I'll Be There Dreckly: I Sea

Makassar, Sulawesi island and Surabaya, Java island, Indonesia

In this blog: the only white face on a long cross-sea ferry, and a trip to a cigarette factory

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Despite only making a couple of stops on the Britain-sized island of Sulawesi there was little else in the south to hold my interest following the amazing previous week in the Tana Toraja region, and the following few days were a bit of a slow, frustrating and slightly boring mix of buses, boats and trains but as ever with Indonesia, things are never completely dull.

Countryside on the way south from Rantepao

Rene and I heading to Makassar

Heading South

From Tana Toraja, Canadian Rene and I took a bus south to Makassar, a ten hour journey on one of the most luxurious buses I'd ever been on and set off just twenty minutes late, a total contrast to the discomfort of previous Indonesian journeys. The scenery was beautiful the whole way, starting with small rolling valleys scattered with Torajan houses with their majestic curved roofs. The scenery became more mountainous after a couple of hours with grassy and rocky peaks either side of the bus, and with the freezing cold aircon on the bus I felt like I was on top of those summits. It got me thinking 'cause this has happened many times in Asia - just like we Brits see heat as a luxury, it seems to me that Asians particularly in hot developing countries see coldness as a rare luxury and completely overindulge on it when they have chance. Eventually the landscape flattened out and for a few hours we saw nothing but huge green paddy fields both sides of the road with villages every so often, the houses having a very different style of architecture again. Strangely the driver drove for six hours straight with no toilet or lunch stop so by the time we got to Makassar I was both bursting and famished in equal measure. It didn't help either that we were dropped at the depot somewhere way out in the suburbs in the dark, but after a bit of walking and guesswork we flagged down a passing share taxi that was heading to the centre and all was well.

Makassar itself was to be nothing more than a transit point I decided. It was a big messy sprawling city with only a few places of interest to the traveller, so for the night and morning we were there I decided to eschew sightseeing and catch up on a few things instead before catching the boat. I was heading next to the main island of Indonesia; Java, and having found all the flights way too expensive plumped for the ferry instead. After all, with so many islands in Indonesia ferries are the lifeblood of the country, so it would be an experience in itself I decided. And it was. Rene had to go to the Indonesian capital, Jakarta for a few days to apply for a visa for India, so it was back to solo travelling for a few days, but just as we said cheers for now and checked out of the hotel, we were hit with a bill for the minibar. We'd not touched it but they were insistent we pay, and things got a bit tense for a few minutes. In the end I had to get to the port and left Rene to sort it out, thankfully for them to admit it was their fault I learnt later.

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All Aboard

I really wasn't sure what the ferry experience would be like, but knowing that the economy class consists of hundreds of people sleeping on mats in giant rooms, I paid a bit more for a second-class cabin. I was a bit taken aback at first stepping on the ship, finding a dirty dimly-lit corridor full of people and boxes of luggage rather than the nice big lobby I ridiculously imagined. It was a confusing jumble of stairs and passages, but thankfully a staff member led me to my cabin which turned out to be exactly what I wanted; simple, functional and clean. Everywhere I wandered on the ship there were people, every passageway, open deck, corner, stairwell and bench contained folks laying on the floor, on their way back to see their families or earn their riches in another part of the country, unable to afford anything better than the most basic class.

Everyone stared as I passed and initially I felt pretty uncomfortable but soon got used to it. Even opening the cabin door involved someone moving out the way to let me past, and unsurprisingly I was the only westerner out of the hundreds if not thousands of people on this ship. Now normally on the streets, where people have at least something to do I might get the odd 'hello mister' in my direction, but here people had nothing whatsoever to occupy their attention and I became even more of a curiosity than normal to them, with heads turning, whispers muttered and 'hello mister where you come from?' echoing constantly. Unfortunately England had been knocked out of the World Cup the day before and when I told them my native place I was constantly reminded of this fact! Indonesians really do love football.

