Sunday, November 15, 2015

I’m already in Sumatra inside a fairly grubby little hotel in the coastal and port town of Tanjungbalai. However, before I describe the hotel, I should go back to getting the tourist visa. For Indonesia, that can be challenging because they have a lot of rules about visas, and they change their rules often. Then they aren’t very good about keeping their various immigration offices informed. So people have different information and you never know what is true or real. The immigration offices don’t either.

It’s possible to get a visa on arrival at your port of entry. But these visas are valid for just 30 days, and they can only be extended once for an additional 30 days. Also, only certain places provide them. The immigration people at Tanjungbalai’s port (it’s just a counter with a couple of frantic men and a laptop and a bunch of stamps) do not issue visas on arrival. To take a ferry to this place, you have to secure a visa in advance. For reasons that no one can explain, the Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur (the capital and main city of Malaysia) will not issue tourist visas. They just won’t. However, there is another Indonesian embassy in Penang, a town about 5 hours north of Kuala Lumpur by bus. They’re in the same country and operating by the same rules, but they WILL issue tourist visas. I went to Penang by bus a little while ago and with very little fuss and bother, got a 60-day tourist visa, which, through a very complicated and barely understood process, can be extended inside Indonesia for an additional length of time. Visas are not free, of course, and there are fees for the original visa and for the extensions. Visas have gotten more difficult to get in recent decades, and they have gotten more expensive. My 60-day visa cost $60 Canadian. When you budget for a trip like this, you should factor in about $1 per day for visa costs. Considering the time and trouble and travel expenses to get these visas, you could even factor in $2 a day. After all, I had to ride a bus to Penang, stay in a hotel there for three nights and then ride back to Kuala Lumpur. I wouldn’t have had those costs if I didn’t need to get this visa.

Embassies generally have a set of requirements that you have to meet. They mostly involve proving that you are, in fact, a tourist and that you have enough money to support yourself and that you will eventually be leaving. So they ask that you provide a copy of your flight out of the country. This is a constant problem for travellers, especially for those who enter over a land border and plan on leaving the same way. The rules call for a flight, but what do you do when you are arriving by ferry? You can’t buy a ferry ticket out of the country in advance. And most travellers don’t know when they will be leaving anyway, so purchasing any type of ticket in advance is a hassle.

In a sense, travellers like myself are caught in the crosshairs in a battle that has little to do with us. A large number of people in Asia work illegally in other countries. They enter as a tourist and then they remain in that country indefinitely and get a job. The rules are meant to weed these people out. A backpacker from Germany is not going to be interested in getting a job in Indonesia. He or she can get a much better job back in Germany. But the rules are applied across the board, and the German backpacker – and Canadian semi-cyclist – must prove they are not going to work illegally. The simplest way to do this is to provide a copy of a flight. At least, that used to be the simplest way. It’s an old rule and it dates back to when people actually were issued paper tickets. Kids today don’t even know what those old tickets looked like. I remember them clearly. Today, every flight is booked online through your laptop, tablet, or cell phone and you have no paper to prove you paid for this flight. But the embassy still asks for such proof. So people have to find a place to print out a paper copy of their itinerary. It is all something of a farce. When I apply for a visa knowing that I won’t be flying, I generally go online and book a flight and then print out the itinerary without ever paying for the flight. I only go far enough into the booking process to make it look official and then print it out and cancel the transaction. That incomplete booking has been enough to satisfy embassy staff in the past. After all, they don’t really care about what you are doing. They are clerks and they just need to fill out the form and make sure the boxes have been ticked. If you give them a piece of paper that looks like a flight booking, they’ll accept it. They don’t have the time to go all Sherlock Holmes and read the printout thoroughly to check that the flight was confirmed or call the airline and see if you are listed as on that flight.

In my research into Indonesia, I learned that people going to the Indonesian embassy in Penang have gotten away with NOT providing proof of an onward flight. Instead, they were allowed to provide proof that they have money. This can be in the form of a bank statement, cash, or a credit card. In my experience, they prefer the credit card. I carry a substantial sum in old-fashioned travellers checks, but the embassy would not accept them as proof of funds. But they were quite happy when I produced a credit card. It’s another farcical element of the process. Though somewhat archaic, the travellers checks represented actual cash – real money that I possess. The credit card I showed them could have been maxed out or have such a small credit limit that it would be useless for booking a flight. It’s funny that this visa-acquiring process can be so serious, but when it came to the most important part – proving that you have enough money to support yourself in their country – they revert to the honor system. The clerk asked me what the credit limit was on my card. I told her $20,000 and that was that. I could have a said a million dollars. How could she know otherwise?

When I feel the urge to get annoyed at the bureaucratic hoops I have to jump through to visit a country like Indonesia, I stifle that urge by looking at it from the other point of view. Once the dust settles, I will have gotten a 60-day extendible tourist visa for Indonesia with very little trouble, and I will have been assisted by very friendly people at the embassy. It was a very casual and relaxed and happy experience. Now imagine someone from Indonesia trying to get a 60-day tourist visa for Canada or the United States or the aforementioned Germany. Chances are that for most, it would be impossible. For the rest, it would involve a hundred times more trouble than I faced. So I tell myself to relax and go with the flow. Penang is a very nice place with a lot of charm, and a three- or four-day visit there is a pleasure. And while I was there, I went to the Indonesian embassy one morning to drop off my passport and visa application, and the next morning went back to pick it up. No muss, no fuss.

One last trick in all of this is the confusion surrrounding the term “valid” or “validity” as it relates to visas. I mention this because it comes into play later in my story. Visas allow you to stay in a country for a certain amount of time. In my case, I have a visa that allows me to stay in Indonesia for 60 days. It is a 60-day tourist visa. But when you look at your visa, you will see another number. My Indonesian visa, for example, is valid for 90 days. That doesn’t mean I can stay in Indonesia for 90 days. It means that I have to use the visa within 90 days from the day it was issued. After that, it expires. However, the English language doesn’t have two separate words for this. My visa is valid for 60 days (I can stay in the country for 60 days) and valid for 90 days (it must be used within 90 days). It’s the same word with two very different meanings. People often get confused by this and think their visa is a 90-day visa. And who can blame them? It says right on it that it is valid for 90 days.

Acquiring the ticket for the ferry to Indonesia is a whole other involved story, but I’ll try to cut it short. Basically, there used to be lots of ferries going to Indonesia from Malaysia. But with the arrival of budget airlines, the ferry companies have gone out of business. I actually met two German travellers at my hostel who were planning to go by ferry. I gave them all the information I could. But when I saw them later that day, they announced they’d just booked a flight. They found flights to the city of Medan for $35. When faced with that low, low price, who wouldn’t be tempted to fly rather than endure the discomfort (not to mention danger) of an aging, overcrowded ferry? Well, who wouldn’t be tempted? Me. I’ll take a ferry over a plane a thousand times out of a thousand. Even if I didn’t have a bicycle with me, I’d still take a ferry given the option. It’s obviously a more romantic and more interesting way to travel.

I spent some time researching ferries, and I eventually rode the train from Kuala Lumpur down to the port town of Klang to physically buy a ticket. You can’t book or purchase these tickets online. I chose to go to the town off Tanjungbalai in Indonesia, and this is one of the ports that does not have a visa-on-arrival facility. You must have a visa in advance to take this ferry. The ticket cost $35 Canadian – the same as the flight. Now I had to somehow get from Kuala Lumpur to Klang on the morning of my trip to catch my ferry. With my new smartphone and computer, I was feeling connected, and I decided to make another run at using websites that helped you find local hosts that you can stay with. Backpackers in general use a site called Couch Surfers. And there is another organization dedicated to cyclists called Warm Showers. Through Warm Showers, I got in contact with a person named Tew Loo Sin. I had no idea if this was a man or a woman, but I sent them a hosting request through the website. Then came several days of messages going back and forth. It was all very complicated and very high-tech. This was because Malaysians use various apps on their smartphones that I don’t use. The main one is called WhatsApp. I don’t fully understand it, but it is the most popular one in Asia by far (perhaps in the world) and you can use it to do an array of useful things. You can chat back and forth in real time. You can send map locations. You can send photos and videos. You can send links and attachments. You can even make phone calls. The only catch is that the other person also has to have WhatsApp on their phone. So I had to install WhatsApp in order to communicate with Tew Loo Sin. They other reason it was complicated was that Tew Loo Sin was a bit terse and unclear in her messsages. I had no idea what she was talking about half the time. And it all seemed very mysterious. I was left with no great confidence that I would have a place to stay in Klang when I got there. But that was at first. As the days passed, things got a bit clearer. Tew Loo Sin was more than willing to offer me a place to stay, but she would not be able to meet up with me until after 9 p.m. But she said that I could meet her friend Tzen and hang out with him until then.

