While we have certainly been enjoying ourselves and seeing some beautiful places, there are some aspects of cruising in Indonesia that take the edge off the experience. One of the worst aspects of this country is the rubbish. We have not been to one place- not even seemingly remote islands or bits of reef where there has not been any rubbish. It is not uncommon to be snorkelling in really beautiful bays and to have plastic bags and other bits and pieces floating past in the water. It is just everywhere and in some villages, the rubbish is downright disgusting. There do not seem to be rubbish bins in many places, nor do the villages and towns seem to have any organised disposal of their rubbish. The way in which goods are sold compounds the problem. Water, shampoo, soap, cleaning products are all sold in single use quantities in plastic containers or packets, and with the numbers of people in Indonesia, this creates a lot of rubbish. After seeing all this, one can’t help but reflect on what a privilege it is to visit clean beaches and national parks in Australia.

There might not be many rubbish bins, nor are there many public toilets (and no basin or soap) which makes for anxiety provoking day trips, especially if one is suffering the effects of the lack of food hygiene standards apparent in the various small road side food establishments. I probably know too much about bacteria between my nursing training and the microbiology I did at Uni, and this has really put me off eating out, despite the fact that food is cheap here. A fairly high proportion of people in the fleet have been sick at various times during the rally.
I have mentioned the “hello mister” brigade in my blogs, and although the children are cute, the constant attention and asking for things wears thin pretty quickly. Again, like the rubbish, there are not too many places we have been where we have not been visited. Often the children and adults too are just curious and want to look at our boat, but it is disconcerting to be sitting out in the cockpit having breakfast enjoying a quiet start to the day, and then for three or four heads to appear over the side of the boat, peering in at you. Sometimes, there are goods for sale- fruit or fish (or in one memorable case, cakes), and this can be handy, but one is never sure how old the fish is. Finally, there are those that simply want you to give them things, and they can be quite fussy about what they want, refusing to accept things other than whatever they have specifically requested.

Since Indonesia is primarily a Muslim country, every village has at least one mosque. These invariably seem to be down near the harbour with their speakers pointed at the boats. The call to prayer, and the prayers themselves in Arabic, are blasted from those speakers about five times per day, starting at 5am. This coupled with the large population of roosters makes sleeping in almost impossible.

Participation in the rally has probably protected us from the worst of Indonesian bureaucracy, but there have been some tiresome issues to deal with. Despite having provided all our documentation when we cleared in at Debut, we have been asked at a couple of places to provide copies of all this again. One of the frustrating things about this has been the inconsistency- some boats have had to provide it and others have not. There were some major problems with the process for our first visa renewal, which fortunately for us had been sorted out by the time we got into Maumere, where the renewal had to be processed. The process was not at all clear and the letter we had to provide from our sponsor did not meet the approval of the local authorities and had be re-written, and sufficient original copies signed for everyone- not easy when our sponsor was only in Maumere for a short time on his way to somewhere else, necessitating a quick trip to the airport to get him to sign the letters. On top of this, customs threatened to impound the boats despite the fact that all we were doing was renewing our visas which had nothing at all to do with customs. At the time the threat was made, all boats had a valid cruising permit and everyone still had a visa current for another 15 days or so.

The sailing itself has been made more challenging by the Indonesian fishing methods. These include deploying long nets strung between small floating things (sometimes buoys, sometimes plastic bottles), series of flat bamboo fish traps strung together over big distances, floating platforms, and many small fishing boats. All of these devices are unlit, making them particularly hazardous at night, but they can also be hard to spot during the day. Most fishing boats are also unlit, although sometimes the lights will be turned on when they see that you are getting close to them.

Despite the high degree of poverty that is apparent, stealing is not common in our experience. None of the boats have had anything stolen. We have felt very safe in the places we have been and have not had any concerns walking through the villages and towns. The people are indeed very friendly and also happy- you only have to wave and smile to be rewarded with a very big smile and “hello mister/missues”.