It’s difficult to find the appropriate words to describe Jakarta. It’s impossible to find any complimentary words. Our train from Yogjakarta pulled in to Tuga Station at 5pm and we had a rough idea that we would stay in the Glodok area, the Chinatown of Jakarta. The Chinta Hotel at $27 (including breakfast) proved to be worth every cent.

Dinner tonight was from a range of street vendors, capped off with a burger from A&W. The streets and narrow laneways are so congested with people, hawkers, motorcycles and rubbish. Nevertheless we walked for a few hours, got lost, walked a bit more, found our hotel, and settled in for the night.

Sadly we missed the chance to catch up with our friend here, but Jakarta is just not a good place to hang around. Taxi to the bus terminal early morning for the grinding 3 hour ride to Merak, the harbour port at the very tip of Western Java. The bus stops at the ferry terminal and the ferry is waiting. It’s a big ferry, in fact it almost reaches status of ship. Fortunately it’s not busy and the 3 hour cruise across the strait to Sumatera is quite relaxing, except for the deafening music, pestering vendors, and the stench of oil and Indonesian cigarettes.

Sailing into the port of Bakauheni the mountains rise out of the sea, and the port is surrounded by small uninhabited islands. A two hour bus ride to Bandar Lampung where we arrive at about 6.30pm… not even time enough for a bite to eat before the overnight train to Prabumulih where we have to wait for our connecting train to Lubuklinggau… where we have to wait for our connecting bus to Bukuttinggi…and so it goes on until Dumai.

We have traversed Java, end to end, east to west. The Sumatera slog has begun.