This was a bit of a mixed blessing. I was very glad to have a place to stay. But after a long day of cycling, I generally want to find a home and crash. I’ll be tired. I knew I would be a physical and mental wreck by 9 p.m. And I would find it very hard to be social and chatty. That’s the difficult bargain you make with Couch Surfing and Warm Showers. You get to meet someone new and get lots of help and enjoy yourself. But you lose your independence and you have to give up control. That’s hard for me.

Well, my last day or two in Kuala Lumpur passed in packing and organizing. My cycling life has descended into chaos once more as I tried to adapt to using a trailer. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The main purpose behind the trailer for me is to remove the weight from the bike. All of my heavy gear will go into the trailer. It is rated for 90 pounds of weight, which is far more than I would ever carry in it. With the weight in the trailer, my bike’s wheels will be less likely to break down. No more broken spokes, bent rims, and far, far fewer flat tires. That’s the theory. Another advantage is supposed to be that it is easier and more efficient to pack using one large duffel bag instead of the multiple pockets and compartments of oddly-shaped pannier bags. And it could make dealing with public transportation easier. Instead of loading 4 or 5 or 6 bags onto a bus or ferry, you load just one big one. And that big one has wheels. So you can wheel it around. It sounds great in theory, but there are reasons why 99% of cylists still use a standard set of four pannier bags and a handlebar bag. Trailers offer disadvantages, too (quite a few of them as it turns out). I’m a little bit annoyed with myself because I went through a process of replacing a lot of my old gear with lighter and smaller gear. The idea was to use pannier bags, but reduce the weight and volume of my gear. So I bought a smaller mosquito net, a smaller sleeping bag, a smaller stove, etc. But after all of that effort and expense, I switched gears and bought a trailer, which means I needn’t have bothered with getting new gear. My old mosquito net would have fit just fine into the trailer. There was no need to buy a new one. And my new one is, in some ways, far inferior to my trusty old one. I set up my new mosquiuto net in my room last night, and it was a big problem. My old one, as big as it was, was far easier to set up.

Well, the morning of my departure finally came, and I carried my bicycle, trailer, and my two remaining pannier bags down to the street. Using the trailer was kind of cool for this. It reduces the number of trips I have to take up and down the stairs. And I was even able to roll the trailer down the steps bumping along from one to the next. But this experience did shed light on a possible problem. Most things in Asia are small, and getting into and out of hotels might involve a lot of very narrow stairways. The trailer could be difficult to carry up and down. It’s a pain to carry multiple small items when you are just one person. But it is equally difficult to carry one large item.

The ride to Klang was a near disaster on every level. Physically, I wasn’t ready for it, and I was quite tired at times despite the trip being quite short at around 40 kilometers total. I was also unfamiliar with much of my gear. The entire bike had been rebuilt during my time in Kuala Lumpur, and I had to get used to new thinner tires and spend time adjusting my gears and brakes to get them to work right. I also had to monitor the trailer. It has two wheels and is a bit wider than my previous trailer, so I had to be careful not to get too close to the edge of the road. I also had to watch for big potholes and rocks. I might miss the hole with my bike, but the wheels of the trailer are in a different spot and could then hit the hole. I think that will become second nature over time, but at the beginning it is one more thing to think about.

I’d also been unable to find a good route to ride to Klang. Malaysia is a very odd country in that it jumped from a traditional farming economy to a modern super economy. They essentially went from bullocks and horse carts to cars in one generation. So they build a vast highway system without ever building secondary roads. It was very difficult to navigate the constant entry and exit lanes. Three lanes of high speed traffic could be merging with the main traffic flow. And on my bike, I would run right into those lanes and have to cross them somehow without getting killed. Then I’d run into the three lanes that were EXITING from the main traffic flow, and I’d have to cross those back in order to stay on the main highway. This would happen every couple of kilometers and it became a nightmare. I felt ridiculous riding my bike there. It was painfully obvious I had no business there on a bike. It’s just not meant for bikes. But I was committed.

Then came the rain. I think everything would have been fine in the end had the skies remained clear. But whatever troubles you are facing while cycling, those troubles are ramped up ten or twenty fold once it starts to rain. And the rain came down in buckets and sheets and more buckets and sheets. It felt endless. The Malaysians were affected just as much as the crazy Canadian, and I started hearing the wail of the ambulance sirens and emergency vehicles as they raced to accident after accident. I hoped I wouldn’t be involved in one of those accidents, but another part off me yearned for it. At least, it would get me off this nightmarish highway, and I’d be in a warm and dry ambulance on my way to a soft and gentle bed.

I was lucky in that I happend to pull into a roadside gas station and rest stop just minutes before the rain storm burst on me. So I was safely indoors and drinking a cup of coffee while the worst of the rain came down. But this added an hour and a half to my riding time, which meant that I would be entering Klang smack in the middle of rush hour. This is something I wasn’t aware of and hadn’t planned on. It turns out that Klang is a satellite town of Kuala Lumpur and everyone in Klang works in Kuala Lumpur. On Friday night, they are all racing home after work in their tens and hundreds of thousands. The highways were overwhelmed, and I had to navigate this traffic insanity while riding through monstrous puddles (hiding potholes and other dangers) all in the middle of a steady drizzle. I managed to stay on track only because of the wondrous powers of my new smartphone. I was using various mapping programs hooked into a satellite GPS system, so I knew exactly where I was and where I needed to go. But my phone is not waterproof and I had to be careful not to expose it to the rain. It was impossible to keep it perfectly dry, but I did my best. On top of that, my eyes are now so bad that I can’t see anything without my reading glasses. They are around my neck on a loop at all times, and they became wet and fogged up as I rode, which made it very hard to see anything on my phone. Normally, I wouldn’t bother riding in the rain. I’d pull over and wait it out – probably put up my tent and read a book until the next morning. But I had Warm Showers hosts and a ferry to Indonesia waiting for me. I had no choice but to continue.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that Malaysia is an ex-British colony, so they drive on the left side of the road. My instincts are all based on driving and riding on the right side of the road. It’s remarkable how big a diffference that makes especially when you are inside a major city. I got into Klang, and I had to navigate to a certain shopping mall to meet up with Tzen. I had this mall pinpointed on my GPS map, but getting there was extremely difficult. I got lost many times and I had to navigate back to a certain spot and I had no idea how to get through all the crazy intersections I encountered. Plus, as is my annoying habit, I had not been taking care of myself. I had had a small breakfast, but I was so intent on getting to Klang, that I had not stopped for lunch or brought any food at all. When hunger rises, my level of irritability goes up with it and my patience goes down (not to mention my ability to think clearly). With the rain still coming down and all of my gear getting soaking wet and covered in mud, it was not the easy and gentle first day I had envisioned. Had I known all this trouble was waiting for me, I’d have left at 8 in the morning.

Finally, I made it to the mall. Cycling against traffic, fighting with hundreds of erratic drivers intent on getting home, I finally pulled into the mall parking lot and rode up onto a sidewalk underneath an awning. My bike was a mess – wet and muddy. I was a mess – equally wet and muddy. I was exhausted and my brain was a bubbling, murky mess of incoherent thoughts. Yet, I now had to contact Tzen and Tew Loo Sin and let them know I’d arrived. I got out my phone and was busy on WhatsApp and other programs communicating with these two and trying to make sense of what was going on. Tzen appeared to be nearby and was on his way to meet me. Tew Loo Sin was still somewhere far away with her exact location and her plans still quite unclear. The phone really came into its own again, as it can send and receive messages on a wide variety of platforms and apps. Plus, with a click of a button, I could send Tzen and Tew Loo Sin my exact location on a map right down to the precise lattitude and longitude. Amazing stuff.

I was busy wiping down the various rain covers on my gear and trying to see if rain had seeped into my pannier bags (it usually does) when Tzen showed up. There was some confusion about what we were going to do. He was essentially there to babysit me until Tew Loo Sin showed up and could bring me to her empty apartment where I was to spend the night (she had plans to sleep elsewhere, so I would have the apartment to myself). The obvious thing to do was just have a cup of coffee or a meal in one of the many restaurants nearby, but what were we to do with my bike? I would normally just ride up to a cafe and park the bike outside and then sit in a place where I could keep an eye on it. But Tzen was concerned about safety, and he wanted to put my bags in the back of his SUV. Thus ensued a bit of a three-ring circus as I took bags off the bike, detached the trailer, re-attached the trailer, and fumbled around with my soggy gear. But part of it was eventually stowed in Tzen’s SUV and we went to a restaurant for a meal and a coffee.

