THE OLD RUN AROUND...
Day 27
Start – winstar hotel, Pekanbaru Finish – Dumi Distance travelled – 257 km Words by - Johnny Bang |
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Hotel Winstar was easily one of the best places we had stayed, modern, clean and with fantastic staff that went out of their way to help us. For not the first or last time this trip I felt as if we were tapping into a rich vein of misappropriated good karma. It was hard to leave so soon but we had bigger plans afoot – and getting the bikes onto a boat was the only thing we cared about right now. We found Dumai in the afternoon and pulled up at the port entrance.
Still on the street, we were immediately targeted by two separate parties that said they can help us get the bikes across. I was immediately suspicious of this over-eagerness to help, but as we had no other leads, we agreed to follow a local guy in his 40’s to his ‘friend’ that has a boat.
He took us to a small empty tenancy on the main street occupied by a family having their lunch. After some negotiations in a back room with an unseen man he asked for my passport. As soon as he had that he would have us by the balls, and I politely refused. Next he said he can help us and someone should follow and the others should stay here at the shop. His eagerness to control our movements was strike 2 and we sent Shaun with him while Dan and I decided to investigate different options.
My plan B was to try the passenger ferry, who I already knew was unlikely to carry the bikes, but may be able to point us in the right direction for freight. When we got there we found Shaun and our new ‘friend’ where already there. Shaun confirmed that he didn’t really know what he was doing, and I can only assume he just saw a quick dollar in three clueless out-of-towners. We thanked him for his help and parted ways. Or at least we tried to…
I don’t know what the game was but he followed us around for the next 30 minutes and insisted all of a sudden that there is no possible way to get the bikes out of Dumai, and that we should ride to Medan instead. We only managed to free ourselves of this nuisance by pretending to follow him out of town (which he insisted on doing) and then performing a quick u-turn and blasting away on our much faster bikes.
We regrouped and decided to split up to cover more ground. I tried the customs office and the ‘vibe’ was immediately better. Apparently there were no ‘official’ (legal) boats, but someone might know a friend of a friend with a boat etc… It was better in person than that last sentence sounded – trust me.
Negotiations on price began and as the afternoon wore into evening I was confident that we at least had a lead… We would hear tomorrow if our price was accepted so true to form we left to find the cheapest accommodation we could.
Still on the street, we were immediately targeted by two separate parties that said they can help us get the bikes across. I was immediately suspicious of this over-eagerness to help, but as we had no other leads, we agreed to follow a local guy in his 40’s to his ‘friend’ that has a boat.
He took us to a small empty tenancy on the main street occupied by a family having their lunch. After some negotiations in a back room with an unseen man he asked for my passport. As soon as he had that he would have us by the balls, and I politely refused. Next he said he can help us and someone should follow and the others should stay here at the shop. His eagerness to control our movements was strike 2 and we sent Shaun with him while Dan and I decided to investigate different options.
My plan B was to try the passenger ferry, who I already knew was unlikely to carry the bikes, but may be able to point us in the right direction for freight. When we got there we found Shaun and our new ‘friend’ where already there. Shaun confirmed that he didn’t really know what he was doing, and I can only assume he just saw a quick dollar in three clueless out-of-towners. We thanked him for his help and parted ways. Or at least we tried to…
I don’t know what the game was but he followed us around for the next 30 minutes and insisted all of a sudden that there is no possible way to get the bikes out of Dumai, and that we should ride to Medan instead. We only managed to free ourselves of this nuisance by pretending to follow him out of town (which he insisted on doing) and then performing a quick u-turn and blasting away on our much faster bikes.
We regrouped and decided to split up to cover more ground. I tried the customs office and the ‘vibe’ was immediately better. Apparently there were no ‘official’ (legal) boats, but someone might know a friend of a friend with a boat etc… It was better in person than that last sentence sounded – trust me.
Negotiations on price began and as the afternoon wore into evening I was confident that we at least had a lead… We would hear tomorrow if our price was accepted so true to form we left to find the cheapest accommodation we could.
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