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We spent a day in Pekanbaru, deliberating over the difficult dilemma of how to cross Indonesia. The facts were:
1. We had to cover 4000kms
2. We had to do a minimum of 6 ferry crossings from island to island to get to Timor (some ferries only running once a week or less frequently)
3. We had to do all that in 30 days!!!
Clearly it was not a possible feat, even for the fittest cyclists… So we spread out our map looking for a way to cut down the distance to cycle. We had also been informed that the hurricane of the day before had caused serious flooding and road damage in east Sumatra (on our initial planned route). So with much regret we decided the best option was to take a cheap domestic flight to Jakarta, thus cutting out 900 km of cycling in Sumatra… We would therefore get to the island of Java (the most populated island that contains the capital Jakarta) much sooner than anticipated. From there we would see how far we would get in the remaining time – we could always fly/sail to Darwin from Bali, if we ran out of time and couldn’t make it further…
One day and a two-hour flight later we arrived in Jakarta. We found a nice cheap hotel in Jalan Jaksa (main traveller’s area) and spent a couple of days in the city, planning a detour visit to the Krakatau volcano, and then further on east into Java. We found Jakarta to be much more ‘Western’ than we had imagined – with Starbucks, Pizza Huts and a nice fast bus lane connecting key points in the city (their equivalent of a Metro). There was not much to see in the way of historic monuments or any other major tourist attractions. We paid a brief visit to the quaint old district of Batavia (now Kota), which still retains its colonial Dutch influence, including the infamous Cafe Batavia, worth visiting for the exquisite colonial interior and sumptuous (though pricey) chocolate-mint shakes!
We also took a stroll around the Sunda Kelapa harbour – one of the few working ports in the world still using wooden schooners and porters to load and offload cargo… Afterwards we took the lift ride up to the top of the Monas monument – a 137 m tall column with a viewing platform on the top. It is often referred to as ‘Sukarno’s last erection’ by the locals – thus referring to the dictator’s philandering, finally ousted from power in the 1960s. The country is still undergoing significant political upheaval on the road to democracy – as we witnessed ourselves in the form of a three day demonstration for changing the labour laws. At one point the crowd started to get violent, smashing lampposts, and we had to take shelter in a nearby Starbucks which promptly brought down its steel shutters!!