I said that I would normally want to collapse in a heap at the end of a difficult ride, even more so when I was soaked to the bone. And that’s true. However, I quite enjoyed my dinner with Tzen. He was a very engaging and pleasant man and he spoke English fluently. I learned all about him including the fact that he was a family man with a couple of young children. He has a full time job at a Canadian company in Malaysia – one that designs and makes furniture. He also used to be a pro photographer focusing on wedding photography. To that end, he had a large collection of high-end professional Canon equipment. He recently decided to stop doing that and spend more time with his family. So he sold his Canon equipment and bought a Fuji XT and a couple of small lenses. He loves his Fuji, and I know why. It’s a great camera.

I had a good time talking with Tzen about cameras and photography and telling him about my horrendous trip from Kuala Lumpur. Tzen and I had a lot in common, and there was no danger of running out of conversation topics. I lost track of the time, but quite a bit later (perhaps ten o’clock?), Tew Soo Lin – the mystery woman – appeared. In a short time, many things became clear. She worked as a tour guide and as such went on long and complicated trips. She had been on a guided tour that day and that was why she returned home so late. When she mentioned “drops” in her messages, she was referring to driving her clients around and dropping them off at various points at the end of the tour. The apartment was not technically her home. She owned it, but she lived with her parents. She rented the apartment out, but it was empty at the moment and that was why I could stay there. As for the terse and somewhat disjointed and confusing messages I’d received, that was pure personality. She was extremely friendly and helpful and nice, but she was more than a little scattered. Her brain was doing a hundred things at once and she was all over the place in her actions, bouncing around from one thing to the next like an out-of-control dervish.

Once it was time to go, I got the trailer out of Tzen’s SUV and attached it to my bike. The plan was to follow Tew Loo Sin to the apartment. She was going to drive slowly, but that intention didn’t last long, and I found myself racing at mad speeds through the dark streets of Klang as I tried desperately to keep up with her. From the map she drew and her explanations, the apartment seemed to be right around the corner. But it was quite far away, and if I lost track of her car, I would have been truly lost once more. We’d have to go through a bunch of WhatsApp messages to find each other again. But I stayed right on her tail lights, and we arrived at her apartment building complex safely – me drenched in sweat once more.

The apartment building offered an interesting glimpse into Malaysian life. There was a security gate, and the two men working there were not Malaysian. They could have been Bangladeshi or Burmese or Pakistani or even Indonesian. A large number of people from those countries come to Malaysia to find work. Tew Loo Sin wasn’t sure about their salary, but she said it was probably between one and two thousand ringgit a month ( $300-$600 Canadian). That’s likely quite a bit more than they could make at home. The building itself was a bit run down and utilitarian – lots of exposed concrete and steel bars in windows, all of it weather aged. Her apartment felt very large to me after my time in tiny hostel rooms. There were three bedrooms, a kitchen, a laundry, a dining area, and a spacious living area with a big set of sliding doors and a balcony at one end. It was furnished to the extent of a living room set and some mattresses on the floor, but that was about it. It was pretty much empty and had the same utilitarian air of the building itself. I was far from complaining, though. It was warm and dry and all mine. Plus, it was so big that it was a breeze to just roll my bike and trailer right inside. Tew Loo Sin had brought a clean fitted sheet and a pillow case for me and I was quickly set up in my own room with a big fan spinning overhead. The fluorescent light refused to work, so I was reduced to using my new Black Diamond Spot headlamp. I ended up doing all of my packing and organizing and cleaning out in the livingroom where there was light. I only went into the bedroom to go to sleep.

Before Tew Loo Sin left me for the night, she ran me through an intense set of training routines for locking the door. This involved putting a big steel padlock on the outside door even after you were inside. I’d never encountered this before, but she would unlock the padlock from the outside and go into her apartment. Then she would close the heavy steel door and reach out through the bars and put the padlock back on – essentially locking herself inside. It was a delicate maneuver because it was quite possible to lock the padlock and then drop the keys. Then you’d be locked inside your own apartment with the keys sitting there out of reach in the hallway. When I left in the morning, I’d have to follow a precise series of steps. I’d have to click the lock on the wooden door but NOT close it. Then go outside and close the heavy steel door and put on the steel padlock. Then I had to toss the keys back inside the apartment and finally reach through the steel bars and pull the wooden door shut so that it locks into place. James Bond would have had trouble navigating all of this without getting it wrong. I stood there for a couple of minutes thinking it through before I finally did it. I didn’t want to make a mistake and find myself stuck outside or inside with no way to get at my bike other forgotten gear.

Before this moment, Tew Soon Lin was kind enough to show me how to get to the ferry in the morning. We went back outside and jumped into her car and she drove me to the ferry to show the exact route. This was even more complicated than closing the door, and she gave me intense instructions about all the landmarks to look out for. Then she quizzed me to make sure I remembered. It was a good thing she did, because I was so fatigued and so mentally overwhelmed that I was barely functional. I needed all the help I could get to make it onto that ferry on time. If I missed it, I’d be in trouble because my visa expired the very next day, and there was no ferry leaving until two days later. Tew Soo Lin’s personality expressed itself in her driving as well, and I found myself tightening the seatbelt and gripping the door handle and other things as we drifted from lane to lane and back again. Giant trucks honked their horns at her and scooters cut by closely, but she was largely oblivious. I couldn’t help but be amused at the number of times she and Tzen told me in their messages to be careful because there were so many careless drivers on the road. It’s funny to get that warning from one of the worst and most dangerous drivers on the road.

I stayed up pretty late in my now empty apartment, and I sorted through my gear and made sure I had all the documents I needed in the morning. Even so, I made a lot of mistakes. I attribute that to having so much new equipment with no system about where to put everything. It will take time to figure out how to best use the trailer – assuming I continue to use it at all.

At this point, words have to start failing me. Because now, the real adventure begins. I got on my bike and started riding to the ferry dock and into the maelstrom. For that, you have to raise your patience levels to the highest pitch you can imagine. You are entering a situation so stressful and so confusing and so demanding that you can only grit your teeth, hum a few mantras and hope you make it out the other side with your sanity still intact. The challenges began from the second I pulled into the ferry dock area on my bike. I didn’t know what the scene would be like, but I certainly wasn’t expecting the sight that greeted me: massive piles of luggage and hundreds of people. And I’m not talking about nice suitcases from the department store. I’m talking about immense cardboard boxes filled to bursting and then wrapped with rope and tape. This was people travelling with everything they own or bringing home goods to resell or put in their shops. There were a dozen or so men running around with various papers and tags to check in this luggage onto one of the two ferries leaving that morning. Forget about the difficulty of dealing with the ticket clerks, it was nearly impossible to even get into the building itself. There was no real order and all the mountains of luggage were piled up everywhere and blocking everyone’s way. Worse, there was only one way into the building and that was down a very narrow space that was also the lineup for departures. Everyone had to check in at the counter ticket on the second floor first, but to get there, you had to fight your way through the hundred people already standing in line at the departures door. Whoever did the design of this place needs to be shot immediately. And the people waiting in line were not standing there with tiny hand bags. No, they had mountains of luggage – strollers piled high with jumbo packages of diapers and every other consumer product you can think of. The majority of the travellers seemed to be women, and they all had young children. Some had as many as five children. Four was pretty common. A woman without at least a toddler and one baby was a rarity. You can only imagine the chaos that this created. How the mothers themselves dealt with this I have no idea. I was at my wits’ end just trying to get myself on the ferry. Imagine doing it alone with four very young children. And it was already becoming very clear that child discipline was not a big part of the Indonesian culture. These children (the boys, of course; it’s always the boys) were out of control and acting like they were in a jungle gym at the park – chasing, pushing, fighting, grabbing, hitting, climbing, falling, running, screaming, yelling. And there’s me trying to get through this sea of people just to enter the building to even begin my own process.

Arriving anyplace alone with a touring bike is a bit of a logistical and security challenge. The bike and some gear has to be left outside as you go inside any building. You can’t take it all with you. So what do you take with you and what do you leave behind? Local people are always incredibly reassuring with their advice. They tell me all the time that my bike will be just fine. “Leave it here. No problem. Is okay. No one will take.” Well, I’ve heard that before, and people do indeed “take”. You trust this advice at your own peril. I’ve had various systems over the years, and my trailer is supposed to make some of this a bit easier. Normally, I’d have six bags on the bike – four pannier bags plus a tent and a sleeping bag. And my pannier bags have multiple outside pockets and compartments. It’s impossible to lock all of the zippers. So no matter how careful I am, there are always some valuable items sitting in a pocket somewhere that busy hands can make off with. I generally have one pannier bag that is my survival kit. It holds all of my most valuble items – passport, money, maps, camera, and now a computer and smartphone. That goes with me everywhere. The rest, I leave on the bike with the zippers of the main compartments of each pannier bag locked with a tiny padlock. (I have a set of five such tiny locks each of which opens with the same key, which I have on a cord around my neck. It’s a very handy system.) I also have to remove the bike components – the bike computer, the headlight, the rear light, etc. – and stow them inside a compartment. Then I have no choice but to trust that when I come back, my bike and the majority of my possessions will still be there. Traveling alone, you have no choice but to take chances like that. You can’t guard all your stuff all the time.

