In Indonesia

Tarakan island, Indonesia (map)

In this blog: arrival in Indonesia, a stroll about town, and a backstreet karaoke bar

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Malaysia to Indonesia ferry

Arrival in Indonesia

A country of over seven thousand islands, the fourth largest population in the world, and so many volcanoes you could call them a little greedy - I've arrived in Indonesia. 

Huge and dissected by the equator, Indonesia is as diverse as countries get and could really be a collection of countries - it's a bit like if you were to include France, Estonia and Bulgaria as part of the UK. Having heard about this country over the years thanks to said volcanoes, sweat shop clothing factories, ferry disasters, the huge population, illegal migrants into Australia and so on (all negatives!) I've had it on my rough plan since the start. 

Our travel gang is now down to just two with the other pair jetting off in different directions, and I'm now travelling just with Rene Boulanger - a 24 year old Canadian from the city of Edmonton for the next few weeks until our plans take us in different directions. 

To go the short distance from Malaysia into Indonesia meant taking a ferry along the north east Borneo coast since there's no connecting roads. We set off from our previous stop in Tawau, Malaysia and rushed to catch the 10.30am ferry only to find the info we read was wrong and it didn't actually leave for another hour. Having rushed I was now a sweaty mess, and stood in the departure lounge on my own under the ceiling fan desperately trying to cool down, whilst Rene made friends with a German couple who were heading the same way as us. 

The ferry was dead quiet and surprisingly nice inside, with every passenger curiously handed a complementary can of soya bean drink as a refreshment. The journey was uneventful bar seeing loads of bamboo platforms way out at sea, which looked like oil rigs but were actually some sort of fishing platforms we guess. 

We passed hundreds of these mysterious looking platforms - for fishing?

We neared the docks in Tarakan and the excitement set in. Whenever I arrive in a country I always love those first moments - rapidly taking in how everything looks, the sounds, smells, the buildings, signs, people, whether it's calm or chaotic. In this case it was mad. We docked in Tarakan and for some reason had to clamber along the outside of the boat then across the deck of another whilst eager porters pushed past to unload the various luggage and small cargo on ours. It was back to chaos, but only briefly thankfully.

First impressions of Indonesia 

Tarakan is an island a little way off the coast of mainland Borneo, and for us just a necessary stepping stone for travel to the mainland. After passing through immigration, the four of us stood outside and looked at each other with the look of 'what now?' since neither guidebooks nor the internet had yielded any information on this out-the-way dull little place. English seemed to be less commonly spoken straight away. We agreed a price for a taxi and found ourselves ripped off straight away, when at the other end the driver told us the price agreed was for just two people and not the four of us. With each of us only £0.60 out of pocket, it was a fairly painfree lesson in vigilance.

Everything looked a tiny bit downtrodden compared to Malaysia, but not nearly as much as I expected. We went to the ATM and excitedly withdrew 1 million rupiah each before remembering it was just £50, then wandered around for half an hour looking for a place to stay within our price range. We found nothing but expensive business hotels so asked a young security guard outside an office block. He racked his brains for a moment then despite being on duty, in broken English kindly offered to drive us to find a place. We could tell he had no reason to fleece us, so hopped in his people carrier and after a couple of attempts he soon found us a perfect little hotel down a side road near the airport. The bed even had a sprung mattress, something I'd barely encountered for months, heaven! The staff barely spoke any English, and it was obvious foreign guests were as rare as hens teeth there, as they made a proper fuss over us and even asked for a group photo with them the next morning. A picture was building that after an easy few months of people being able to speak my native tongue, things were about to get a little more difficult. 

Backstreet karaoke 

That night after dinner the Germans suggested grabbing a beer somewhere so we went for a wander. None of the local shops sold alcohol, but a guy pointed down a road at a building before slowly riding his scooter to lead us as we walked behind. It was a strange looking bar - more like a warehouse or a nightclub from the outside, and we tentatively wandered in. It soon became apparent this was not a normal bottle shop or a bar. The walls and ceiling were completely black save for interestingly a load of Guinness banners, and the lighting very dim. There were no tables to sit around, and instead we were led to one of the bench seats which faced a projector screen at one end of the room like a cinema. This all looked and felt very strange, and it soon became apparent that we were in fact in a karaoke bar - something that is popular throughout Asia.

We were given a warm beer each (you have to ask for cold apparently, pah!), and a slip of paper - 'write your song here' the guy said. We had no intentions of doing karaoke, but he was persistent so we caved. There were only fifteen of so locals present including a ladyboy or two, and most of what they were singing was awful Indonesian ballads. Even the security guard came in from outside and had a go, in fact he probably had the best voice of all. The choice of western music was fairly limited but I soon found a couple of crackers which on reflection were strangely fitting - Green Day 'Time of Your Life' and Metallica 'Nothing Else Matters'. Us three lads collaborated on the microphone singing our hearts out, and received an applause from the small crowd at the end - it was a lot of fun. Very few foreign tourists pass through Tarakan, and I can't imagine any have ended up in this little backstreet place making it all the more of an authentic local experience. As far as karaoke can be called a local experience anyway. 

Karaoke time - we stuck with the English songs

Me, Christoffer and Rene giving it some beans

Back at the hotel we exchanged details with the Germans and talked blogs - they told of how they'd had custom graphics professionally designed for their blog, bought a new MacBook Air computer for it's weight and power, upgraded their GoPro camera from last years version, and travelled with four other cameras, with her writing and him editing their photos and videos along the way. It was all very professional for a pair of backpackers, a little too much I wondered, and further proof that Germans can't do anything by halves! They were a very nice couple and you can find their blog here.

Catch up

We had planned to move straight on the next morning since Tarakan was just a transit hub, but late that night we realised we actually had no idea where we were heading for since we'd not read too many details about the country. With a nice hotel to chill in, we decided to stay another day. Rene read everything about Indonesia he could, whilst I sat in a near trance in the cafe next door for much of the day, tapping away at the keys to catch up on writing.

In-between and after though, we went for a little stroll to sort a few things. Along the main road through town poor locals sat beside the road every couple of metres, selling petrol in one litre drink bottles for passing motorbikes despite a petrol station not being too far away - a desperate looking existence. Motorcyclists passed quickly shouting 'hello' and 'hello mister' to us, the only white boys in town being an obvious novelty to them. I bought an Indonesian SIM card for my phone with guesswork being the order of the day for picking one, and nearby was was surprised to see a few bakeries, where I bought some strawberry flavour banana crisps out of curiosity, which tasted like deep fried sugar and little else.

Tarakan was a gentle and fun introduction to Indonesia, the people were friendly and helpful, and I was filled with promise that it wasn't going to be mad, dirty and chaotic as the odd person has suggested to me before. Let's hope this wasn't just a pleasant blip.

With a local ladyboy, or manlady, or drag queen.
Orr just man who liked makeup. We weren't sure!

Rene, myself, the hotel manager, Christoffer and his wife Kerstin
The hotel manager was desperate for a pic with us,
they don't see many (any?) foreigners there it seems