So, we're in the Indonesian bit of Borneo... Arrived yesterday.

Wait, weren't we supposed to be in China? Yes, that was the plan, right up until the point when the Other Tern's ears refused to fly. (They're on the mend now, but flying is still a little way down the track.)

No China, then, but still the need to go away... Partly because of the latest noisy scourge on the fourth floor of our apartment building. And partly because PT gets this trapped feeling every now and again, and a desperate desire to move, and we'll be grounded in August because we're looking after someone's plants. So the travel opportunity window was tight.

Singkawang, therefore, was ratcheted up the schedule, being a) a place we'd never been to; b) a place we could get to by bus; and c) a place in Indonesia, a country we used to live in, and then visited at least once a year, until that great habit-stopping event called the pandemic, after which we kept saying we MUST go back, but never quite did.

Our last trip to Indonesia was actually in 2019, right at the very beginning of what was supposed to be our Big OE. That was Borneo, too. Pontianak, in fact (the origins of whose name came up again in an article only recently).

Singkawang had been on the radar for a while, and the original plan was to go with friends, draft in a car and driver, and do a bit of a loop round the northern bit of Kalbar (West Kalimantan). We'll still do that, hopefully. But my need to go NOW -- aaaargh, NOW, NOW!! -- meant postponing that experience, and just getting the bus.

To be honest, we didn't even know there was a bus until we saw it on the departure board when we went to Sibu the other month. It's a funny kind of business. Unlike the service to Pontianak, which takes you right through to your destination in the same vehicle, the one to Singkawang involves you in a two-step process: You get a Bus Asia bus to the border, and then swap to a Damri bus to go the rest of the way. You can't book the trip online. You can't even book it at the Bus Asia office in the middle of Kuching. You have to go out to Kuching Central (the main bus terminal, which is not at all central). And you have to pay cash (MYR 100, which is GBP 17.5, per person per direction). It's best to buy your return ticket straight up, as you might need to show it to the Visa on Arrival people in Indonesia (we didn't have to produce it, but you never know).

I was a little apprehensive about the journey. We've had a variety of Indonesian bus experiences, with a fairly terrible trip to Solo marking the nadir, and at the other end of spectrum, the highly efficient DayTrans people, who took us to all sorts of destinations, including Semarang and Salatiga, demonstrating how well it can be done.

The Kuching to Singkarang trip definitely wasn't down there with the Solo fiasco, but it wasn't fab... A quick summary of our experience, in case you want to try this for yourself:

The bus is scheduled to depart at 0945. They tell you to be there at 0900. The bus rolls up at 0915, and you can board at your leisure (as they say). This one is quite comfortable. Plenty of leg and bum room. There are about 20 of us on board. We leave promptly at 0945; and we arrive at the Malaysian checkpoint at about 1115.

The formalities are fairly speedy, and we're all ready to leave again by 1130. Except someone is missing... We wait. By 1145, luggage is being offloaded, and the rumour is flying around that someone's been detained... What's certain is that we move on with one fewer person... Poor guy. You always hope it won't be you one day.

Anyway, we're off.

But no. Now we've stopped again, and we're parked up in no man's land between the checkpoints, waiting for... Well, we're not quite sure... But it turns out Nigel's guess is correct. We're waiting for the Damri bus coming in the other direction. Once it arrives, we wait for its passengers to get off, transfer all our luggage, and climb aboard. It's much less comfortable than its Malaysian counterpart. The seats have built-in leg-rests, but there's not really sufficient room to deploy them effectively, and you can't push them right back into a neutral position. Because of this encumbrance, none of the women (or presumably the shorter men) can get their feet to touch the ground when they sit.




Next, we trundle the short distance to the Indonesian checkpoint.

It's 1210. Which is 1110, Indonesian time.

To go through Indonesian immigration, you have to take everything off the bus again. You buy your visa. Which costs IDR 500,000 (GBP 23) per person, but is expedited fairly speedily. (Take cash. I didn't actually check whether they accept cards, but I got the impression they don't.) You shove your stuff through the Xray machine, and then back into the luggage compartment under the bus.

And at 1135, we're off again.


But less than five minutes later, we've stopped. We seem to be collecting a parcel. Or is it another passenger? No rush, anyway...

Now it's 1140, and we do another few metres, but stop again to collect a few more parcels.



And at 1200, just when you think you've finally got going, it's the lunch break... About half an hour or so.





Finally, we're really on the road, but we stop to shed passengers all along the route, because basically, you can get off wherever you like...

We finally arrived at 1600 Indonesia time, or 1700 Malaysia time. A long, long day.

***

It was tedious and uncomfortable, and I'm not honestly sure I'd recommend it. But it's interesting to look out of the window, and see that so much is the same as back home in Sarawak -- the vegetation, the shape of the land, the huge rivers (we're only a few miles removed, after all) -- but so much is also very different. The mosques are grander. There are rice fields. The houses are styled in such a way that they couldn't possibly be Malaysian. And there are SO many more motorbikes. We often think that motorbikes have mushroomed in Kuching in the time we've lived there. We'd obviously forgotten what a REAL motorbiking population looks like...

Some photos from the road (bear in mind it's incredibly difficult to take photos from a moving bus, especially one that's been rained on...):









***

We're staying at the Swiss Belinn. This is a little out from the main "sights" of Singkawang, but has a number of advantages. It's part of a complex that includes not only the Singkawang Grand Mall (with supermarket) but also the bus station... So, having survived your long odyssey from Kuching, all you have to do is roll around the corner to the hotel lobby.

Plus, the views are great, as is the breakfast buffet:






The mall, meanwhile, boasts its very own ginormous gorilla...




Touring the supermarket was a nice little walk down memory lane. We didn't have low-carb aspirations when we lived in Indonesia; now, however, many items that used be favourites have to remain in the "oh, remember that" category. But we did permit ourselves some bite-sized Beng Beng biscuits (these are SO good), and a tiny bar of Silver Queen.

It's amazing how you bounce back from a bad journey. I remember thinking the same thing after that corker of a bus ride we had from Zagreb to Banya Luka (at least we weren't too hot this time...). Once the journey's over, you get out there into a different world, and it all seems worthwhile...