Hi everyone,

My partner and I are currently traveling through Indonesia and since we couldn't really find too much info on the ferries between the islands I thought I should put something up, we are only on Bali just now but I will endeavor to update this as we travel along the remainder of our route :-)

From: Sumatra (Bakauheni)
To: Java (Merak)
Frequency: 1 every hour 24 hours a day
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: 67000 IRP
Date We Traveled: 24-05-2009

From: Java (Banyuwangi)
To: Bali (Gilimanuk)
Frequency: 1 every half hour 24 hours a day
Duration: 1 hour
Cost: 27000 IRP
Date We Traveled: 31-05-2009

From: Bali (Padang Bai)
To: Lombok (Lembar)
Frequency: We got ours at 12:30 ish and have been told various stories ranging from they only run at 08:30, 12:30 and 16:30 to someone telling us they run every two hours 24 hours a day so good luck!! :-D
Duration: 4 hours (Approx, had some waiting around for a jetty to clear at Lombok)
Cost: 195000 IRP (Charged for big bike)
Date We Traveled: 03-06-2009

From: Lombok (Labuhan Lombok)
To: Sumbawa (Poto Tano)
Frequency: 1 every hour 24 hours a day
Duration: 2 hours
Cost: 69000 IRP (Charged for big bike)
Date We Traveled: 05-06-2009

From: Sumbawa (Sape)
To: Flores (Labuhanbajo)
Frequency: 1 a day, at present it is supposed to leave 16:00 on Mondays and then 08:00 Tuesday - Sunday.
Duration: Supposed to be 8 hours but ours left forty minutes late and took 9 hours
Cost: 206000 IRP (Charged for big bike)
Date We Traveled: 10-06-2009

From: Flores (Ende)
To: West Timor (Kupang)
Frequency: Random at best, when we turned up on Flores we asked a few folk and got told different stories each time, the best thing to do is to go to the town you aim to leave from (Aimere, Ende or Larantuka) and ask at the port there and even then make sure you check regularly before the boat leaves (we did it every couple of days) as they are quite often known to change without any prior warning!
Duration: Supposed to be 18 hours ended up being a rather choppy 22
Cost: 215000 IRP (Charged for medium bike)
Date We Traveled: 18-06-2009

P.S. If anyone knows how to put this up in table form can they tell me, would be a lot more useful then I think :-)


The Wonderful Wander To Oz

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The Wonderful Wander To Oz

Fantastic! We are about 2 weeks behind you doing exactly the same thing, so will be eagerly keeping an eye on this thread. I was actually just about to post in the the other thread to ask about ferries, so thankyou.

hello every one yet again. this subject has been going around here for the past 2 yrs pls just read all the info that has been posted on here, I live in Bali and you are welcome to contact me if you need to know any thing just send me a pri msg and i will try and help
cheers
dingo

Just to bump the thread and to show it has been updated.

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The Wonderful Wander To Oz

Dingo - As I mentioned above, we are following a few weeks along behind hobospy and trying to plan our itinerary.

Do you (or anybody else?) know how often the ferry runs from Flores to West Timor?

Also, I have read there may be a ferry from Sumbawa to West Timor directly. Any information on either ferry about how often they run would be very helpful to us. I have searched other threads but can't find this information.

Of course I'm hoping hobospy will update the thread once they've done the trip themselves, but if we can find out sooner that would be great!

There you go Dave (I think that is you anyway),

Just to let you know there is a ferry from Flores (Ende) going to West Timor (Kupang) this Thursday (18-06-09), well that is what we were told when we went down to the office on Saturday, we are going again tomorrow to check that it is still leaving then and we will try and find out dates for next week and a number for the office. The ferries from here (Flores) to West Timor seem to be a bit more ..... freestyle so if I was doing this again I would try and get a friendly Indonesian hotellier to call up on my behalf and try and find out for me as the guys there don't really speak much English.

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The Wonderful Wander To Oz

Just one final hint for anyone traveling this way the number for the Ende office is 0 THREE 8089 ZERO 420 and there is at least one guy that can sort of speak English but if I was you I would try and get some friendly hotel chap or chapess to make the call for you in Indonesian to make sure you get the right info!

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The Wonderful Wander To Oz

When I was in Kupang trying to get to Endes there should have been a daily ferry service, but because of the weather I had to wait a week.

If the seas have calmed since then (I sailed in Feb) then I can't see why you can't use those. 18 hours. Cheap.

Pelni is the other one that sails fortnightly - something like the 14th and 28th - of each month but they have to crane your bike on so it gets expensive as is a real hassle to organise.

I just kept get getting the guy who owns the open-sided cafe down on the waterfront - can't for the life of me remember the name - to call the ferry company.

Personally I wouldn't skip Flores and sail straight to Sumbawa. Flores is a lovely island. Apart from Endes, that's a hole.

First up - massive thanks to Hobospy. Your posts are the only reason we are sitting in Darwin right now! We couldn't have managed our insane schedule without detailed knowledge of the ferries.

Just thought I'd add our experiences to the list also - I'll only mention something if it's different to what Hobospy has already described.

