Sawahlunto is a town built in a bowl, and the company that built it made no secret about who was in charge. After coal was found in the valley in the 1860s, the Dutch colonial government set out to turn a handful of rice fields, which is what Sawahlunto means, into a mining centre, and the town grew up in layers around the pits. The officers' houses sat on the high ground with space and shade, while the labourers' quarters crowded closer to the work.
The people who did the digging were a mixed lot. Many were convicts brought in from Java and elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies, known as orang rantai, the chain people, because they worked in chains. Later, free labourers came from across the archipelago, so the town acquired an odd cultural mix: Minangkabau, Javanese, Chinese, Batak. You can still see it in the streets, the food and the buildings. Dutch-era houses with high ceilings and wide verandas stand beside mosques, and a handsome old power station and station building have been turned into museums.
The coal brought money and power but also hardship. When the mines ran down in the later twentieth century, the town nearly emptied, until it began presenting its history as a reason to visit. In 2019 UNESCO listed the town together with the railway and mining sites as a heritage landscape.
The road to Sawahlunto from Solok, about nineteen kilometres, climbs through green hills and tight bends with a lot of truck traffic. Take it slowly. The town is much quieter than you might expect from the roads. Solok has plenty of fuel and food, and in Sawahlunto itself there are simple eateries, so you can happily take a lunch break among the old company buildings. Wear a rain jacket in the afternoons, because storms build quickly in the hills.