Chicken buses "Indo" style
Trip Start
Mar 15, 2008
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24
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Trip End
Jul 15, 2009
Lombok,
West Nusa Tenggara,
Indonesia
Friday, June 13, 2008
We decided to try the public transport from Bali to the neighboring island of Lombok, against the
warnings of the guidebooks. Transport is slow in these parts, so many islands with bad connections and flights are out of our budget. The tourist service charges 185,000($18) to get from Bali to the Gili Islands, it involves a bus to a public ferry than another bus to another public ferry taking around 9 hours. It seemed we could do it for around 70,000 each according to our guidebook. This was to be a learning experience.
We woke up early to start our journey
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. We planned on 1 taxi ride, 5 to 6 bus rides, one horsecarriage ride, 1 long ferry ride and 1 short boat trip to arrive at the island. The problem is it is difficult to pay the proper price as a foreigner, they all try to overcharge you. Whenever we get dropped off at a bus station numerous touts run up to the bus trying to claim us. They see me as an ATM machine. They start screaming at
me demanding to know where I'm going. They immediately begin to lie like crazy; there are no buses today, buses don't go there, exaggerate the distances from place to place, it's maddening. They refuse to tell you where to get the "public" bus to go somewhere. They yell at others not to help us, they hope we will give up and
use them to get where we are going. They want to take us privately at absurd prices by Indonesian standards. You have to have patience and perseverance to get through it.
After about 20 minutes of this circus I decide to take a taxi to the next bus station, even tough
it's more expansive than their last offer strictly out of spite. At this point the prices come way down and then someone finally tells me that the public bus to the ferry pier had arrived
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. We negotiated a price that was too high, but we were ready to go. It seems Indonesians just don't travel very far. They have one bus a day fromthe main city of the island to the main ferry of the island. You have to change buses every 20 miles or so if you don't catch that one bus, it is quite frustrating for the independent traveler. Eventually, we get to the ferry building, buy a ticket for the 1 pm ferry, but that ferry was going somewhere else so we had to wait for the 3 pm ferry which ended up leaving at 4 pm. It's becoming obvious we won't make the islands in one day. We arrived in Lembar, the main
ferry dock of Lombock after dark. After a lengthy negotiation and walk towards the city they finally caved and offered us a ride for a fair price. Of course, the asshole didn't drop us off where we wanted to go so we had to take a cab and we finally arrived at our hotel around 11 pm that night having covered about 60 miles in 15 hours.
The next day we woke up caught a local bus to the main bus station for a repeat performance. Locals
were chasing our bus as we pulled into the station asking the driver to stop. At first I was wondering why the driver wouldn't stop, it's common practice to hail buses from anywhere
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. Then I quickly realized they were after me. Some want to give you a ride somewhere, others hope to refer you to someone so they can get a commission. Theyfollowed me around for about 5 minutes, as Ana and I strode past them. We actually found the public bus pretty quick, but had to wait 2.5 hours for it to leave, even though it was already full. These buses are crazy, we are packed in like sardines amongst various packages and animals. There are live chickens in bags, packages tied
to the top of the bus, people on top of the bus and hanging out the door. My legs make the journey a painful one. However, the scenery is stunning, colors and hues of greens that I didn't know existed, trees full of large fruit and endless varieties of flowers. We were lucky enough to go through monkey forest where there are literally
hundreds of monkeys on the side of the road, just chillin and watching the cars go by, whole families with their little babies. I have never seen so many monkeys in one place, they are so funny to watch.
Finally, we arrive at the dreaded Bansal where the touts and hawkers are legendary. All the guidebooks
recommend that you take the horse carriage to the ticket office in order to avoid their wrath, we did
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. Ironically, there weren't any hawkers here. It seemed all those warnings have scared away all the tourists and thus all the touts. We were able to get a ticket straight away and we even paid the proper price, about 80 cents for a 40 minute ride to our destination, the Gili islands. We could already see that they were worth the trip, stunning island beautyabound.
We ended up saving about 5 bucks going this way, but learned numerous valuable lessons about "public"
transport in Indonesia. Our experience will help us plan the rest of our trip throughout the archipelago, we will be able to make better decisions and plan for delays and hardships.
