I did this crossing in Nov '08 with a friend and it is no problem at all. You ca do it all alone too go with chakra shipping but arrange all paper work on indo side urself thats what I did! it all cost 500,000 rps on indo side and we were on our way out of belawan Easy!!!just watch out for traffic once your in indo tho!Peter are you still in thailand mate? remember to contact me if you need help in Bali as this is where I live and my bike is here too.hestzero at geemail dot com

We had 3 panniers full of stuff on the bike, when it was shipped from Penang to Belawan. And because the bike arrived late on Friday, and we decided to go to Thailand for the weekend, (and also because we had faulty info about the speedboat, which did not go on Mondays) the bike had actually stayed at the customs warehouse for 4-5 days, before we were finally able to pick it up.

Everything was ok, but our panniers were hard, so they were locked. Not sure, if I´d leave soft panniers on, or anything else that can be easily taken off. Everyone at the port seemed to know full well, where the bike was kept!

From experience of living and working in indonesia for the last 6 years I dont believe that anyone will take gear off you bike in belawan the guys there are more interested in looking at and talking to you about the trip etc. They will however turn all the light and indicator switches on tho but thats no problem really. I put my email addy in my last post incase anyone needs help or infomation about bali but i wrote it wrong it's hest zero one at geemaildot com
good luck guys!

Peter, your gear will be ok. Dirk from (belgium)and myself did it in november '08. and robbo did the crossing in dec with out a carnet! read his blog The hard way home. I dont know why you guys are stressing so much, it is easy and no problem whatsoever.
All i says is watch the traffic once in indo too many idiots on the sepeda motors!! with out licences too! btw it was easier and cheaper to fly ourselves from penang to medan on air asia they go every night at 21.00 we started on the ferry but it had to turn back due to rough seas you can get a visa on arrival for 1 month and can renew it here in bali for another month for 1.5 mil rps.
send us an email I will give you my ph number here in bali if you need any help
hest zero one at geemail dot com
cheers
ivan

Thanks for the advice. We are leaving some of the bags on the bikes, then. We were stressing just a little bit, because we were told only this morning that there will be a boat tomorrow, we didn't have our visas, for which we needed to show tickets, which we couldn't get until we knew when the boat goes. Su's MY visa expires on Monday and that is when the next ferry leaves. It was touch and go whether she would have to do a second border run. (Thais only get 30 days in MY.) Everything is sorted now, the bikes are going aboard tomorrow lunch time and we are going Monday.

Is there an ATM in Belawan or do we have to go into Medan for that?

Ivan, is your previous gmail a/c still valid?

BTW, the Indo embassy's website in the UK states that visas are NOT extendable. We have been told otherwise and have heard that some immigration offices will do it regardless. It probably won't be an issue for us, as we are planning to be in Sarawak in 2 months' time, then head for Philippines. I'm still not clear on how to get from there to Sulawesi, but we'll cross that water when the time comes.

Ciao,
Peter.

__________________
Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

For the benefit of all those poor sods who can't travel by bike, but have 4 wheels: Cakra told me today that they also ship cars on their boat(s). Their email is:

CakraShipping at Gmail

Cheers,
Peter.

__________________
Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

Ok, time for an update. We have now been in Sumatra for 4 weeks. To answer my own questions:

There is at least one ATM not far from the port that takes CC.
We stayed At Danau Toba and found them good, although a tad expensive.

An 'agent' did all the paperwork and we were on our way within about an hour or so. Could have stayed in Medan at JJs cheaper if I hadn't stuffed up loading the waypoints into the GPS.

When applying for an Indo visa in Georgetown the embassy demands a ticket. Funnily, they accept inwards tickets and also a copy of the carnet. The last I heard from Dingo is that visas can be extended.

Ciao,
Peter.

__________________
Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

Actually we arrived in Belawan a couple of days before Christmas and first we went looking for the famous mr Monte. Curiously, nobody seemed to know anything about him (and his phone seemed to be switched off), so we looked up the shipping company Pt Melda Jaya. There nobody spoke any english, and before we knew, a guy whose name is Anan was called. He said it would cost us 1 million rupiah to ship the bike. We were not too happy with that (especially knowing from some previous post that theoretically it should be possible to do it at no cost at Belawan side at all) but agreed to come back on the 2nd of January as the next ship should have been leaving on the 3rd.
When we arrived in Belawan on the 2nd of January the shipping company was closed and the locals advised us on coming back on the 4th. That is what we did. Luckily, this time they were open and we wanted to make another attempt to make it without a fixer. But once again, even before we could take our boots off and enter the office, they were already talking on the phone to mr Anan. He showed up and told us he would give us a discount, so the price would be 800 000 rupiah. We did not really have a choice, because mr Monte was nowhere around and our visas were expiring the next day. So we agreed, and within an hour all the paperwork was done (i.e. the bill of lading was printed and the carnet was signed, all very easy) and the bike was in the warehouse waiting to be shipped the next day.