The trailer offers the unique ability to put all of your gear inside one big duffel bag and lock all of it with just one lock. Close it, lock the zipper, and you’re done. You don’t have multiple pannier bags to worry about. Furthermore, even if you secure all the contents of a pannier bag, you haven’t secured the bag itself. Anyone could just remove the entire bag from the bike and run off with the whole thing. Who cares that the zipper has a little lock on it? They’ll get through that in a minute or two or just cut through the bag itself. The trailer is a bit trickier for a thief. It’s too heavy to pick up and run away with. It’s also not easy to figure out how to take it off the bike. Once you lock the bike, the trailer should be perfectly secure. So in this case, I found a place to park my bicycle with the trailer. I removed my survival kit pannier bag and then went inside the terminal. That was a bit easier than having to worry about all the pannier bags and all the pockets.

The lineup at the ticket window was short, but it took a long time to process each person. I also learned that standing in line and leaving personal space is not a big part of Indonesian culture. People butted in ahead of me all the time and pushed me to the side and bumped into me and stood far too close. It was very claustrophic and very stressful. Meanwhile, it was brutally hot and sweat was pouring down my face. When I got to the front, it was a simple matter to pay the 20 ringgit terminal fee and get my boarding pass. I’d asked these women about my bicycle on numerous occasions, and they always said that they took bikes on the ferry without any problem. But what they failed to mention at at any point was that you had to go through the men in blue uniforms downstairs and formally check in your bicycle and pay a shipping fee. This, for some reason, was never mentioned despite asking about it a half dozen times.

Downstairs I went and back into the chaos. I approached the men in blue and they all pointed toward a senior member named Tony. He was the dude in charge. Tony was very helpful and very professsional, but he was also very busy and he didn’t have time to waste. No chit chat there. He just told me to get the bike. There was no point talking about it if the bike wasn’t right in front of him. So I went to the bike and started securing it for transport. I had hoped I could just leave it as is and simply roll the entire bike and trailer into the building and onto the ferry. But this was no giant vehicle ferry such as you see in the Philipines. This was no RORO (roll on, roll off) ship. This was an enclosed passenger ferry. It is essentially like an airplane but on water. And it functions the same way. Luggage has to be checked in and then stowed in the luggage compartment. As such, I had to turn my trailer into luggage. It’s possible to remove the wheels easily and turn the trailer into a big duffel bag. But then it would be heavy and difficult to carry. I decided to leave the wheels attached. I figured it would be easier for the cargo dudes to move it around that way.

I took the trailer off the bike and then rolled the bike and the trailer over to the men in the blue uniforms. I had to really stand my ground and get a bit aggressive to have Tony and his men in blue pay attention to me. But finally, their attention shifted to me and my bike and trailer were accounted for and luggag tags were attached. It was a bit confusing as far as the fee went. The bike was just considered a piece of luggage, which was nice. There was no huge “sports fee” or anything such as you’d find in an airport. I simply had to pay 20 ringgit for the bike and 20 ringgit for the trailer. The final total, though, came to 60 ringgit with no clear explanation of where the other 20 ringgit had come from. I had a 20-ringgit tag for the bike and a 20-ringgit tag for the trailer and nothing else. To be honest, I didn’t even bother to ask about the extra fee. I figured it was either a legitimate handling fee or a tacked-on corruption tax that was going to go in their pocket. Either way, I had enough to worry about without making a big scene. (60 ringgit is $18 Canadian – a bargain however you look at it.) And Tony told me repeatedly that this fee covered me all the way to Indonesia. In other words, I had to pay nothing on the Indonesian end, and if anyone tried to ask for money there, I could refuse.

I liked Tony a lot, but I was still a bit concerned about the bike and trailer. Who knew how brutally it would be handled between now and Indonesia? I didn’t even want to think about it. My conern wasn’t lessened when I saw them roll the trailer off to the scanner as it was being checked in. Tony told me to wait until it went through. If there was a problem, they’d call me over and we’d have to sort things out. If not, I could be on my way. Anyway, with the wheels still attached, the trailer was a tiny bit wide and awkward for this scanner. Two men picked it up and tried to jam it in a few different ways until they found a weird tilted angle. My face was giving involuntary shudders and grimaces as I watched my beloved (and very expensive) trailer being manhandled like that. It’s a rule of thumb for me that bicycles suffer far more damage at the hands of airlines, buses, ships, and trains than they ever do when you actually ride them. Want to see your bike badly damaged? Just hand it over to anyone at an airport or train station. But there was nothing to be done, and I had to just let it happen and trust that things would work out. I didn’t even see my bike anymore. For all I knew, someone was currently riding it back into Klang for a quick sale on the black market. But that’s life.

I had had my usual hopes and dreams of a wonderful hour or two in the ferry terminal taking in the sights, taking pictures, reading a book, or writing an email. I had gone to the ferry terminal far earlier than necessary just so I could get all the hassle out of the way and then relax. But every step had taken so long that I had no time for such relaxing and no place to do it anyway. Still, I had enough time to grab a meal in the ferry terminal restaurant area. That part of my morning worked out very well, at least. I got a very good and very filling meal at a good price. And I was starving. My ride on the ferry on an empty stomach would not have been much fun.

After my trailer and bike were out of my sight, I joined the lineup for departures. This was no orderly line, and I was jostled and pushed on all sides, particularly by the children who raced up and down the line to chase their brothers and sisters and then run back to rejoin their mother. These poor mothers. They must have had the patience of an angel. The woman ahead of me had four young children, and she had a large stroller underneath a mountain of baby clothes and diapers and toys. But when she got to the door, she was told that she would have to check the stroller. It was too big to take on the ferry like that. My heart bled for her because she probably had a ton of stuff on that stroller that she needed for the baby, and now she had to leave the line and deal with the men in blue, pay a fee, and then probably rejoin the line at the back, all the while dealing with a baby, a toddler, and two out-of-control young boys terrorizing the entire ferry terminal. But she was clearly experienced. She was a trooper. I later saw her on the ferry, and she had found a long space between some seats and was lying stretched out on the floor sleeping. She was all wrapped up in a blanket along with her children.

The Malaysian staff at the ferry terminal were clearly accustomed to dealing with the much higher-energy Indonesians. There was a lot of shouting at the Indonesians to relax, move slowly, don’t push, stand in line and just wait your turn. On this entire trip, I enjoyed the standard comedy of errors surrounding the yellow line. All travellers are quite familiar with that yellow line painted on the floor. You stand behind it and wait your turn at immigration and other places. But without a physical barrrier of any kind, that yellow line might as well have been invisible as far as the Indonesians were concerned. They couldn’t help themselves and they just tumbled over the line again and again and crowded around the desk or counter. The Malaysian officer would stand up and yell at them to get back behind the yellow line, but it was like holding back the tide.

A further comedy centered on the fingerprint scanner. I can’t imagine that scanning the fingerprints of everyone leaving Malaysia from this crazy port would have much use, if any at all. But it was the policy, and over and over and over again, people struggled to place their fingers correctly and hold them steady enough and long enough for the scanner to do its thing. The woman directly in front of me had no luck at all. The scanner would not work for her. She was sweating badly and her hands were wet. She dried them over and over on her clothes, but the scanner just wouldn’t work. The Malaysian immigration officer did what he has to do most of the time: he reached out with his hand and put it on top of the woman’s hand to hold her fingers steady and in the right place. I kept expecting them to give up and for the clerk to laugh and wave her on. But this is an official government system. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to process her exit and close the window on her computer record without those prints. We were all stuck until this machine either worked or the woman just abanonded her journey. She kept looking back at the lineup waiting for her and she smiled in apology that it was taking so long.

