Trip to Indonesia – Feb 14-15, 2009

Indonesia was a country I wanted to visit purely because of its close proximity to Singapore. Considering I had 5 weekends free in Singapore during my International stint there, it only made sense to make a visit, especially when it was a country that encouraged visa on arrival. Apart from that, I’m not at all sure what Indonesia has to offer, especially given my geographical challenges!

So Joban, my trainee friend with me in Singapore, and I did some research and figured there were 2 islands of Indonesia really close to Singapore – Batam and Bintan, both a 1 hour ferry ride away. On further research, we figured Batam was not really a place you would want to go if you wanted a ‘clean’ trip. So we chose Bintan and reached a place called Tanjun Pinang, the capital of Bitnan, from our apartment in UE Square in this way:

UE Square ->(Bus)-> Bugis ->(MRT)-> Tana Merah ->(Bus)-> Singapore Ferry Terminal ->(Ferry)-> Tanjung Pinang

Now the ferry terminal in Singapore took our breath away. I know we should stop getting surprised with seeing stuff in Singapore so neat and always well organized, especially after spending 2 weeks here and going out and checking out different parts of Singapore on every single day of my stay here, but still the ferry terminal was something to see! It was nothing short of a decent airport terminal of India. Things were supremely well organized, and the two of us had an image of a small little ferry junction a la India! It was because of that notion that we reached the terminal just 10 minutes before our ferry departure and realized that we were too late to make it. The boarding for a ferry closes 45 minutes before departure!! So we missed our 8:50 a.m ferry and had to take the next one at 11:10. Not having any other option, we got our documents in order and made it through the check-in counter and waited for our ride. When it was finally time to leave, we hurried through the long air bridge to make sure we got seats on the open upper deck of the ferry, because we had read that the view on the ferry ride from Singapore to Bintan was a treat in itself and we should definitely not be sitting in the comfort of the a/c inside the boat. When we made it to the upper deck, we realized that people sitting there only did so to be able to smoke, not to check out any picturesque surroundings along the way! The air was pretty suffocating for both of us, until we started moving, thereafter the sea winds not only blew the smoke cloud away, but also had this pleasant breeze to it that made us feel really sleepy. More so because we had gone clubbing the previous night to Zouk, one of the more happening clubs of Singapore, where I ended up mixing many different drinks and only managed 2 hours of sleep after getting back – all together adding to a completely non conducive environment to staying awake on the boat ride! So I grabbed 40 winks before reaching Tanjung Pinang.

The moment we got out of the ferry after it anchored and got our first glimpse of Indonesia, we just couldn’t help but think of our own country. I don’t think I need to explain further, but I can just say that this was the kind of ferry terminal that we always had in mind! Well, we get off and go to the visa on arrival counter and the place was nothing more than a kiosk of an Indian train station selling platform tickets! It was almost ludicrous the way we got our visas. We were wondering if they even checked our passports properly or looked at our faces while handing them back. It was that easy – give passport, stick visa, get passport back!

Anyway, we just took our passports and started moving, and there were a bunch of touts waiting right outside the counter itself! We hadn’t even walked out of the terminal and these guys began their usual rounds of soliciting business from us – ‘taxi sir’, ‘hotel sir’, ‘girl sir’, yada yada yada. Having already read about this bound to happen, and moreover being from a country that specialized in creating touts, we only knew better than to just quietly make our way out and politely ignore everyone around. But there was this one guy who just didn’t let go of us. We had to go and book our return ferry for the next day and were hunting for the place, and this guy kept following us and talking to us. He proved a little useful because he took us to the ferry booking counter and also translated to the people there in Bahasa that we wanted to travel by the 2:00 p.m ferry the next day, but he was being a real pain. Joban anyway tried bargaining with him and bringing down the cab fare from 150,000 Rupiah which was actually the rate quoted on wikitravels, but it had clearly said that this was over-quoted and we should try and bring it down. So while Joban kept talking to him, I went and exchanged currency and got 788000000 Rupiah in exchange for 100 Singapore Dollars. Yup, the number of zeroes in the Rupiah currency is really perplexing, but it is because they don’t have a smaller unit like cents in the case of Dollars and paise in the case of Rupees. They only have a single currency Rupiah, and it work something like 1000 Rupiah is 5 Indian Rupees! The smallest currency in the Rupiah denomination is 100 Rupiah and that is equal to 20 paise.