From: Sumatra (Bakauheni)
To: Java (Merak)

No issues - showed up and straight on to a ferry. Think it was 94,000 IRP for the car.

From: Java (Banyuwangi)
To: Bali (Gilimanuk)

No problem getting on ferry. The police were a major hassle though - basically seemed to be angling for a bribe and held us up for about an hour. Think it was around 250,000 IRP for the car.


From: Bali (Padang Bai)
To: Lombok (Lembar)

We caught this at 7pm, so there are definitely more ferries than just the times Hobospy listed. I think they run every 2 hours. We were the only car to fit on the ferry though (lots of trucks), and there was still a queue waiting behind us to get on. Bikes should be fine. 605,000 IRP for the car.


From: Lombok (Labuhan Lombok)
To: Sumbawa (Poto Tano)

We caught this at 2am. Still quite busy at this time of night, but no problems. Think it was around 200,000 IRP for the car.

From: Sumbawa (Sape)
To: Flores (Labuhanbajo)
We caught this at 8am on a Thursday. We arrived the night before and gave the guy at the terminal our number plate details. The ferry was totally full, so probably worth doing this to get in the queue if you have a car. Bikes would squeeze on no problem. About 800,000 IRP for the car.

From: Flores (Ende)
To: West Timor (Kupang)
The ferry from hell. We were told by the ticket guy in Sape (via a helpful local translating) that there was a ferry from Aimere going on Sunday and from Ende on Monday. We went to Aimere at 11am on Saturday (just in case, on our way to Ende) and discovered that the ferry was going at 1pm! The ferry we were on then stopped at Ende on the way to Kupang. It was incredibly crowded, and no vehicles were loaded at Ende, it was just too full already.
We asked a couple of people in Aimere about the schedule and were told they only go once a week (although that might just be the Aimere-> Ende-> Kupang ones). I suspect that there are other ferries from Ende to Kupang.
Total time on the ferry was 29 hours. Cost 1.8 million IRP for the car.

Hobospy and others ... just want to say thanks for posting the really useful info. A relief to find. It's January 2010, we're in Bali, will be riding to East Timor and Australia in the coming weeks. Will post updates. Very hard to get good ferry info, people-who-did-it is the only recent truth.

If you are riding the area we may have additional useful info for you at
Wheezy Rider & Thao

See the "Getting to Indonesia" blog. It is not that easy these days due to Carnet issues here, but I think we found the simplest way for now.




-Peter AKA Wheezyrider

Hobospy and others ... just want to say thanks for posting the really useful info. A relief to find. It's January 2010, we're in Bali, will be riding to East Timor and Australia in the coming weeks. Will post updates. Very hard to get good ferry info, people-who-did-it is the only recent truth.

If you are riding the area we may have additional useful info for you at
Wheezy Rider & Thao

See the "Getting to Indonesia" blog. It is not that easy these days due to Carnet issues here, but I think we found the simplest way for now.




-Peter AKA Wheezyrider

great stuff, will be using all this as from tomorrow. if anyone had any good info on how to get across from butterworth, malaysia to sumatra that would be fantastic to hear. we are stuck in penang for a few days trying to sort it out. we are using panomoto.com for the info there but any more would be great.

also if there is anyone going across east timor to darwin we would be looking to share a container with perkins some time mid- late february..

all the best
nicky

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Far From Home, U.K - Oz and beyond.
http://www.globegallivanting.blogspot.com/

Hi Nico-la-vo,

I think the main way to get across (and the way we used) was to use Cakra Shipping in Penang. The details are here:

Cakra Shipping and Trading
187 Lebuh Pantai
2nd Floor
Penang


I can't remember his phone number but just wander in and ask to speak to Mr Lim and you will get the right person. The office isn't too hard to find, it is on the mainland side of the road (if that helps) they pretty much know what to do but weren't that great in giving us a definite time for getting our bike onto a boat which led to us staying on Penang for a few days more than necessary.

Hope this helps.

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The Wonderful Wander To Oz

Anybody heading East through Indonesia do yourself 3 favours:

Cross over with Cakra. All you need is a carnet.
Avoid the ferry from Aimere and Ende, continue on to Larantuka and take the ferry to Kupang from there.
2 months is not enough we found. Park the bike(s), fly out and get another (2) month(s) visa. Bali is a good place for that.

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Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

Indeed Indonesia is a beautiful country that deserves more than 2 Months.

A note on the Visa situation;

1) If you have a 2-Month Visa (211) its possible to extend that up to 6 months for 1 month each at a Kantor Immigrasi available in each major city. This might sound scary but they are quite friendly and might even give you a receipt for payment. The cost is around 250.000Rp, hand in your passport 1 week before visa expires. Or head to Kuta, Bali where you can find numerous travel agents who can arrange the extension for you (at a cost...)


2) If you have a 1-Month VOA VisaOnArrival, a recent change allows you to extend this for another 30days only. Same procedure, cost i dont know.



Im actually living in Mataram, Lombok and if you are passing through and need some help with visa extensions just let me know Ive been through the process of extensions numerous times myself......

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Amsterdam-Australia 2007-201x Amsterdam-Capetown 2002-2003