The entire bus ride to the Tanjung Priok ferry terminal, I
was bracing myself for the worst. I would once again be getting on an ekonomi
class PELNI ferry. I had no choice really. There was no other means of overland
transport to Singapore, and I couldn’t afford a first class ticket.
Ninda came to see me off, and her moral support dearly
helped me the through the psychological stress that was overcoming me. Every
place the bus passed triggered nightmarish flashbacks of my ferry ride from
Kupang. A family boarded the bus and I had visions of the mother and son puking by my
bed. The bus passed a large gutter and I saw streams of garbage being thrown
overboard into the sea. We passed a gardener watering a bush and I was brought
back to streams of urine flowing from lifeboats onto the upperdeck. These
visions, I was soon expecting to again be my reality.
Things, however, started to look up once we arrived at the
port. Where I expected to see throngs of humans cramming through small gate openings,
I saw sparse, orderly people calmly passing through check-in. When I made it to
the ship, I found a ferry that was twice the size and transporting less than
half the number of passengers as the previous one. I was overjoyed to find that
there was actually space to walk on staircases and hallways. People actually
had assigned beds on their tickets. And best of all, there were people
collecting garbage and cleaning the place!
Sure, there were still small cockroaches crawling around my
bed, and the food was still bad enough to reverse the digestive process, but to
me this might as well have been the Titanic. Once you’ve stared into the pit of
hell, any glimmer of light is a gift from heaven. Even though they were less torture chamber-y
than before, I did still make a (successful) pact with myself to avoid the
bathroom at all costs.
In contrast to the previous 3 day horror show, this pleasure
cruise was a mere 29 hours, and arrived exactly on time. As I strolled down the
gangplank in Sekupang, Batam Island I looked to the north. Through a dense haze
from Sumatran forest fires, I could see the distant, faint, ethereal skyline of
Singapore.
Within 30 minutes of being tied up at the port, I had made
the quick jaunt to the neighbouring ferry terminal, bought my ticket, cleared
customs, and was in a fast boat dashing over the waves to the 6th
nation on my tour.
