May 19, 2015
24 hours on an Indonesian ferry: It could be worse
In the morning Tom (who had indeed got himself a new tyre and a helmet at precisely the point at which he no longer needed them) and I found one another near to the port and had breakfast together before I went off to get supplies for our ferry ride at a little supermarket. The girl who served me tried to sneak an extra item onto the bill in order to make a little money for herself. It was the third or fourth time that had happened to me in Sumatra. It was always a disappointing moment when I caught them out and had to tell them that I didn’t really appreciate being stolen from. There were some very good and some very bad things about Sumatra, and this was one of the bad things.
We had also been warned many times to watch out for pickpockets and thieves on the boat itself - apparently some people invest in the ticket and ride the ferry just to steal from people. And it was a really big boat, with many hundreds of people on board for the 24-hour journey to Batam. Because it was an overnight voyage we were each assigned a bed, and naturally Tom and I had elected for the cheapest tickets and found ourselves in the economy section. This was basically just a big open room with dozens of mattresses lined up in rows right next to one another with no dividers in between. With hundreds of people on board this was certainly going to be cosy.
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We weaved our way through the crowds of people and found our way to our elected beds as defined by our ticket numbers. On the mattress next to mine was a great big fat woman who was so large that many of her more flabby parts actually spilled over onto my mattress. Tom, for some reason, seemed to find this hilarious. “Maybe you’ll get lucky tonight!” he chuckled. The smile was soon wiped off his face after he tried lying down on his own mattress, however, and discovered it was covered in bed bugs. And that’s before mentioning the cockroaches, which were coming out from under the beds and crawling all over everything.
Well this was certainly a discouraging start, but believe it or not the boat journey turned out to be a good one. There were outdoor decks where we spent most of our time, and Tom certainly seemed to be in his element. We were the only two foreigners on board, which naturally made us slight celebrities, and he captivated a few of the other passengers with his guitar skills. I managed to read a fair chunk of a book Tom lent me about how to pick up girls, which is always useful, and I was entranced by a beautiful ocean sunset, the boat didn’t sink, and we even found a good place to sleep. The communal bed system wasn’t popular with everyone and lots of people took to the floors looking for more restful places in various nooks and crannies, and we had a great spot next to the doorway that our bikes were being kept in. I used my bike as a barrier to protect me from the noise of the rest of the boat and slept very well, and if any cockroaches ran across my face in the night I didn’t even notice.
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Morning came and we reached our destination of Batam on time, although getting off the boat was a chaotic process if ever there was one. All of the passengers tried to get off the boat all at once, whilst various porter men ran around between them carrying boxes and various other items of cargo on their heads. With everyone cramming for the small stairs at once and these porters trying to run back up again in order to get more items while other porters tried to run down with great weights on their heads it was a sure difficult task for Tom and I trying to disembark with two fully loaded touring bicycles. Eventually we did make it off though, and into a big hangar where, because it was pounding down with rain, all of the people that had been in such a rush to get off the boat a few moments earlier now stood waiting.
We made a dash for the international ferry terminal next door, the one that I had been in on my first arrival into Indonesia six weeks earlier. We even stopped to eat in the same restaurant that I had been to on that morning, and I ate rice and eggs again, that came with the strange pink things. Look:
We booked tickets for the next available boat for the hour-long journey to Singapore, which gave us just enough time to get our bags and bikes checked in and get through customs. The procedure when I’d come the other way had been a smooth one, but that of course had been conducted on the Singapore side. This time we got down to the luggage check-in desk and found no one there. We only had twenty minutes until our boat would leave, and we weren’t able to check our luggage. There were a couple of porters standing around, and they said the luggage guy would probably be back in a minute.
But five minutes later and there was still no sign of anyone. We were in danger of missing the boat now. The porter just shrugged and said “Maybe he’s in the toilet. Maybe he went to lunch. I don’t know.” AHHHHH!!! INDONESIA!!!!! None of this seemed to be bothering Tom in the least, who was going through an emotional goodbye to the last of his remaining dolls. I’d told him that they probably wouldn’t be well received in clean-cut Singapore and thankfully he’d conceded that it might not be such a bad idea to throw them away.
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As Tom slam-dunked the baby into the trash a man finally arrived who could check in our luggage, and as soon as that was done we made a dash through to passport control, and down to the docks, making it onto the boat just in time. Indonesia was over.
Today's ride: 3 km (2 miles)
Total: 40,838 km (25,360 miles)
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