SAWAHLUNTO SEEKS MALAYSIAN TOURISTS AND INVESTORS

PADANG (West Sumatra, Indonesia), Feb 26 (Bernama) - Sawahlunto, an old town
in West Sumatra, plans to have a large scale promotion in Malaysia to attract at
least 500,000 tourists and investors.

The town's mayor, Amran Nur, said he was trying to rope in several other
towns in the region to have a joint promotion.

"Malaysia because it is prosperous and according to statistics 12 million
Malaysians holiday abroad every year. Secondly many Malaysians have blood and
sentimental ties with West Sumatra," he told Bernama here recently.

He said if those Malay-Minang-Java ties were handled well at least half a
million Malaysian would visit Sawahlunto which was rich in natural beauty and an
interesting history and was only 55 minutes by air from Kuala Lumpur.

Amran said as the town of about 56,000 people only had small hotels
preparations were being made for homestay packages.

On attractions, he said there was the old part of town which came up after
the Dutch colonialists found coal in 1858 and there were coal tunnels which were
supplied with oxygen.

"Even though we are a small town we have three museums and dozens of ancient
builings having a close relationship with coal-mining which still provides work
for locals," he said.

Amran hoped that with the revival of the period-coach rail service between
Padang and Sawahlunto on Feb 21 more tourists would come on the three-hour
journey taking in the natural countryside beauty, viewing small towns and going
through a 900m long tunnel.

He said besides padi fields that stretched as far as the eye could see on
terraces and foot-hills other attractions were the Danau Singkarak a 21km by 7km
lake that had a type of anchovy (ikan bilis) that was as big as an adult's
fingers and said not to be found elsewhere.

Sawahlunto, he said, also had a monument to remember the humanitarian
tragedy of chained forced labour or "orang rantai" brought in by the Dutch from
Java to work in coal mines and who, although they were paid, were chained to
prevent them from fleeing.

There was also the Melaka Gallery on that historical city's past

On agricultural investments, the mayor said what was required was not
investors for large plantations but downstream entrepreneurs especially to
process into chocolate about 50,000 tonnes of cocoa that will be harvested in
two years.

--BERNAMA