Just in case anybody needs it, here is mr Anan's phone number 06177908505.

We left a roll bag on the bike. We locked it so that it could not be opened, but anybody could get it off the bike with ease if want to stole it. Fortunately all was there in the end.

The wooden vegetable ship looked like this:



On Penang side we first went to the shipping agent Sinaran Idaman Enterprises on Church street (on maps it is called Lebuh Gereja) to pay for the shipping. It was 290 ringgit for the shipping and 30 ringgit for some mysterious EDI (we got a receipt and all), so all in all 320 ringgit. Then we took the ferry to Butterworth and walked to Bagan Dalam port. While we waited at the warehouse for the bike to be unloaded from the boat, famous mr Lim showed up (he seems to be aware of every bike coming and going) and although we did not ask for assistance, he was very helpful. After a bit of running around the carnet was stamped (in the export section, though, but I doubt anybody cares) and we were nto even asked for the port charges. So, off we went!

Bike off the ship:

Hi all -- I'm here in the Cameron Highlands with my trusty Vespa P200 that I rode here from Serbia. I've just run into a Canadian guy and his girlfriend on a pair of 250cc Yamahas, and they're riding back up to Penang in a few days to attempt the shipping to Belawan. They told me that Penang is pretty much the best, if not only, option for getting from Malaysia to Indonesia.

But that's in the wrong direction! I'm heading down to Singapore in a bit to meet up with some folks, and I'd prefer to not have to ride all the way back up to Penang. Dmitry mentioned in this thread -- or the previous thread that was closed -- that Port Dickson does offer shipping to Dumai, in the form of a Mr. Zaharia who can magically get your bike on a passenger ferrry. That was back in 2008 however. Meanwhile, from the sounds of it, all the passenger ferries no longer run...? Is that true?

Thanks in advance for any up-to-date info anybody might have!

P.S. I tried calling this Mr. Zaharia and there was no answer.

Ship your bike to Dumai if you enjoy having it impounded.

Take your bike into Singapore if you enjoy red tape and spending lots of money for nothing.

Search HUBB for more details, it's all there.

Why not ride back up Malaysia taking a different route? It's a nice country to ride in.

__________________
Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

We did the reverse in September 2009 and shipped both bikes on an onion boat from Dumai to Port Klang,http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...i-melaka-35519


the details of the agent in Port Klang are here

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...941#post300395

Good luck
Ann

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Lucas & Ann
http://somemustard.blogspot.com

Just a quick update for those who want to use this thread as a source of information shipping from Indonesia to Malaysia. I've done the crossing a few days ago, but I found not much of the information shared applies anymore unfortunately. Even if you speak a bit of bahasa and ask yourself like I did, it's a bit difficult, so I haven't found a proper way, I had to "hack it".

After I tried from Dumai to Malacca and figured there wasn't even a passenger ferry from Belawan to Penang anymore, I got to Tanjung Balai (where a speedboat operates from towards Port Klang) and spent about a day talking my way into getting the bike on the boat, including convincing the port master, coastal patrol that it will be ok, then hand lifting it from the floating consol to the boat and carrying it up on a 10 meter narrow set of stairs (one side open to the abyss) on the Malaysian side then talking to some high ranking customs officer about the unusual Carnet situation. It was a bit of an adventure but something to remember

Cost was about a third (including some money to the captain, some for loading the bike, customs and other official "costs") of what everyone else was reporting on HUBB using Cakra and the infamous Mr.Monte (who I don't think is in business anymore, I haven't even seen any small veggie ships in Belawan, plenty in Tanjung Balai...would have been my plan B).

Unfortunately I can't see this as a casual way of getting a bike across the strait, I think one or two more would probably fly, but then they would just cut it short and I don't think a full size touring bike would make it, even my DR fully drained was pushing it, we had to lift it off the boat just 2 of us.

If someone has done this recently, information would be welcome.

Cheers,
Andras

But do you know, if Cakra Shipping still operates the onion boats between Penang and Belawan? That should be a proven and relatively easy way to transport bikes.

