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strong>April 12, Online

While Bali remains the most popular tourist destination in Indonesia, East Nusa Tenggara (NTT) ranked second in a recent poll by a social travel site burufly.com.

The poll received 1.5 million unique clicks, showing that 21 percent of respondents wanted to visit Bali and 17 percent NTT. The remaining 62 percent was spread over 10 places including Raja Ampat in West Papua, Jakarta, Yogyakarta and West Java.

Your comments:

Wanting to visit and visiting are not the same. The 21 percent wanting to visit Bali can be seen in
Bali; the 17 percent wanting to visit NTT are nowhere to be seen except, perhaps, a few thousand
a year visiting Komodo.

Infrastructure in NTT is extremely poor, let alone infrastructure in the tourism sector. If the government in Kupang wants to cash in on the 17 percent wanting to visit they should stop the endemic corruption that has made Kupang the most corrupt capital in Indonesia as per Transparency International's yearly surveys.

NTT is the most underdeveloped province in Indonesia although government's budgets for that purpose are relatively large. Look at the condition of the road from Kupang east to Timor Leste. It's a disgrace. It's time to wake up to reality.

Henry Manoe