Indonesia

The conference for work ended on a Wednesday and Thursday I was to travel from Hong Kong to Surabaya, Indonesia. The very cheap China Airlines flight I had booked showed a connection in Taipei. Little did I know there was also a connection in Singapore. All told, the flights took about nine hours when a direct from HK would have been maybe three. But hardly worth the expense. I arrived close to midnight in Surabaya and was scheduled to depart Indonesia exactly seven days later. Instead of a running play by play of the trip, I chose to summarize the week’s adventures more topically.

Road Rules, Volume 1

Some of the great adventures to be had in countries such as Indonesia occur on the back of a scooter, riding a lumbering ferry or stuck on a stuffy slow bus. Traveling overland in a country where reliable public transport is few and far between and where traffic laws don’t really exist can be daunting, time consuming and most certainly a frustrating experience. Yet it is highly entertaining and definitely the best way to see the people, places and things that define a country.
Planning a trip with this in mind, my flight into Indonesia brought me into the country’s second largest city, Surabaya, Java. My flight back to the states was from Denpasar, Bali: 300 miles, one island and 7 days away. What is typically a 4 or 5 hour easy drive on a luxurious interstate in the US is quite a bit different in any developing country.

My plan was to spend a day or two at Mt. Bromo, a scenic volcano and national park area in between Surabaya and Bali. After spending a sticky night in a cheap hostel, a helpful gentleman named Danu loaded me up on the back of his scooter, took me around town to few stops and then to the bus station.

Danu and I tackle the streets of Surabaya:


At an extremely chaotic bus station, here is my view of what happens: People who have their destination in mind walk down an aisle of buses and screaming gentlemen, all trying to get you to ride their bus, or the bus company that is slipping them a few rupiah to recruit passengers. All the while for some reason, someone on stage is singing loud horrible Indonesian music. In my case, Danu told them I wanted an air conditioned bus to Probolinggo, from where I’d get another ride to the top of the volcano. It was a rather pleasant and uneventful ride, until I got to within a few blocks of the bus station in Probolinggo and was prompted off the bus for the transfer to Bromo. Sure enough, they dropped me at a special ‘tourist’ office obviously friendly with that bus company. My new good friend Koko told me I could wait an hour or two for a public bus take to two and a half hour ride up the mountain or I could pay a little bit more and hop on the back of a scooter for a 45 minute upward burst. So I took the bike.

Flying up the mountain on the back of a bike:


About halfway up, the clouds closed in and it was soon raining. Luckily I had a jacket to protect my bag, but no cover up for me. It was soon a heavy downpour. A picnic it is not when the rain is hitting your face and eyeballs on a scooter going 50 mph. My friendly driver seemed not to mind either. Soaked to the bone, we passed the rain line, everything was dry, I had not a dry spot on me. I was dropped at another hotel that was obviously friendly with the tourist company. I had opted to pay for a standard room but suspected I was given an economy room, most likely with my good friend Koko pocketing the difference. One must learn to take the good with the bad, make lemonade and give in to the fact that gentlemen will do what’s needed to work the tourists to make a few extra bucks. I’m not a sap, but I’m also not one to make a huge stink over a couple bucks here and there.

After about 24 hours spent exploring the volcano and surrounds, it was on to Bali. I was told the bus would leave from Probolinggo at 12pm, take the 8 hour bus ride/ferry connection to make it to Denpasar, Bali by 8pm. What followed was just incredible. With a few other European tourists, we waited in the hot afternoon shade for the bus…11am…12pm…1pm…finally 1:45, the bus came. We hopped on, only to be taken to a bus repair station, the gas station and finally on the road out of Probolinggo by 2:15. The busiest thoroughfares are narrow two lane roads traversed by everything from massively overloaded big rigs down to the piddliest motorbikes…and more motorbikes. Here’s how we navigated the Northeast Java coastal road: We’d approach a slow moving truck. The bus would straddle the center line so the driver could see oncoming traffic, which was usually significant. If at some point there was a break in traffic and the drive could see far enough ahead, he’d swerve the bus into the passing lane, oncoming motorbikes be damned, accelerate like hell and swerve back into the lane usually just in time to avoid another oncoming truck. All the while, motorbikes would pass up on the right or left, every single vehicle honking almost constantly to notify others of their presence.

When a motorbike would be coming from a perpendicular street and entering the crowded coastal road, driving etiquette was not to stop, wait for a break and pull out, but to make a tight turn onto the dirt shoulder of the road and eventually inch over onto the pavement and into the flow of traffic. At one point I was looking out the window, and man driving a scooter with a woman on back (both dressed in traditional Indonesian Islamic garb), approached from a cross street. The man pulled the bike out almost right in front of the bus. We swerved a bit and the bus driver threw him a honk. The man over corrected and dropped the scooter on its side, the man and woman went sprawling! Horrified, I looked back and tried to see if they were okay. But we sped ahead and I was left to guess at the result of the minor crash. I also noticed that not one other person on our packed bus had been looking and noticed the accident.

A monkey does a nice pole dance at a rest stop on the road from Surabaya to Denpasar:


The ferry we had to take on this journey would take us from the island of Java to the island of Bali. By 9:30pm, we had finally reached the ferry. We had to wait about a half hour then they drove the bus straight onto the ferry, then the five Europeans and I went topside to exchange travel stories during the leisurely hour long ride. Back on the bus, for the home stretch to Denpasar. We reached the city by 12am only to have to pile in the back of another van to get to the tourist area where there were some welcoming, cheap beds for some tired souls.
Transport in Indonesia had already exhausted and awed me, and some of the more interesting rides were yet to be undertaken.

More fun to come on the roads of Indonesia.