“and may we never see you again…”
S.Clark 2015.
Java
Hot, dusty, polluted and hazy,we are in Java. After having a relaxing time ‘holidaying’ with Katie and Sam we finally left the bubble of Bali and arrived back in to the reality of Indonesia.
Dean and I have travelled Java before (Dean twice) so we were keen to just get through it as quickly as possible. Dean set the alarm for a 4am start today to try to beat the heat and the trucks. He actually set it for 4pm which I was quietly happy about and we ended up leaving at 5.30am. My ass was hurting after about 30 seconds of being on the seat again after yesterday. We have spent the last two days riding solid. Our faces black with soot and dust in just an hour on the road… I can only guess what we have been inhaling! We rode for about 14 hours today and travelled 600kms which is actually pretty good going for Java. I counted on average that we overtook 100 trucks and/or buses every 40kms… at one point it was in 25kms…. yes guys, this is how bored I am…. oh my god. So that’s about it… counting trucks, sore ass and a whole lot of sweat and road grime. Living the dream!
To top it off when we finally made it to a city to find a hotel at 8.30pm-tired and dirty, we were refused a room because we are not Muslim. I don’t need to explain how I felt on hearing that ☺️
We have two more days to get through the remainder of Java and then we go to Sumatra…and it had better get better really soon!!
Back on the road again
We said a sad goodbye to Sammy this morning with the intention of heading off early from Kuta, but 3 hours sleep isn’t really enough to face the traffic here, so it wound up being a 10:30 departure.
(At around 12pm)
“What the fuck are we doing here again!? … Whose idea was this?”
No reply.
Riding in Java is not really fun. Today it took 3 hours to do 120km in thick traffic, close to 100% humidity and 36 degree heat.
Tomorrow we’re planning a 4am start to beat some of the traffic …
3 more days to go.
Indo Style on the KTM
Last night we scooted around Ubud three up on Betsy, got some pretty funny looks 🙂
Do you think Katie is having a good time?
Lined up for the ferry to Bali
Lined up with all the bikes…
While the girls are in the shade.
After a few days underwater at Gili T we’re headed to Bali.
And here comes the ferry 🙂
Hanging with the Clark sisters in Gili T.
Let us see it before you post!!
Making friends in Sumbawa
Sally waiting on the ferry
Half hour after we boarded the ferry to Sumbawa, Sal reminded me that there is NO BEER in Sumbawa…
As I ran off the ferry and back to the closest shop I heard the rumble of a group of big capacity bikes headed towards the pier, and there they were, about 10 Harleys and a few GS1200’s!!
I made it back to the ferry with some Bintang in hand, still in time for departure, and quickly made friends with the group, an organised tour mostly from Jakarta. We chatted a bit about the ride through Flores, took some pics and then settled in for the 6 hour crossing to Sumbawa.
Which was predictably held up at the terminal for an hour, so by the time we got to Sape it was almost dark and we still had about 60km of very windy road to the next town – Bima to find a room. Usually I’d love to join a group of guys on a ride, but the inclement darkness had me in a hurry so we said our goodbyes.
We arrived in Bima as darkness settled in, and tried a few hotels in town before one would let us stay. Being told “full” at an obviously empty hotel has happened to us before in Indonesia, and we’re still unsure why.
There was a religious ceremony being held in the town square that night which made for an interesting walk around. We knew that Sumbawa is more strictly Muslim than most of Indonesia, but seeing primary school age girls wearing a hijab was pretty strange.
Next morning we set off early hoping to beat the heat for the ride through Sumbawa. We stopped at a little hut for a coffee mid morning, where Sal tried to make friends with a bunch of small rabbits running around the place…
“Sal they may have fleas…” i said as she scooped up the smallest one for a cuddle.
“yuk”
Back on the road and 5 mins later we buzzed through a town where there were 5 GS1200’s and an 1190 Adv parked on the side of the road, I confused them for the group we’d met on the ferry, and stopped to say hello.
“hi guys, where are the rest?”
“there are no more, just us”
“what about the harleys?”
“different group…”
“oh well, hey enjoy your ride, see you at the ferry terminal!”
We continued on for another hour before three of the bikes flashed past us as we rolled through another village.
Being passed by someone is not something that happens to us very often, and when it does it’s usually by a teenage kid on a local bike riding like his life depends on it, but being passed by 3 BMW’s hasn’t ever happened before.
