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We caught the highly efficient Singapore ferry from the World Trade Centre, to the Indonesian island of Karimun – a slightly unconventional jumping-off point for Sumatra, but much nicer than the traditional stop-by island of Batam, just off the coast of Singapore. In true Singaporean style our departure at the ferry terminal was highly clean and efficient – with airport style luggage check-in and all the amenities of a modern international terminal.
How different it was arriving at our destination, Tanjung Balai port on Karimun island. A wooden jetty and a crumbling wooden building, with customs officers chain-smoking underneath the no-smoking signs plastered on every wall. On arrival we were dismayed to find out that we would only be able to get a 30 day tourist visa – the visa rules having been changed recently! This put a serious spanner in the works. Indonesia being a very large country, our planned route covered almost 3000kms, and would need approximately 2 months to cover fully on bicycle! We realised we would have to take some shortcuts to cross the country in time…
We stayed one night on Karimun, and caught a fast-ish boat to another port just off the coast of Sumatra, called Selapanjang. From there we would transfer on to the river-boat that would slowly wade for 14 hours upriver to the town of Pekanbaru, in the middle of Sumatra. We had 1 hour to kill on Selapanjang – Nic wandered off 3km into town in search of some food, but came back empty handed. In the end we bought some chicken curry (claw!!) and rice wrapped in a banana leaf from a local woman on the jetty. No cutlery so we ate Indonesian style (with the right hand).
About half an hour later a wooden boat-cum-mobile-pigeon-coup that looked like it had been on the water since the 19th century moored up. We took no notice of it, waiting for the nice river-boat on which we had booked two ‘kamera’ (rooms) for the overnight trip. Whilst waiting Nic joked that wouldn’t it be funny if this was our boat! The smile was quickly wiped off his face when realisation dawned that ‘this WAS our boat’!!
Quite daunted we boarded and placed the bikes at the bow. Once inside, the boat wasn’t as bad as it looked from the outside. It was WORSE. The two ‘kamera’ that we booked turned out to be a floor space separated by planks from the next compartment, each about 3×6 ft. The whole inside of the boat was all open-space so there was no privacy, and worse still, no shelter from the chain-smoking locals. We decided that we would probably die of suffocation by the morning if we stayed there – so we clambered up the outside of the boat on to the roof. We were warned we might be cold in the night by the locals – but we decided to brave it nevertheless. There was in fact no need to worry since it was a dry balmy night (though the locals promptly put on their woolly hats!).
We had the roof pretty much to ourselves the whole journey. The boat meandered its way at a whopping 10kph through the mangrove forest and oil palm plantations. There was no habitation in sight other than the odd logging station and oil palm rigs. A few small settlements were largely primitive – no cars or electricity and everything made from wood.
As the night fell we watched the sunset and a large storm to the east – we later found out that it was a big hurricane that caused serious flooding and damage to the roads on our route. Thankfully it stayed dry on the river and we fell asleep watching the stars.
Woken at dawn by one of the crew, we watched the sunrise over the oily calm waters of the river. Finally the boat docked – we were on Sumatra, the largest island of Indonesia. It had taken us three boats and 36 hours to get here – each boat was worse than the one before and the standards of living had dropped dramatically with each boat. From the clinically clean Stepford-wife suburbs of Singapore to the third-world streets of Indonesia, where children played bare-foot…