Anyway, so I got the money exchanged, but Joban was still negotiating with the tout and I was getting flustered because we had done with our work in Tanjung Pinang and I just wanted to reach our destination on Bintan island, a place called Trikora beach, as soon as possible. But Joban continued his tactics, and ditched the guy saying he was too expensive and started walking ahead, knowing only too well that he will come back with a lower figure once Joban started talking to another cab driver. And the guy actually did, he came back with 120,000 Rupiah. But the thing was, this new guy that we spoke to was a real dullard. He quoted 100,000 Rupiah to Joban and Joban replied with 80,000 Rupiah and the guy agreed! So we just decided to go with that guy, but the first guy began getting really furious by this time. So much that he was harassing the new cabbie big time and then started asking money from us for all his “services” – which included bugging us since the moment we landed and then using his broken English to translate a few things for us. He was demanding 10,000 Rupiah. Now I wasn’t very sure what the worth of 10,000 Rupiah was, but considering we had a 40km ride now negotiated for 80,000 Rupiah, there was no way we were gonna pay this guy 10,000 Rupiah for spending 20 minutes unwarrantedly with us. But just to get rid of him, I gave him 5,000 Rupiah and this guy looks at the note, grabs it from me, tears it and throws it back. I reacted saying ‘what the hell?’and he says ‘fuck you’. I told him ‘fuck you too’. He then started saying something’s in Bahasa to both us and the cabbie, but we decided to ignore him and just get on with our way because we had barely spent half an hour in Indonesia and really didn’t want to get into some fight with the locals already! So we left the scene and the last thing our irate tout tells us is ‘you’re going to Trikora beach right? I’ll see you there’. He didn’t stop with that. Even after we began moving, he kept following us and continuing to threaten our driver. This was beginning to be a real mess! But thankfully, once we hit the highway, our man left us alone. I kept trying to figure out the worth of 5,000 Rupiah. I knew it was 25 Indian Rupees, and that is a good sum to pay someone for simply leaving us alone. It was definitely not so small an amount to throw attitude that way. The worth of 5,000 Rupiah totally confirmed itself when we stopped to refuel at a petrol junction. 1 litre of fuel was only 4,500 Rupiah. So basically I had given that sod enough money to get him 1 full litre of fuel and he still had the cheek to tear the note. After that, I wasn’t bothered at all. Joban was totally enjoying it saying ‘let him come, we’ll see’. Anyway, we had a nice long journey to Trikora beach and intended to find ourselves a room in a place called Shady Shack or Susi’s, which were 2 popular resorts on this beach.

We kept traveling and traveling and came across a bunch of places like Bintan Resorts and Bitan Agro Beach, which all looked really neat, but no sign of our Shady Shack anywhere. We asked a lot of locals, but none of these guys, including our new cabbie could manage even a single word of English. I remember trying to ask our cabbie’s name and he just couldn’t understand what the word ‘name’ meant. I had to point to myself and say ‘Sandeep’ and then point to him for him to figure it out and he blurted ‘Salim’. It was that crazy here! So we kept searching and finally at one particular place while we were enquiring, I remembered reading on the net that the place was run by a nice Mr. Lobo. So I just asked these guys if they knew Lobo and suddenly they all lit up and went in chorus, “oh, Loboooooo”. It was so cute, I also went, “ya, Lobooooo” along with them. So, apparently Lobo here was more famous than the place he runs and we found our way there. And true to its name, Shady Shack was really Shady, because you can barely spot the resort from the main road!

So we entered the resort and landed at Susi’s first. We spoke to the owner there, Sularto, who told us that Lobo and he are friends and share the same portion of the beach and we can even stay here itself. We had actually read about Susi’s too on the net and knew it wasn’t very different from Shady Shack. So we decided to check out the place and a non a/c room, right on the banks of the beach was available for S$20. We brought it down to S$17 and took the place. We also asked Sularto to prepare some lunch and ordered one chicken meal and one fish meal. He said it would take an hour, so we decided to go for a walk along the beach. It was a really awesome beach; the sand was white and water was different shades of green and blue. I wouldn’t know turquoise from mauve, but I’m guessing it was all of that. We took a nice long walk, taking photos along the way, and noticed that there were a decent bunch of foreigners here. A few of them we even observed were on our very same boat in the morning! That was really nice to see and we hoped to get talking with them sometime during the day. But after lunch, we realized we were so tired that we just wanted to sleep, so that’s what we did. I also had some of the local beer called Bintang and ended up eating a lot because of that. So that only made me feel more sleepy. For a change, I actually ate more than Joban. He has this enormous appetite and is one of those guys who had absolutely no aversions to any kind of food, quite like me. But he was getting all sorts of paranoid with Sularto’s food, saying the oil is not good, the chicken is cold and the tofu was too spicy. I was enjoying the food all the same. It was 4:00 p.m and I hadn’t had a morsel the entire day! So I gobbled down quite a bit and slept peacefully to the soft noise of the beach right next to us.