I turned around and looked at Sal, she smiled… which I took as approval to join in, so we dropped a couple of gears and set off.
Now before anyone gets upset with me, we had been going very slowly at this point, proven by Sally’s comment later in the day
“you were going so slowly today was going to take forever, i was glad you sped up”
this is taking forever!
Ok so now we’re a group of 4 bikes snaking our way through Sumbawa, which was really fun. So much fun that when my fuel light turned on about 25km before the road met the coast (and started to twist and turn again), I was a bit disappointed.
But we were all low on fuel, so the next Pertamina (fuel station) saw all of us pull up for a short break. Before we knew it, we had a cold drink in one hand, and a slice of watermelon in the other.
“gift, lady first, take, drink!”
We sat and talked bikes with the guys for ten minutes as the other three of their group arrived before setting off again, bound for another roadside stop on the coast for lunch.
The next 30mins riding was rather spirited, but I managed to pick my way past all of the guys and shadowed a funny guy from Jogyakarta named Didier, who was the fastest of the group, for about 10km. I showed him a wheel every now and then while trying (unsuccessfully) not to piss Sally off too much!
When we stopped at a little restaurant, Didier was wearing a broad smile and quickly suggested that he and I should leave the rest of the group and go out racing each other…
“ok no problem, but do you mind if I leave Sally here?” I asked a little tongue in cheek.
This was met by raucous laughter from the rest of the group. We joined the guys for lunch, which they insisted on buying for us, grilled fish, steamed chinese broccoli and sambal, delicious and very generous!
The guys were great company, fellow motorcycle travellers with plans to visit Patagonia later in the year, so we had plenty to talk about.
After that we rode more or less as a group to the ferry terminal, where they managed to buy our tickets for us, refusing my attempts to work out who had paid, and how much it cost.
waiting for the ferry with our new friends
The group of Harleys we’d met the previous day were there too, so we made quite a sight, 30 enormous bikes rolling onto the ferry.
This crossing was quite short, 45 mins later we were looking at the terminal in Lombok, waved goodbye to all our new friends and set out to find a room for the night.
This part of Lombok is quite remote, so we were lucky to find a homestay just before dark and with no restaurants in the vicinity, the pasta, tomatoes and bintang we’ve been carrying since Flores were turned into quite a nice meal 🙂
I’m sorry but I cant remember all 6 names, (and I don’t think I can spell some of them), but Didier, Jimmi, Richard, Mesha and friends, a big hello and thank you to all of you guys, keep in touch and I hope you aren’t too cold in Patagonia!!
If you ever visit Australia come and stay with us in Adelaide!
Pics from Sumbawa
a few pics from Sumbawa taken from the helmet cam. Sorry no descriptions, still working out how to do this!
Riding in Flores
I throw three gears at the bike in quick succession, 4 then 3 then 2… the motor makes that glorious sound that only a twin can make as it pops and growls under hard deceleration, with this much weight on the rear of the bike I can really use the gearbox to slow us down.
It’s making me smile, but this is another one of those uphill hairpins that Flores seems to have a monopoly on, so we get right back to first to make the turn, then it’s a short shift to second and we work back up through the gearbox again, not killing it, just riding the fat torque curve until it’s time to brake again for the next turn.
On a trip like this you cant ride like a lunatic, you can’t even ride moderately quickly, there’s always a goat, some roadwork, gravel or oncoming traffic just around the next blind corner so you have to be careful, so we always travel with plenty up my sleeve so to speak.
“chi va piano va lontano” is what an italian once told me in Africa, but then he quickly backed it up with “ma non andare troppo piano!”
(who goes slowly, goes a long way… but don’t go too slowly!)
That said – I’m having fun. Fun… tinged with guilt. For everyone of those hairpin turns that we roll into, I know that poor Sal on the back needs to hold on pretty hard not to fall into me, and given that we’ve been at this for about 5 hours now, I can sense that she’s getting tired…
Another turn, this one’s a little tighter than I expected so I need to brake right into the apex, which helps to turn the bike, but puts an awful lot of stress on the passenger… on the exit I tap Sal on the leg to say ‘sorry about that’, she take a deep breath and we continue.