Eventually, something magical happened and the scanner gave off the happy blue light which meant that it had scanned her fingerprints, and I was free to cross the yellow line and begin my exit process. It was a point of pride with me now that the scanner work the first time. I kept my fingers dry and I placed them precisely in the right spot and held them as steady as I could while applying pressure. To my relief, the scanner worked the first time. I felt quite proud, like I’d gotten an A+ on my exam. Despite the stress of this departure, I was in a very chatty and relaxed mood, and I had a nice tongue-wag with the immigration officer. (In a way, I was trying to distract him from the fact that I’d entered Malaysia so many times.) He made sure I had the proper visa for Indonesia and he asked when I was returning to Malaysia, and we joked about the fingerprint scanner. It was all very friendly, and I was passed through to the other side. I was almost there. All that remained was to hand over my boarding pass (such as it was) and find a seat on the ferry. Tony was at the end of the long ramp leading to the ferry, and I chatted with him. My ulterior motive was to be reassured that my bike was indeed on the ferry. There was nothing about this ferry that screamed luggage hold. It looked like a ferry for people only. It looked very inadequate to the task of transporting the mountain of luggage I had seen earlier. Tony didn’t exactly say that my bike was on the ferry, but he said some encouraging things. I snapped a picture of the ferry with my phone and then went inside.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that there was another foreigner at the ferry terminal. And not just any old foreigner. This fellow was on a motorcycle journey from Portugal all the way to the very remote island of East Timor. Forget about my itty-bitty bicycle and trailer. This guy had a huge 650 cc motorcycle with lots of luggage. He was decked out in protective leather clothing with big black boots and a large helmet. My bicycle was just luggage. But his motorbike was much more than that. It was a vehicle subject to all the rules and regulations surrounding importing vehicles, not to mention laws regarding insurance, a driving license, and who knows what. If my heart bled for the woman with the four children, it also bled for this man. He was under tremendous time pressure to get to East Timor as part of a project celebrating the arrival of the Portuguese in East Timor 500 years ago. The previous day he had ridden 1,500 miles from Bangkok, Thailand, all the way to Melaka in Malaysia only to be told that they would not transport his motorycle. He had to turn around and in that bad rain storm drive all the way back up the coast to Klang only to be told that they would not transport his motorcycle there either. When you consider the nature of the ferry and the size of his motorcycle, it’s no suprise. In Canada or Portugal, there is no way in a thousand, million, million years that anyone would even think to put a motorcycle like that on a small a passenger ferry. It’s like riding your car up to the airplane and asking them to check it in as luggage. But this fellow pleaded his case. He told them all about his project – complete with marketing material and a website – and told them that if they won’t take his motorcycle, his journey was over. Done. Finished. To my amazement, this swayed them and when I boarded the ferry, I was stunned to see this huge motorcycle right in the passenger area and practically blocking the entire entrance. Again, it’s not something that would even be remotely possible in Canada.

The interior of the ferry was distressingly small and crowded. Think jet as opposed to boat. And the Indonesians on board all managed to take up more space than strictly necessary. They live in a crowded world and they claim as much as space as they can – roughly twice as much as one person needs. I saw no perfect place to go, and I ended up having to sit beside this rather crazy old man. He had claimed the seats beside him with his bags, and he showed no desire to move them to make room for me. Other passengers around us eventually chimed in and told me that it was okay to sit there. Apparently, it was my instinct to ask for permission that was causing the problem. The old man had no idea what I was saying and he certainly had no experience with someone asking “Is this seat taken?” In his world, if you want the seat, you take it. You don’t worry about niceties. He wasn’t happy that I sat beside him, but that’s fine. You fight for your spot on a boat like this.

Unfortunately, a child from the deepest regions of evil was sitting in the seats right in front of me. He and the old man became friendly (I thought they were related, but they weren’t.) and they placed crazy loud games that involved the boy launching himself over the seat and screaming and yelling and making loud fart noises. This went on for hours. The kid even had a tablet with a farting app on it. He could make endless variations of fart noises just by touching the screen. I pulled out a book to read, and this boy grabbed the pages and turned them and pulled on them and covered them up. He grabbed my glasses off my face and poked at my eyes. When I said something in English, he imitated me in a nonsense sing-song voice while making gibberish sounds – clearly meant to make me look foolish. He was a horrible, horrible child and the mother allowed him to do whatever he wanted. Interestingly, all the adult men around me didn’t seem to mind in the slightest. They all joined in the boy’s madness and laughed about it. The boy climbed all over them and punched them and grabbed their belongings and knocked things over and kicked things into the aisle, but the men just laughed and thought it was highly amusing. I kept thinking this or that man had to be the boy’s father, uncle, and grandfather. Why else would they put up with it? And how could they be so friendly so fast? But that’s the way it is in Indonesia, it seems. People are extremely friendly and social and tolerant of children. It’s one of those weird grey areas where you find cultural misunderstandings. In my world, the kid was obnoxious and needed to be controlled. In Indonesia, he was just a normal boy and everybody thought what he did was perfectly fine.

Physically, the trip was exhausting. The spaces were confined and crowded. At some point, they turned on some TV screens and blasted out a movie at high volume. The sensitivity to noise is another grey area for various cultures. To me it was perfectly obvious that the movie was WAY too loud. It was insanely loud and driving me insane along with it. How can anyone put up with that? But for the Indonesians, it was just fine. This ability of people in Asia to withstand incredible amounts of noise without going insane is a continual mystery to me.

There was a great deal on the ferry to keep me entertained, though. There was quite an active kitchen onboard and they produced a seemingly endless stream of hot noodles (just add hot water) and coffee and tea. People came around from seat to seat selling peanuts and other snacks as well as SIM cards. A man roamed the ferry constantly with a bag stuffed with currency. He was changing money for everyone that wanted to. I’ve been making an effort to be more social, and I engaged people around me in conversation with the ulterior motive of enlisting their help when it comes to all the things I would need to do once we arrived in Indonesia – find shelter, find food, find water, get money, buy a SIM card, etc. Once more, though there are troubling and confusing waters. I found that the Indonesians were quite masterful at understanding nothing of what you are saying and yet acting as if they understand everything. The person I’d be talking to would give every indication of speaking English and understanding English well enough. But then we would reach a point where it became clear that they understood nothing. They just kept that fact perfectly hidden. They are being polite, I guess. Most of the time, you can tell when someone doesn’t understand you. But the Indonesians are impossible to read. Time and time again, I’d find myself caught holding this one-sided conversation with someone that wasn’t understanding a word I was saying.

I did find the occasional person that spoke English well. They tended to be Malaysian, however. One such man was very chatty, and we went together into the bowels of the ship to the kitchen, where he treated me to a cup of coffee. (I did not have any Indonesian money, yet.) However, my attempts to get help or information from these people were quite, quite fruitless. This is another aspect of travel in general that often comes as a surprise – local people really don’t know anything about their own country. At least, they don’t know anything that would be of any use to me. The reverse would be true in Canada, so this always puzzles me. People in any city or town in Canada would be more than able to steer a foreign visitor to whatever they needed – a bank, a coffee shop, a cheap hotel, a cell phone shop, a book store, a market. They’d also be able to tell you with some accuracy how far it was to all the nearby cities and places. Indonesians on that boat were unable to do any of those things. It was quite amusing, to be honest. And they never seemed to grasp the basic and logical truths about things. When I asked about hotels in Tanjungbalai, I was often told to just go to Medan – the “nearby” city of millions and millions of people. They understood perfectly well that I was travelling by bicycle, but then they couldn’t make the logical leap to understanding that since the boat was docking at 5 o’clock, I’d be unable to ride the 186 kilometers to Medan before dark. And despite having been born in Tunjung Balai and living their entire lives there, they had no idea about local hotels – cheap or otherwise. I was only given the helpful information that it would cost a minimum of $60 US a night. Having done this sort of thing before, I knew perfecty well that given some legwork, you can track down a budget hotel for $5 or $10. I knew that such places existed in Tanjungbalai, but no one could tell me anything about them. In fact, they insisted that there were no such places. In fact, they are usually completely wrong about nearly everything. It came up that I intended to visit the famous Lake Toba. A man on the boat lived there, and he told me and everyone else that it was about 50 kilometers away. I knew this was nonsense, and this time I had my magical smartphone to back me up. I punched in a couple of data points on the map and saw that the closest point near Lake Toba was 165 kilometers away and the place I wanted to visit was 260 kilometers away. So you rely on local informants at your peril. In fact, most local informants are nearly incapable of understanding what I’m asking them. To me, it seems perfectly simple, and you can’t chalk it up to a language problem. It’s something else. When I had my dinner last night, for example, I went to a typical streetside spot and above all I wanted to have rice. I didn’t care what came with the rice. I wanted rice as the base of the meal. Rice is a pretty universal word, I think. I asked the man about rice. He said, “No rice.” The point is that he didn’t say “I don’t understand what you mean” or shrug his shoulders. He said “No rice.” I pressed him on this, and he insisted there was no rice. I decided to take matters into my own hands, and I looked around and saw the typical big plastic container that always contains gallons and gallons of cooked rice. I walked over to the container and removed the lid and saw it was full to the brim with rice. I pointed at it and said to the guy something about how they do have rice. Then he agreed with me. Now they DO have rice. “No rice” suddenly turned into “You want rice?” So, what were we talking about all this time? I have no idea. It will remain a mystery.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. When I started on this tangent, I was still on the boat. I spent a chunk of time chatting with the man from Portugal. He had an interesting story to tell about his journey and how he worked as an election monitor in various countries around the world – a job that he kind of just stumbled into. I also became very friendly with a nice youngish Indonesian man from Tanjungbalai named Irfan. He was very nice and I got good vibes from him. I really wanted to have a local contact in the city, so I was more insistent than I normally am about establishing some kind of social bond. I said that we should meet for coffee or for dinner during my time in Tanjungbalai. He was very interested in that, and he said that he could help me find a cheap hotel. His friend was meeting him at the docks and his friend knew all about such things. I mentioned being interested in going out on one of the big fishing boats, and he said he knew lots of fisherman and he could put me in contact with a boat that might let me join them for a day. I was very excited about these possibilities, and we arranged that Irfan would wait for me outside the ferry terminal building. It would take me a bit longer to get through the formalities, but he insisted he had lots of time. He said many times that he would wait for me. We even stood in line at the immigration counter together. He went through ahead of me and indicated that he would wait outside. But later when I went outside, he was gone. Nowhere to be found. That was disappointing. It appears that I would be on my own.