Woke up by around 8:00 p.m and it was pitch dark outside. The place was barely lit, and it was a new moon night. We took a walk to Lobo’s Shady Shack which was right next to Susi’s and dinner was being served to all the residents there. We also joined in, met Lobo and had a serving of fried shrimps, fish gravy, bean salad, rice and more tofu. But this time around, the food was much better than lunch. Joban also thankfully seemed to think so, and we managed to do more justice to finishing our food this time around. He took 2 breaks also in the middle to ensure he gunned the whole thing down!

After dinner, there was a bonfire being arranged on the beach and we went there and started talking to the people there. There was Eva from Norway, Yurki from Korea, Jennifer and her French speaking Dad from France, a couple from Germany, and so many others. It was really good fun chatting with all of them, sitting around the bonfire under an immensely star-lit sky. After hanging around for quite some time, we got back to our room and called it a day. Salim was to come next day at 9:00 a.m and take us back to Tanjung Pinang where we intended to do some shopping and check out the city life of Indonesia.

So that’s what we did, after taking another morning walk, this time in the opposite direction from Lobo’s, and shooting more pictures and realizing how amazingly beautiful this place is, that I almost simply cannot put it in words fittingly descriptive enough. We had Sularto’s breakfast – noodles and egg and once again, the dish was super oily, but I had it all the same. But this time, my stomach was to give way by evening..

Anyway, we drove back to Tanjung Pinang and I had some more of Salim’s cigarettes, which he had actually introduced me to the previous day itself and it was this version of Gudang Garam, and a version that I preferred a lot more to the Garams we get in India. So we drove, I spoke some more with Salim in sign language and soon, he dropped us off at the ferry terminal of Tanjung Pinang. We were hoping to run into that tout from the previous day and ask him why he didn’t turn up at Trikora! Anyway, we used our last few hours at Indonesia shopping in a big mall called Ramayana, which was actually a mall for the local people of Indonesia, so apparently you get much better rates and don’t get fleeced like the other places designed for tourists! I picked quite a few things from there. Then we went souvenir shopping, picked a couple of things from a neat looking souvenir shop, and finally headed to our ferry at 2:00 p.m. This time along, we sat in the a/c compartment itself, though I barely managed to get any sleep, and after we reached Singapre by 4:00, Joban wanted to do a bit of shopping and it was at this time that my stomach totally went kaput. So I decided to quit and get back. Joban also wrapped up early and we were on our way back to our rooms.

The entire time I kept thinking about the different scenes from Indonesia. The locals staring at us making us wonder if this was the way foreigners felt when they came to India! The crystal clear water on the beach that made you clearly see your toe in spite of being knee deep in it. The Bintang beer, the shack we stayed in, the broken English people spoke, the foreigners we made friends with, Salim scratching his head every time he couldn’t understand what I tried telling him.. the place was brilliant. A must visit if one were to ever stay in Singapore. Only beware, visiting the place will not be devoid of an adventure!

Some things to remember before making this journey:

1) Take the earliest ferry out of Singapore – works out S$10 cheaper than the other ferry’s during the day

2) Eat only at Lobo’s Shady Shack. Stay at Sularto’s Susi if you want a/c, else you can stay as well as eat at Shady Shack only

3) Ask Lobo or Sularto (get numbers from the net) to send a cab to pick you from the ferry terminal if you wish to avoid touts

4) Lobo and Sularto accept Singapore Dollars, so no need to convert to Rupiah (and lose out on conversion costs) unless you wish to shop locally. Actually, some shops near the ferry themselves accept Sing Dollars. So no problems at all.

5) Visit only Trikora beach on Bintan – the rest might literally be ‘Shady’!!

6) Don't even dream of using your Singapore number in Bintan. The local service provider Telekomsel charge $4.50 for a single incoming or outgoing call and $1.50 for an SMS. There is always full range, even when you're on the ferry, but its best to just leave your phone switched off.

7) Smokers: Don't take cigarettes from Singapore. Its cheaper in Indonesia. Next, don't bring back cigarettes from Indonesia, way too expensive to bring it back in to Singapore. I was asked to pay $5 as tax on pack of 10 cigarretes, which had only cost me about $1.50 when I bought them!

8) The entire journey should not cost more than S$100, which is less than a day spent at Sentosa!

That’s it. Cheerio!