#32 Indonesia – Going to Sumatra-Medan

I was well prepared this day, I went early in the morning and took a ferry from Batam to Dumai, another small fishing port. People are very friendly in Indonesia but they’re very pushy they’re always trying to sell you something and they always try to raise the price because they assume that you’re foreigner you have a lot of money.
It took almost 6 hours in the ferry to reach Dumai. The boat was packed and people were taking so many things with them, air conditioners, food, electric equipment and so forth.
I then headed to the bus station to take the bus to Medan, the forth largest city in Indonesia. Going to the bus terminal was fun, it’s similar to what I imagined myself doing when I took on this journey. Fourteen passengers were squeezed in a little cargo van, which will shuttle us to the main bus station. I was laughing with the other passengers because I was saying no air conditioning and was taking pictures. Although they didn’t speak any English, we were laughing together. I wanted to get out of the bus to go buy a ticket for the bus and was trying to figure out how to open the door, so I put my head out of the window to try to find the latch from the outside but the passengers were laughing thinking that I was trying to get out from the window.
The trip on the bus from Dumai to Medan was a nightmare, the drivers here drive very dangerously, and they pass other vehicles while there’s still incoming traffic. It seems the usual way to drive because the incoming vehicles were doing the same and they will stop or go out of the way to allow us to pass. I was sitting behind the driver seeing everything was really scary especially when it was at night. I thought to myself how come no one is saying anything, I went to the driver and told him to slow down, but I don’t think he understood me and even the second time when he understood it didn’t change anything. Lesson learned, no more buses unless necessary and no way to travel on a bus at night.