At long last, the ferry approached the shores of Sumatra. It was an exciting time. I started to see big traditional fishing boats and then when we got closer, I saw the typical shantytowns on stilts that you find on waterfronts all over Asia. They are the kinds of places that just beg you to break out your camera and wander around. That’s a weird contradiction to my travels that I’ve never been able to reconcile. I have a bicycle that is all set up for long-distance travel and for going to many places. And everyone would tell me that there is nothing of interest in Tanjungbalai. Yet, I could easily spend two months here quite comfortably hanging out, exploring, and taking pictures. There would be no end to the fascinating things you could uncover. And for photography, it’s a treasure trove. So why even move on? I guess you feel pressure to see all these places listed in the guidebooks – all the beautiful places. But I can find just as much to interest me right here in Tanjungbalai. But to stay here for two months would be pretty ridiculous…

Things got a bit crazy when the ferry docked. The passengers rushed the doors and it was dog eat dog in terms of being the first out the door and the first through customs and immigration. I nearly got trampled. The main problem is that as a Canadian my instinct is to leave a little chunk of empty space between me and the person in front of me. I don’t want to be crowded right up against them. But the Indonesians behind me are driven mad by any amount of open space in a line. If they see an opening ahead of me, they’ll push right past me and occupy it. Now this person is butt to crotch right up against me. So I step back a little bit to make space. And another person pushes forward to get in that space. I end up being pushed BACKWARDS through the the line rather than moving forward. It’s such a weird thing. In the end, I rarely fight or even hold my position. I just step aside and wait. I’m always the last person off the boat, train or bus. I’m always the last person in line at immigration.

It was a bit of a challenge just getting off the boat and making my way down the narrow docks. I passed the little porthole through which all the luggage had gone, and I saw my trailer being smashed around, dropped, kicked, pushed, toppled, and otherwise mauled before it was rolled away. At least it had arrived with me and the wheels seemed to still be true. I hadn’t seen my bike yet, and I had no idea how I was to be reuinited with it. For now, I had to deal with immigration. I’d been given a customs and immigration form while on the ferry. The customs form was only in Indonesian, and I had to resort to my smartphone to enter the terms one by one and have them translated into English so I’d know how to fill the thing out.

I was feeling confident because I had my 60-day visa already. It was a beautiful thing – a full-page sticker in my passport looking very official. As I said previously, this port is rarely used by foreigners because they do not offer a visa on arrival. But what I hadn’t counted on was that even if you have an official visa, the local officials might never have dealt with one before. Rather than having my passport stamped and then waved through, I was pulled out of line and brought to an office for an official interview. The man wanted to know all about me and what my plans were while visiting Indonesia. He was friendly if thorough and he eventually signed off on my visa and I was brought back to the main desk. Now my passport was tossed into the mix and five men were involved in a long and complex process of figuring out how I was to be entered into their little laptop computer. I’d been learning just how friendly Indonesians are, and it became more and more apparent as I stood around the counter waiting. All the officials wanted to talk with me and all the passengers wanted to talk with me. I was being hit with greetings from everywhere like a man out in a field during a hailstorm. I was overwhelmed with them while trying to focus on my passport and answering the questions about my visa.

At long last, my passport was returned to me. Normally, I’d go over my passport carefully and check everything that had been stamped, noted, or written down. But I was more than a little frazzled, and I just stuffed my passport away and squared my shoulders to deal with customs and my bicycle and trailer. Those two items were out on the narrow dock surrounded by other luggage and lots of people. The men who work in the area carrying luggage and other things were all yelling at me to get out of there. There was a crazy panic in the air. They wanted me to grab my bicycle and leave, and they shouted this at me in no certain terms. But it’s not that simple. I have to go over the bike. The gears and brakes had all been knocked out of alignment and the chain was jammed into the gears. Nothing could move. The mirrors were twisted around threatening to break. I had to make sure my pannier bags were safe and secure and that my wallet was safe. Plus, I had the trailer, which was trapped behind a mountain of luggage. There were stages to be dealt with here: move the bike to an open space, repair it, attach my bags, get the trailer, attach the tow bar to the trailer and to the bicycle. THEN I could leave. And all these men yelling at me were not helping my state of mind or my ability to focus. I was very close at this point to losing my temper. I can deal with a lot of chaos and confusion, but I do not enjoy constant yelling. What is the point of the yelling? We’re not saving the world from nuclear catastrophe here. There is no doomsday clock on a countdown to death for all. This is just a bunch of people getting off a ferry. There will be another ferry tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. There is no need for all the screaming and pushing. How can they live like that every single day?

With perseverance and lots of sweat, I got all my stuff together and got it through security. Everything had to be scanned again. It felt strange at times to see these scanners in such an informal setting. It felt like a fishing dock, and it seemed odd to have men in uniform with guns asking me questions about the contents of the pouch around my neck. I almost felt some resentment. Then I realized that despite the appearance of this place, I was going through an official immigration checkpoint. An airplane and an airport creates that atmosphere of officialdom. But this crazy place seemed like a casual fishing dock.

Finally, I was ready to go. I was just about to push off when suddenly a young man in jeans a dirty shirt got in my face and started yelling at me to give him my passport. He was yelling something about immigration, and he was holding out his hand demanding I hand over my passport. Not surprisingly, I refused. I’ve had some experience of the world, including one very bad experience when I handed over my passport when asked. I wasn’t about to just give it to anyone who walks up to me, especially when I had just gone through a very long official process and was, essentially, outside the official area and in Indonesia proper. I asked him who he was and why he wanted my passport, but he just kept yelling. Another man – dressed in equally normal city clothes – joined him and the two of them started yelling at me. I was not convinced by their act, and I told them that I did not appreciate the yelling and that if they expected me to give them my passport, they should make some small effort at official clothing. At least give me a badge on your chest. These guys looked no different from the hundreds of people crowding around everywhere – tricycle drivers, luggage handlers, money changers, beggars, other passengers.

Deep down, I knew they were probably communicating some kind of official truth. Someone in immigration wanted a second look at my passport for some reason. Who knows why? So I was willing to go back to immigration and spend all the time in the world talking with as many immigration officials as they wanted. But I wasn’t going to just hand over the most important document I have to some random dude. Plus, all of my possessions were now on my bicycle. I couldn’t just walk away and leave it all there. I needed to lock up the trailer and remove the pannier bags and bring them with me. My two interrogators were not thrilled with my delay and they just kept yelling and yelling. Ironically, there was a table to my right with four police officers or something in full regalia – guns, hats, uniforms, badges, the whole deal. They just sat there and surveyed all of this. At one point, I turned to the most senior of these officers and asked him if these men yelling at me had any official standing in the dock. Who were they? Can I trust them? But the police officers just laughed. They thought my discomfort was quite amusing.

I eventually secured my bicycle and went back with these two yellers. We went to the immigration desk and the yellers kept yelling and holding out their hands. I ignored them. After all, I had had a very long and friendly chat with the official immigration officer who had filled in all the details in my computer record and eventually had my passport stamped and signed by his superior. I would give my passport to him or his superior, but not to the yellers.

In a moment or two, everything suddenly became quite clear. The man from Portugal with the motorcycle was still there. And there was a suspicion that his visa had expired. As I wrote long ago, the visa allows you to stay in the country for 60 days, but it is valid for 90 days from the date it is issued. The Portuguese man had gotten his visa long in advance and they thought it had passed its 90-day expiration date. That was the source of all the confusion. And they assumed that since we were two white guys on the same boat that we were traveling together. So if his visa had expired, mine probably had, too. No one had thought to check that when I was processed, and so the two yellers were dispatched to track me down and yell at me.