Unfortunately they don´t take passengers. But if there are no passenger boats doing that route at the moment, I believe you should be able to find flights between Medan and Penang (a bit of a hassle that way I admit, but getting the vehicle across, and dealing with customs, especially if heading to Indo, is still the harder part I think!)

I haven't contacted Cakra as all the reports that went through them came the opposite way and everyone seemed to go through Mr.Monte on the Indonesian side. I went to the Belawan port, the police didn't even want to let me in first, but a bit of social engineering did it. Only to find that Belawan seems to be a big ships only port now, I haven't seen any banana boats on the main pier and in the food court area and certainly no one heard of Mr.Monte there (the lack of small boats might explain, apparently the new way was in for 2-3 years now).

Tanjung Balai, on the other hand seems like the banana boat heaven, just near the speedboat terminal, there were at least 5 blue wooden boats lined up, all similar, taking coconut or what not. Shouldn't be a problem, plenty of fixers kicking around, but none of them speeks English.

If, however, you find that Cakra ships from Belawan, there is train connection from Belawan to Tanjung Balai, where you can take the speed boat for 200.000 rupees at around 2pm (I think mine was delayed because we loaded the bike after all the passengers were on board) and be in Port Kling by around 7pm KL time (4 hours). Nice air conditioned run carrying only about 50-60 people. Flight is also an option, but even with my minimalistic gear it's too heavy and they didnt't seem to care about the content (they do screen iton both sides).

Cheers,
Andras

Hi All,

Hope this will be of some use to someone. We did this using a carnet, so it may be slightly different if you don't have one.

These were the steps we took to get the bike over to Indonesia.

First we got our 60 day Visa's from the Indonesian Consulate in Penang GPS ref N5 25.975 E100 18.295, this took two days to process and didn't prove to be any hassle with a carnet. If you have a pillion a letter from the rider to say the pillion will be leaving the country with you and the bike is required. No outward bound flight ticket is required anymore when in possession of a carnet.

1. Contacted Mr Lim of Cakra Shipping, Georgetown. ph 6042625879 mob 60124709717

2. Visited his office, 2nd floor,187 Lebuh Pantai, Penang. GPS ref N5 24.860 E100 20.284. Mr Lim is a very helpful guy and will let you know all the information required.

3. Organised the bike to be shipped on Friday, we were to meet at his office at 10am handed over 370RM then we headed out to the dockyard at Butterworth to meet the ship coming in and to get it loaded there and then.

Customs on a Friday is a bit of a pain, Friday is a Muslim prayer day so Customs close in the afternoon, with the ship getting it at 1500 we had a lot of waiting around.

4. The crane operator didn't really have an idea on how to lift a large GS Adventure so it was worthwhile for me to make sure he rigged it correctly. He may be a bit more knowledgeable on smaller bikes.

5. Say goodbye to the bike and jump on the back of Mr Lim's bike and head home.

6. Flew Georgetown to Medan with Air Asia on Monday morning (ferries do not operate that route anymore). After ditching our gear at the hotel I headed out to Belawan Port by motorcycle taxi (one hour) to pick up the bike. The shipping agent's office in Belawan is at GPS ref N3 46.831 E98 41.120. This place is just a house, here the Belawan agent will come and escort you around the Customs procedure which is a bit long winded. I kept my m/c taxi with me and waiting around till I got to the see the bike. I paid him 100,000rp for his troubles and for all the waiting.

The first customs chap just wanted to have a little chat and see the carnet, second visit to another customs to tell them to come and inspect the bike. After inspection (just frame/engine number) another trip on the back of Mr agent's bike to another Customs office in the dockyard to get the carnet stamped.

7. Finally got back on the bike and made my way back to Medan.

Traffic here is pretty bad compared to Thailand and Malaysia, I made it out there in 45 minutes and managed to make it back in an hour, this was just lucky.

Keep your GPS on you and don't leave it on the bike when you ship it, it saves a lot of hassle getting to the shipping agents office in Belawan.

Cost
Shipping out with Mr Lim 370ringit -- 76GBP
Collection fee, 800,00 rupiah, don't pay any more than 900,000r -- 64GBP

No fees to customs or anybody else, all went well just took a long time.

Cannot say if the process will be the same if you do not have a Carnet but I'm sure Mr Lim will tell you the details.

Cannot think of anything more to add but he can contact us on gsaworldtour@hotmail.co.uk if he needs anymore information. We will also try and put this up on HU and possibly ADV if they have a borders link.

Hope this is ok,

John

gsaworldtour.com