The only free space on the ship

People everywhere on board

Leaving port an hour later than scheduled, it was quite pleasant sat there on the floor of the upper deck, watching Makassar disappear into the distance then small islands pass by, as well as huge cargo ships and tankers. The only place I could really get any space though was sitting in a lifeboat which I spotted hanging off the top edge of the boat with no barriers across, a perfect place to read and relax. Peace! Space! Once the sun had set the Muslim 'call to prayer' played over the ship's PA system, and I headed for a shower and food. Despite meals supposedly being included in the ticket, for some reason the second-class restaurant (nice name!) wasn't serving that evening and sent me downstairs to economy class, where I squeezed my way through the cattle market of people only to receive an overpriced plate of tepid rice and what might possibly have been chicken. Luckily it was all back to normal the next day and I got a decent feed.

Despite it being a twenty-four hour crossing time passed surprisingly quickly and I actually quite enjoyed the experience. My plans of getting up-to-date with writing as well as finishing a book slipped away unfinished, and mid-afternoon we floated into the harbour at Surabaya - a huge industrial city of smoking chimneys, big factories, storage silos, and hundreds of parked-up cargo ships.

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Docking at Surabaya

I knew Surabaya had little to offer but hadn't got round to planning further ahead, to know where I was headed next so decided to stay a night. The port was a bustling frenzy of people and baggage squeezing into packed minibuses and cars, but strangely none seemed to go to the city centre. The language barrier made it even more confusing so tired of asking I set off on foot, eventually finding a share taxi which took me at least come of the way to a hotel before I guess-walked the rest. The room was nothing special with a lack of windows, no shower and a sink tap which didn't work, but choice was limited and it had to do. After the food on the ship I craved western-food, and with the biggest range of grub I could ever imagine available in a huge nearby mall I found just what I wanted. I'd planned to leave town straight away the following morning, but after some research a couple of interesting-sounding sights changed my mind.

I've mentioned before that Indonesians are massive smokers, some of the biggest puffers in the world I reckon. Its a dirt cheap hobby here, and adverts appear everywhere on the streets, media and even train station departure boards. Whilst I hate smoking myself, the ever-so-Indonesian tourist attraction of a cigarette museum and factory tour sounded too interesting to miss so I took a becak - a cycle rickshaw - to the House of Sempoerna a couple of miles away. Sempoerna are one of the most popular brands of cigarettes here, and in this factory about four-hundred women hand roll up to four-thousand tobacco and clove mix cigarettes each per day. Unfortunately I arrived on a Sunday, a day which they'd somewhat considerately taken off, so saw just an empty factory and a video but it satisfied my curiosity just about enough anyways. The adjoining museum was funny even if it didn't indeed to be, full of curiosities, paintings and photos of people smoking and some company history, all in an old-fashioned 'Guinness Is Good for You!' manner that blissfully ignored the fact that smoking has killed the odd person.

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I took another becak (for novelty value mostly) to the Arab quarter of town which was full of busy narrow passages full of traditionally-dressed Muslims shopping or heading to the nearby mosque, but apart from that not a lot of Arabian feel in reality. It was interesting enough but didn't really grab me so I continued to a Chinatown nearby. Surabaya is the first place in Indonesia that I've seen any Chinese faces, but in reality the district is just like any other these days. The streets were pretty grotty and the Dutch-colonial era buildings crumbling, but the huge fish market was really interesting, a hive of activity. Men carried in huge plastic drums of fresh fish, and there was a real variety on offer that I'd not really seen before, including stingrays and barracuda. Next door was a huge shed where women sorted and shelled garlic cloves and around the corner an interesting chicken market, and I wandered amongst it all for a while seeing a few quite unique sights.

I'd planned to leave town on a 4pm train to the city of Malang, but ran out of time and decided on a later one instead. Heading to catch that one I arrived at the wrong station, and after a race across town reached the correct place one minute late. Now, I've been on time for everything until now, yet every single bit of transport I've taken in Indonesia has been late leaving - sometimes twenty minutes sometimes a couple of hours. Yet here I am, one minute late, and it had already gone. Almost predictably though, when I caught the next train it left nearly an hour late! In the meantime though I headed for some food, on the way catching a free open air rock gig then on the way back, spending a quarter hour looking around an ex-Russian submarine used by the Indonesian Navy, now retired in a city park. Missing the train wasn't so bad after all.