From that point, it was a quick transaction. It was pretty clear that whatever the problems with the motorycle dude’s visa, mine had been issued just a week ago. I was given my passport and allowed to go. My trials and tribulations were far from over, though. I returned to my bike (thankful that it was still there), and began the process of putting the pannier bags back on. I had just begun when other men started to yell at me. They were baggage handlers, and they wanted me and my nuisance of a bicycle out of their area. Again, we’re not talking about a nicely lit office space like in an airport where I was blocking an elevator or something. This was a fishing dock with a mass of humanity swirling in all directions. Total chaos. My little bicycle was hardly a problem. In any event, they’d created the problem by forgetting to check my passport’s validity when I was processed. It was their mistake, so don’t yell at me that I’m not out of your dock yet. Plus, since I had returned to the immigration counter for this second check, I now had to go through security again to get back to my bike. I think I was allowed a tiny bit of impatience, and I told these men to quit yelling at me. The yelling was not doing any good. The police officers had a good laugh about this, and one of them told me to ignore the baggage handlers. They’re nobody and have no authority, he said.

The crazy thing is that in terms of the overall challenges of my arrival, the difficult part hadn’t even begun yet. Getting off the boat and through customs and immimgration was the easy part. Now I had to deal with Indonesia proper, and from the noise level, a very large chunk of it was waiting for me right outside. I appreciate the friendliness of Indonesians, but it was a bit overwhelming to roll my bike out there into the middle of it. I can only liken it to being smashed over the head with a wheelbarrow. Just BOOM. No one who hasn’t experienced it can understand it. I wish I had a GoPro strapped to my head or something and could have filmed the whole thing. I had to get my bike and trailer down a steep set of three or four steps. That came as a surprised. I was expecting a ramp of some kind, but it was just steps. I was so flustered by this point that I just rolled my bike down the steps and let the trailer clunk, clunk, clunk all the way down. People were shouting at me from all directions. They were shouting greetings and asking for my name. Amusingly, this was done by shouting “My name is…..?” and then trailing off. They do this over and over again and wait for you to fill in the blank. My brain is thinking, “I don’t know your name. Why are you asking me?” The schools here must be extremely poor if even this most basic of sentences is taught so poorly. I think people in most countries at least get “What is your name?” approximately right. I’ve never heard the “My name is….?” and the trailing off before. But I sure heard it now and it was shouted at me from all directions and then from everyone on both sides of the street as I struggled to ride away.

Unfortunately, my new friend Irfan was nowhere to be found. I was disappointed that he had left, but I can’t fault him for it. I had been delayed quite a long time, and he had a life to get to. He couldn’t wait for me forever. Perhaps he didn’t wait at all? I’ll never know. In any event, it made things more difficult because I wanted to hang out a bit and just give him a chance to appear. Maybe he was in a local street-side stall having coffee as he waited. Anyway, I stood astride my bicycle and looked around to see if I could spot him. Meanwhile, everyone was shouting at me and pointing in the direction where they thought I wanted to go (to Medan, of course). I stood my ground for a while and withstood the torrent of attention. People crowded the trailer and asked the usual questions about where I was from. Men came up to me and plucked at my shirt and asked me to give it to them. Other people asked me to give them my bicycle. A few asked for money. I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I needed a bit of space and just rode off to where I saw that the road cleared up a bit. Everyone was yelling at me that I was going in the wrong direction, but I ignored them. I knew it was the wrong direction. I just needed some open space where I could gather my wits. But as soon I stopped the bike, some children came up to me and started asking for “Dollar! Dollar! Dollar!” Then a man came up to me with a very attractive and well-dressed young woman. She was dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, but I’m pretty sure she was some kind of prostitute. There is no other reason a strange man would introduce me to a woman in that fashion. He kept pointing at her and saying something about her. I didn’t need to speak Indonesian to know what he was saying. Or maybe I was wrong. It did seem quite strange that in this culture this would happen so suddenly and out in the open. But it was the only possible explanation.

I eventually gave up on Irfan and rode back into the chaos around the dock and out the other side. To my horror, the traffic on the road was in complete gridlock. There had been heavy rains, and the dirt road was nothing but muddy potholes. There were so many tricycles leaving from the dock and there were so many big trucks servicing all the businesses lining the street, that nothing could move. We just creeped along. I was not riding the bike. I just stood astride it and pushed myself forward a bit at a time while avoiding the deepest of the puddles. Being immobile like that was akin to being the target in a golf range. Everyone was shouting things at me and pointing at me and going into crazy antics. One guy kept pointing to a truck where they were loading heavy containers and he made “big muscle” gestures while pointing at me. He just wouldn’t stop yelling, and he eventually came right up to me and stood right beside me, yelling and yelling and yelling about something. Everyone else just laughed and enjoyed the show at my expense. I began my trudge through the mud responding to the many greetings and the shouts of “My name is…?”, but I quickly grew tired of it. If I responded, it just led to more yelling, and I couldn’t understand what they were yelling about. Lots of people used any response from me to come up to me and ask “Dollar? Dollar? Dollar?” I didn’t even have any local currency even if I was inclined to give them any money.

The traffic and road conditions were brutal, and it took a very long time to make any progress at all. I stopped to fire up my magical smartphone and with dismay I saw that it was nearly 7 kilometers to the center of town from the dock. I had thought it was nearer than that. I began to think of all the things I needed to do, chief among them getting money from an ATM. I’m still new to this modern world, and I’m very nervous about using ATMs in other countries. I’m certainly not going to waltz up to any random ATM stuck to the wall of some little shop on this muddy road with a hundred people yelling at me. But eventually I needed to find the courage to stick my card into some ATM somewhere. I’m nervous that one wrong move, and the machine will swallow my card and not return it. I also had to find a place to stay, and despite days of research, I hadn’t managed to uncover even one possibility. I’d just have to ride around until I spotted something. And I needed a local SIM card in order to placate the powers that control my magic smartphone. And I would need drinking water. And I was starving, not to mention exhausted and stressed out. Meanwhile the traffic was out of control. I had to be on my toes at all times.

Finally, I left the worst of the mud and traffic behind me and picked up speed until I found myself in what felt like a downtown area. At one corner, a group of men inside a police station courtyard shouted greetings. On impulse, I turned my bike around to pull in there and chat with them. Why not? And they might know of a cheap hotel nearby. The key word I’d suddenly remembered was losmen. I think traditionally, a losmen was a type of homestay or B&B. But it now also means just cheap hotel – something that doesn’t even have enough quality for one star (as someone explained it to me). These men didn’t really speak English, and they insisted a dozen times that it wasn’t a police station even though there was a huge sign saying Police Station right there above them. However, one guy got the idea that I was looking for a losmen, and he was willing to show me where one was. He got on a scooter and I followed him. The place he brought me to was very nasty. I mean, really bad, even for me. But I was running out of time and I decided to stay there even if for just one night.

Considering how horrible the room is, it’s overpriced. Their cheapest room is 80,000 rupiah, which is $8 Canadian. And this cheap room is on the third floor up an extremely narrow and dangerous staircase. Now the disadvantages of the trailer become more apparent. With lots of separate small bags, I’d have to make multiple trips up the stairs and down again. But at least each bag would be manageable. Carrying that trailer up the stairs took a lot of strength. And I wasn’t smart about it. I should have removed the tow bar and the wheels and put on the shoulder strap and carried it like normal luggage. But I was impatient and I just picked up the whole thing and tried to Hulk my way up the stairs. It was really dumb. I ended up smashing my glasses against my chest. Both ear pieces popped right off. And I nearly went tumbling down the stairs twice. Plus the trailer kept getting stuck.

It really is a horrible place. There is dirt and cobwebs everywhere. Everything is broken and smashed. The door barely closes and only a tiny latch prevents anyone from just waltzing in. A kitchen spoon would pop off that latch. There are window screens, but they are all torn and allow the mosquitos in. Luckily I have my own mosquito net, and I spent some time setting it up. There is a fan, luckily, and it keeps the room cool enough to sleep. The bathroom is down the hall. It is just a simple squat toilet with a big tank of water beside it. You flush the toilet by hand with a plastic basin. And you use that same basin to take showers. It’s a bit disgusting when you think about it. So you try not to think too much. The walls contain years of dirt and graffiti. There are ants everywhere, but so far no cockroaches or fleas or bed bugs. So that’s good. (Edit: The bedbugs came later, but they showed up.) There’s a really loud karaoke place right next door. That would normally be a huge problem, but I was so tired last night that I slept through it. At midnight, though, I woke up to find someone knocking on my door and calling to me. I was in a deep sleep and really had trouble focusing, but eventually I came to the surface and I was told that I needed to come down to the desk with my passport “Now!”

I kind of knew what was going on. It’s not uncommon for the police to check the hotel registers – especially at a dive hotel like this one. There could easily be a fair amount of petty crime going on here. The police had come here, and they saw the name of a foreigner in the register. That’s very unusual, and they wanted to talk to me. However, by the time I got downstairs, the police had left. So it was all for nothing. I turned around and went back to bed.

