Travel & Living

Pangandaran, one of Java's best-kept secrets as a known tourist attraction has also been extremely popular among locals, for a long time. A small fishing town possesses one of Java's beautiful beaches.

Pangandaran also hosts many annual international events like the International Kite Festival. The festival is a gathering of kite lovers from across the world where all their colorful kites are flown together under the blue sky of Pangandaran.

It's not a surprise if Pangandaran is considered as a leading tourism site as it offers diverse aspects of attractions. The white sandy beach tour is one of those enjoyed by visitors. In the southern sea shore, a relatively gentle slope, visitors can enjoy the romance of the sea crystal clear waters of Pangandaran with crashing waves that aren't too large.

By driving about 4 hours from Bandung or 7 hours from Jakarta, visitors also can feel the swing from the waves with a panoramic view of the coral reefs and the ornamental fish with colorful, amazing eyes, while snorkeling or body surfing. Also, by renting a fishing boat, visitors can experience the fun of adventuring around the sea area of Pangandaran.

The site is also known as a one stop tourism experience, from swimming, snorkeling, fishing, jet skiing, and hiking, Pangandaran has it all. It truly is a full package vacation that's suitable for all ages.

On 17 July 2006, Pangandaran was hit by a tsunami, an undersea earthquake, measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale. The tsunami devastated most of the tourism infrastructures and facilities in the area, hundreds of lives were reported to be lost and/or missing. And, the number of visitors to Pangandaran declined drastically.

Due to the impacts of the tsunami in 2006 the UN World Tourism Organization together with the Indonesian Ministry for Culture and Tourism (MoCT) are now planning for a sustainable re-development of Pangandaran, which harmonizing the development of tourism and nature conservation.

The overall goal of the UNWTO project in Indonesia is to strengthen tourism development processes and enhance conservation of biodiversity in the model site of Pangandaran and Ciamis district. It is expected that the project serves as a model example for other destinations in Indonesia and even the South-East Asia region.

And now, Pangandaran has now begun to rise again and continues to attract tourists. Pangandaran's beaches today began to rise and is beautiful again. Tourists started to come again, both local and foreign tourists, and the buildings and facilities are designed as in Bali, however, prices are far cheaper than in Pangandaran to be more beneficial to visitors.

Moreover, this area has been established by the government as one of the top 15 (fifteen) tourist hot spots that will be managed by the model of the Destination Management Organization (DMO). Through this governance, all stakeholders involved are required to work hand in hand in managing the region's tourism plan, development, implementation, as well as monitoring and evaluation.

This, of course is not an easy thing to do, given the previous Pangandaran region known as mass tourism, with the area not being crowded and well-managed, and the area was not even environmentally friendly tourism site. Prior to the tsunami, many stalls lined up haphazardly on the beach, and especially during the holiday seasons, you instantly see dozens of these stalls offering a wide variety of products ranging from food, drinks, beach clothes, and souvenirs.

Problems were encountered such as the mindset of pragmatic society that is still a challenge that must be faced together so that each process is carried out and can be a lesson to us all and that Pangandaran is to be a better place to be visited.

Maintaining the Pangandaran requires effort and commitment, in which all stakeholders from the Local Government of Ciamis to the Department of Culture and Tourism (Disbudpar) are to play an active role with a clear, direct concept of tourism so that in the future, Pangandaran is a worthy place to be filled with interesting attractions supported by promoting a vigorous and full support of all the existing stakeholders.