cards dan CDMA RUIM cards can be cheaply purchased approx 1 USD at almost every supermarket along with their reload vouchers, ranging from approx 50C US Rp 5000 to approx 10USD Rp 100K.