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Cycling Through Asia – The First Section |
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As I said in the last diary entry, our plans for the two year trip are not set in stone. However, we did have to create a rough itinerary to see if we can come up with a route that would largely avoid the monsoon season. Riding in torrential rain, facing land slides and heavy seas does not exactly fit into our definition of fun. Also, there is a rather small window to cross the Himalayas.
Roughly, our trip is divided into four sections
- The Islands: Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei
- Mainland South East Asia: Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam
- China and Himalayas: Not to be explored too much here.
- India
Instead of speculating on things in the distant future, let us focus on the first part of the trip.
We intend to spend between five and six months on the islands comprised of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. On 26th April 2009 we will fly from Perth to Denpasar, Bali – simply because this is the easiest and cheapest way to enter Indonesia from Perth. After a couple of days in Bali, we will fly east to an island called Flores. More precisely, we intend to fly into Maumere. This will be the 'official' starting point of our cycling. We will cycle west over all the volcanoes Flores can put in our way (we hope) to Labuanbajo, the western tip of Flores. There we intend to take a PADI diving course and visit the famous Komodo islands to see for ourselves the infamous Komodo Dragons. News flash: Just yesterday, two dragons killed a farmer on Komodo..
After this little holiday, we plan to catch a PELNI ferry (official Indonesian ferry company) to Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. Sulawesi is located north of Flores. The plan is to ride to the northwestern tip of Sulawesi. Here, we would like to catch a ferry west to Tarakan on Borneo. The reason for this is that we are anticipating this will be near the expiration of our 60-day Indonesian visa. From Tarakan it will be a short hop over to the Malaysian state of Sabah. This is the rough plan for the first sixty days.
Next, the idea is to ride through Malaysian Borneo (Sabah and Sarawak) in a east-west direction, probably visiting Brunei on the way. We will then pedal on to Kuching to apply for a new 60-day Indonesian visa. Recent news on the traveler hotline indicates it is currently possible to get visas in Kuching. If you can confirm this or know otherwise, please contact us!
After Kuching, we plan to ride to Pontianak where the real adventure begins. I could not find any information online about riding a bicycle through Western Kalimantan. A friend traveled overland in the southwest of this region, but then took a boat to Pontianak. We intend to ride through the Heart of Darkness. How cool and scary is that?
Eventually, we plan to finish our Indonesian part of the trip on Sumatra. However, this really is so far away, it is not only difficult to plan, but harder to think about at this point in time. There are a variety of reasons why we may have to change our plans, down the road...let's just leave this as a 'vision' for now.
To give you a better understanding of what I am rambling on about here, I drew a little map of the plan above. I remember how foreign all those places sounded to me before I started doing some research.
If you have visited any of these destinations and have tips about places to visit, people to seek out and experiences we should make, please contact us!
Only four weeks to go – can you believe it? I probably won't write for a couple of weeks as all the things we have to do now would be rather boring to you: taxes, canceling gas and phone, getting rid of possessions, etc.
I reckon the next update you will receive will contain more details on travel arrangements and maybe some information about our bicycles and gear.
Until then, stay tuned.
Adrian |
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