Before bedtime, though, I went out in search of a SIM card. That was a crazy adventure. I don’t really understand smartphones at all, but basically you have to get a new SIM card in every country. The SIM card gives you access to a network of cell towers and systems and you get a new phone number. SIM cards can be phone only, but they can also have data plans. This gives your phone access to the Internet. Without a SIM card, you can still use your phone with a WiFi connection, but you won’t be able to make phone calls or get on the Internet through the phone system – which is essential. There are a lot of variables to consider and a lot of technical requirements. Plus there can be rules surrounding giving SIM cards to foreigners. (In Malaysia, you must register all your personal details and provide your passport in order to get a SIM card.) Considering all of this (and the severe language and cultural barrier here), I was nervous about going into a cell phone shop and doing this on my own. Then I spotted a big, official Samsung outlet. They don’t sell SIM cards, but since I own a brand new Samsung phone, I thought I could go in there and ask for advice. I just needed to get started. Perhaps there was a certain SIM that worked best with Samsung phones.

Going into that store was one of my better ideas. The woman who worked there, Rea, was a bit confused by my request at first. She told me that they didn’t sell SIM cards. I said that I knew that, but I was a visitor and I didn’t know anything about getting a SIM card here, and I wanted some advice. Once she got the idea, she was very helpful. She even went with me to a little cell phone kiosk up the street and talked to the owner for me. It was a good thing she helped me, because it was not as simple as just popping in a new SIM card and walking away. The technical details would take forever to write down. Just suffice it to say that there was a problem. I always seem to have problems. Other people insert their SIM card and turn on the phone and they’re done. But for some reason my phone would not work. The man and Rea worked on it for about forty minutes with no luck. Rea eventually had to leave and go back to work. The man didn’t speak any English, but somehow he did something, and my phone worked. I had no idea what was going on, but he was happy with the result, and I paid him.

SIM cards are surprisingly affordable. This one cost 80,000 rupiah ($8 Canadian), is valid for one year, and comes with a 6-gigabyte data plan to start. To be honest, I didn’t even know if 6 gigabytes was good or bad, a lot or a little, but Rea thought it was a good amount for me. I walked away from the cell phone shop quite happy, but there was something wrong with the phone case. It hadn’t been re-attached properly. So I shut down the phone so I could press on the edges harder and click it into place. But when I turned the phone back on, it wouldn’t work anymore. I had lost Internet access. I was near the Samsung store, so I went inside to give Rea an update. Rea was very concerned about this. She didn’t want to be responsible for bringing me to a store where I got cheated. So she marched right back there with me and the two of them set about doing their technological voodoo all over again.

In the end, I don’t know if the man in the store knows his stuff or is not very brightt. They kept working and working and working to find some magical setting to get my phone to work right now. That was the point. The new SIM card was in place, but I couldn’t access the Internet. That’s why we spent about an hour and a half working on it. But then the man said something to Rea. She translated and said that it takes 24 hours to activate the SIM card. You register it, and then you need to wait 24 hours for it to be activated by the system. But if that were true, why didn’t he say that from the beginning? Why work for 1.5 hours to get the phone to work when he knew it was impossible? So Rea and I walked away just hoping that my phone will suddenly work the next day. Sure enough, I woke up this morning and found that everything was fine. In fact, my access to the Internet is extremely good and fast. In Malaysia, I rarely used my phone on the Internet because it was too slow, and it often didn’t work. But my connection here is perfect. I hardly even need a computer.

By the time we’d dealt with the cell phone, it was time to close down the Samsung shop and for Rea to go home. She asked me what I was going to do next, and I said that I was going to look for a purified water refilling station. I had my 10-liter water bag with me, and I needed to fill it up. I was pleased when I arrived here to see that Indonesia had these water stations just like they did in the Philippines. I wanted to find one and get some water. Rea said she knew exactly where to go, and she offered to drive me there on her scooter. That was pretty wild. Rea is this tiny Muslim woman and she was wearing the full hijab. So was it okay for this big, hairy, sweaty Canadian man to jump on the scooter behind her and go for a ride? Apparently it was because we were soon tearing through the dark streets and weaving in and out of the crazy traffic. We got a lot of startled looks, that’s for sure.

Of course even this errand wasn’t totally smooth. Instead of a refilling station, Rea brought me to a convenience store where I could buy bottles of water. But that’s not what I wanted. She then understood, and we hopped back on her scooter and went for a long, long ride. I was a bit worried about that. I just assumed that the water station would be right around the corner. But this one was far away, and there is no way I could remember how to get there. Plus, I didn’t want to inconvenience her. But she seemed happy to do it. There was a bit of confusion at the water refilling station when I produced my water bag instead of a bottle. The instinct for many people in Asia when they encounter something out of the ordinary is to just wave their hands and say “No, no, no, no.” But with Rea at my side, we got past the “No, no, no, no” and I soon had a full water bag. Hopefully I can find my own refilling stations in the future.

Oh, I almost forget the biggest adventure of the night. Can you believe there were even more adventures after all of this? This one was the most important one of all. I could have done none of the above – check into a hotel, get a SIM card, get water – without money. I needed to find a bank and withdraw cash from an ATM – my worst nightmare and greatest fear. I got advice from the guys at my hotel about a safe and secure bank nearby. I went there but it turns out that bank had zero connections to the outside world. There were no “Interac”, “Visa” or “Plus” indicators anywhere. I had to find a different one. I found a very secure looking bank on my own, and it had a row of six ATMs inside a sealed and secure room. Lots of people were going in and out, and I gave it a try. My heart sank when after putting in my card, entering my PIN, and choosing to withdraw money, I got a big scary error message and the machine spit out my card and told me to contact my bank. I talked to an official bank employee there and he gave me directions to another bank. This one looked even more professional and safe, and each ATM had a huge line of international symbols. My heart pounding, I read through all the instructions and inserted my card. I chose English as the language and then I was asked to enter my PIN. I did so, but then nothing happened. I hit “Accept” and “Done” and all kinds of buttons, but the ATM just stared at me and did nothing. It would not accept my PIN. It was like it was waiting for me to enter more numbers. Finally, I got an error message that asked if I wanted to wait longer. So I guess the machine was waiting for something, but I didn’t know what. I cancelled the transaction and tried again, but the same thing happened. I talked to two local people who had just used the ATM. I tried to ask them if PIN numbers in Indonesia were four digits or six digits long. This proved an impossible concept to get across. I tried for a long time to phrase it simply, and I think I succeeded, but these two men just couldn’t answer my question. It was really frustrating because this sort of thing happens all the time. Their English was good enough, but they couldn’t grasp the logic of my question. Then they gave me directions to yet another bank. However, when they were saying goodbye, they told me that with their bank (the one I’d just had trouble with), I had to put zero zero in front of my 4-digit pin for it work. They were quite clear on that point. So why in the world didn’t they tell me that earlier as I spent fifteen minutes explaining my problem and how the machine wouldn’t accept my 4-digit pin number? It’s baffling.

Well, I tried two more banks and was close to despair. No money was forthcoming. Then someone told me about one more bank: BCA. This bank, my informants told me, was THE bank to visit if you were using an international card. I found a BCA bank not far away and crossed my fingers. I inserted my card, entered my PIN, and got some money! It was a bit confusing because the ATM offered me withdrawal amounts, but they were far too low. There was an “Other amount” option, but I was scared of putting in a number that was too high and being rejected. I didn’t know what the maximum withdrawal amount was. At one point were all my transactions going to trigger some kind of online alert and have the banks shut me down? After all, I had visited 7 banks in the space of a couple of hours and attempted a dozen or more withdrawals. That was sure to send up a red flag. I didn’t want to risk any more transactions. I needed money – any amount of money. So I chose 1.5 million rupiah at random. It sounds like a lot, but it’s only $150 Canadian. And to my utter relief, it worked and I got some cash. On the negative side, it also gave me a bank balance, and there isn’t nearly as much in there as I would like. I found out from another person a short time later, that the BCA bank has a limit of 10 million rupiah in withdrawals per day.

I put away my money and card and walked back to my bike parked right outside the ATM. A young boy was standing there, and he asked me for “Dollar”. I really didn’t have anything to give him, and I felt bad. I had just walked out of a bank, after all. But the ATM issued really large bills.

Well, all of that (plus a crazy adventure getting some dinner during which all the restaurant employees laughed at me the whole time) is an account of my arrival in Indonesia. It surprises me that I was still standing at the end of the night. I was exhausted and going on pure adrenaline at that point. I slept well even considering being woken up for a police check. I intended to move to a different losmen today. I found a very nice one as I was looking for a working ATM machine. But I’ve been drinking coffee, uploading pictures, chatting with people on my phone, and writing all day. It’s a bit silly to write so much about just one day, but I find that arrivals are always the most intense times. Your senses are the sharpest and you see things that you just don’t see later on. Plus, a lot happens, and this is the first time I’ve ever arrived in a new country by boat with a bicycle and with a smartphone and ATM cards and a computer (not to mention a trailer). It’s a unique event in my life, and I wanted to write all down.

 

Tags: Sumatra Part 01