Riding in Flores is about as good as motorcycling gets, particularly on a Sunday as everyone is at home, and the usual truck traffic is absent so we have the whole place to ourselves. I’m tired though, and my left foot is actually hurting from all the gearchanges, so when we flash past a little hut with satchels of coffee hanging from a piece of string out the front, I make the “shall we stop for a coffee?” sign, and Sal gives me the thumbs up.
“Oh my god, how much more of this have we got left?”
“I think the worst (best!) of it is over…” I reply.
About 4 hours later we roll into Labuan Bajo, find a place to stay and skull a couple of longnecks of Bintang watching the sunset over the bay.
We’ve come from Larantuka in three days, that’s only about 550km in three long riding days with no traffic at all.
Fantastic.
Shipping Australia to Timor
Shipping the bike is the least exciting part of a trip, can be very frustrating and usually takes longer than you want. Other people’s blogs have helped me with this in the past, so this is my turn to pass on some experience.
Australia (Darwin) to East Timor (Dili) was very easy to organise, not particularly cheap, but as a RORO service, very convenient.
I chose to ship by sea cargo because it costs half as much as air, and in this case is much easier as you don’t need to crate the bike.
Here’s how:
Prices were in August 2015.
1) ANL organise the shipping from Darwin to Dili, currently running 2 boats between Darwin-Dili-Singapore. The sailing schedules and contact details are published on their website www.anl.com.au, they have a boat roughly once every 7-10 days.
Beware that the schedules are prone to change with no notice, i.e. they run late, never early. Ours progressively changed by 8 days between booking and delivery.
Call them and they will send you a booking form to fill in and return to them. They will reply with a booking confirmation which you are to print and take with you to customs and PJ’s (see below).
2) When you’re ready to drop off the bike, visit customs in Darwin, 21 Lindsey St, Darwin, (GPS -12.458359,130.840225), and have them stamp your carnet. They will want to see your ID and booking confirmation, which should take about 10mins.
3) Drop off the bike at PJ’s Freight yard, Export Drive, East Arm NT 0822. (GPS -12.469490, 130.922875). This is about 10km from the city centre, if you drop it off late in the day with a bit of luck one of the guys at PJ’s will give you a ride back to the city. This literally involves riding into the shed, parking the bike and walking away.
4) Go somewhere else for a week or 4 until the bike has been delivered to Dili.
5) Book your flight to Dili – (Sriwijaya Air or Air Timor) booking in advance may leave you in Dili for longer than desired if your boat is delayed. By SE Asian standards Dili is very expensive, factor US$30/night MINIMUM for a terrible room, but you can eat cheaply on the street if you’re game for a couple of dollars, otherwise restaurants will range from $5 for a cheap meal up to western prices. We stayed in a barely habitable room, with a broken toilet that was at the end of a pile of construction rubbish for US$30/night.
6) Once in Dili, get a taxi from the airport direct to the ANL freight yard, (GPS -8.559512, 125.532399). This should cost $2. Give them your booking confirmation, Passport and about US$70 and they will give you your Bill of Lading – which proves the cargo belongs to you.
7) Take the Bill of Lading, a copy of your passport, your ownership document and your carnet to Customs in the Port in Dili. Avenida Salazar, Díli, Timor-Leste (GPS -8.553605, 125.573624). They will stamp your carnet, keep the lower portion of that page and send you on your way. Should take 5 mins.
8) Return to ANL, show them the stamped carnet, and they will give you a cargo release form, which you take to a small customs hut across the compound and give to the customs officer, more stamping and passport checks and you can take your bike away. This took me an hour as the bike was still in the container. If your’s is at the back of the container instead of the front it could be several hours.
9) Fill the bike with fuel (the petrol stations on the way out of town charge much less than the one in the middle: US$140/lt vs US$1.05/lt) and ride away!!
Cost – The KTM950 cost AUD$925 to get to Dili, (paid to ANL Australia) and another USD$68 in local fees in Dili, paid in the ANL office. Customs should not charge you.
Crossing from Timor to Indonesia is overland, and all the islands in Indonesia are connected by RORO ferries, that normally leave daily. The exception to this is from West timor (Kupang) to Flores (or elsewhere), which leave a few times a week. Ask at your hotel in Kupang for more details.
We’re going all the way to Medan in Sumatra for shipping to Penang, Malaysia. I chose this option because it’s another RORO service, no crating, and the customs and port process is very simple and also cheap. More on that in the next post on shipping.
Hope this helps someone!