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PELNI FERRY ADVENTURE

The panic started getting to me once we arrived at the dock. As soon as we crossed the front gate, people starting hitting the taxi and looking through the window to see our bags. As we progresses through the alley the hitting became more and more violent has people started climbing on the taxi to be the first one the grab our bags. Let’s just say that the competition was fierce. There’s was a sea of bag carrier over there trying to pick up our things and get them on the boat. (Singaporean and Indonesian use the ferry to transport marchandise so they travel with a lot of boxes, therefore a lot of bag carrier are on place). We finally got out of the taxi with our bags without any problems. We only had 2 small bags, we were not their type of client. We thenWe then proceeded to stand in front of the door with a few 100 other people waiting for the doors to open, we then notice that we were the only tourist. That’s where I got scared a bit. People were staring at us and whispering. At first, I thought shit, I am too naked, it’s a muslim country (we didn’t know that until we arrived in that courtyard) After 30 minutes, one guy finally came up to us and ask “ Can we take a selfie with you?” We became the tourist attraction, all the people that were whispering got the courage to ask us for a photo. That’s was all, we were extremely tall white tourist and they wanted pictures. And throughout indonesia people requested picture and sometime they just snick one without asking.

After waiting in that area for over an hour, they opened the gates for us. We then had to put our bags through to most useless scanner on the face of earth since people piled up their bag through the scanner, so the scanner was basically a nice conveyor belt for bags. After that, we had to wait in a large room that soon felt very small and made us regret waiting in the sun in the parking lot.
Let me reminded you that we are in Indonesia, it is warm, very very warm, especially in room that is getting smaller by the minute as more and more people are getting in. There was fans and A.C in the room but only 3 fan were working and one tiny A.C was on… Not enough even the locals were boiling. After another hour or so waiting there it was time to get on a bus that will get us to the boat. I am going to sum up trying to get on the bus, the bus ride and going through th boat ramp as a really “pushy” and “elbowy” ride.

Once we were on the boat, we got directed to our cabin. To get to our cabin, we needed to go through the third class cabins and we were really happy we booked first class. It was a summer camp style of dortoir but without the space between the bunk beds... and hundreds of them! To summarize, hundreds of people bunked up in the same room at 35-40 degrees celsius. (Here more specific about the Boat and it’s amenities) Our first class cabin was two single bed and a shower. But we never took a shower because that thing was last cleaned in the first world war…

Tiny warning about the boat that we wish we knew beforehand, they blast the prayer 4 times a days in the room and you cannot turn it down. Bring ear plugs. Now here the truth, the sheets were clean but there was tiny insect crawling around the room and falling on us as we slept. We got in a pretty big match of bug killing. It was also very very warm, even if on the website they said there was A.C. but truly, it was not A.C. for Canadian in Indonesia… A nice thing was that we were fed and the food was good, not extremely good but good. It was chicken and rice for every meal and the side dish changes. But keep in mind, you are on a boat (and not like one of the disney one) so you deal with what you get.
On that boat ride we met an incredible man that was riding his bike around Asia (summing up 14 000 miles so far!) and we share stories and talk a lot with him (Here is Scott Sharick instagram). The ride felt like being in a different world. No matter where we went, there was people and no one on the boat really spoke english. Side story: We missed the first meal because they announce it in Indonesian. We started asking question about meals later on and suddenly they start announcing meals in english! We were really grateful.

We were supposed to arrive in Jakarta at 8:00 pm, so we told ourselves no problem, we will book an hotel on the boat or upon our arrival. But it didn’t happen that way, the boat was late, very late and we ended up arriving in Jakarta at 2:00 AM. If you are asking why we didn’t book an hotel before leaving? We were planning on doing it on the boat. And yes there was internet on the boat, but of course it wasn’t working… So after getting out of the boat and the dock terminal wich was my new most chaotic arrival of all time. (This time it wasn’t just one person pushing us but multiple and we had to fight our way through the gate. And I mean fight literally, it wasn’t just elbow anymore but full on pushing). Afterward, fortunately for us, once we were in the port building, there was free wifi! So we googled hotels and get ready to leave. Thing is, you cannot book an hotel for a night that’s almost over…

We then decided to choose an hotel that shows availability and show up there. We negotiated a taxi, gave him the address and arrived almost without any problem (Besides that the taxi got lost …). We then proceed to the first hotel counter to find two adolescent playing games on there phone… And clearly we were annoying them. They kept repeating that we could only rent a room at 2:00PM not before and that we needed to go away. We gave up and started wandering around for another hotel in the middle of the night in a country we didn’t know. (Because we didn’t have internet or a phone to check online again or order a cab) Fortunately, we found one, but we didn’t have enough cash to book the room. So my Alexis went in search of an ATM while I stayed with the luggage hoping that everything goes well. (More like praying at this point… begging…) Finally, he came back and we were able to go to sleep, In the worst hotel of our trip yet. Yes, a lot of “THE WORST” in one night. But hey, that’s what adventures are! We don’t remember why we wanted to take the boat to get to Jakarta but we also didn’t regret it. It was one of those aventure that you remember because they were so strange and disorganised.