Hitchhiking Sumbawa

I was really excited by the idea of hitchhiking across Sumbawa, the big island east of Lombok. So far I’ve really hitchhiked only in Quebec, so hitchhiking in Asia would for sure be quite different. I don’t want to hitchhike alone, so traveling with Chrys was the perfect occasion for a hitchhiking journey.

We started our trip in Lombok at the ferry port so we could already get a free boat ride! And we thought it would be easier to get a ride before than after the ferry when everybody is in a hurry to leave. One important thing, hitchhiking with the thumb up is not working in Indonesia, people won’t understand. You have to make a sign with the right hand (since left is impure) that you want the car/truck to stop. And then, ask for numpang (a free ride). It actually worked pretty fast! I don’t think we even waited for half an hour before a truck with two young guys and “anarchy” written in small on the side door accepts to bring us until Alas, small town one hour or so from the the port. Ferry costs the same price for a truck whether there are 2, 5 or 10 people inside, so they didn’t really care. The guys where carrying black sand used for building in Sumba, an island south of Sumbawa. So everyday they go back and forth from Sumbawa to Lombok carrying black sand – I don’t even want to know where this sand really comes from and what kind of environmental damages its digging is causing. The ferry course took about an hour. Sumbawa was looking so close to Lombok – and actually, it is indeed close, but these ferries are sooo slow sometimes you don’t even feel like you are moving. We reached Sumbawa under a beautiful starry sky. One hour to Alas in the front of a truck where seats are designed more for 3 than 4 people was not the most comfortable ever, but the guys were really nice, helpful and funny! They dropped us in Alas in front of a cheap losmen (local hotels). For the first time in Indonesia, I had the impression we got the normal local price and not the bule price – 50’000 rupiahs for a basic room with 2 beds, fan and even a bathroom (usually 120’000-150’000 rupiahs is considered as cheap), and the lady did not take a while to decide which price she could ask us. It was great to simply be considered as normal human beings – a feeling I got more than once in Sumbawa, which is for sure because it’s not a touristic island at all, except for a few spots dedicated to surfing.

The following morning, after buying some fruits and pisang goreng (fried bananas) at the local market in which we became in two minutes the main attraction, we started to stop cars and trucks along the road – there’s basically one road crossing Sumbawa from West to East. Of course, we became the main attraction for the second time in less than 10 minutes. Again, hitchhiking worked pretty well and fast. Another truck with two guys brought us to Sumbawa Besar, Sumbawa’s main town. This time, the truck was carrying cow food. The ride was really quiet and we ended up at a gas station just outside of the city, a great hitchhiking spot. Not long after we started to stop cars and trucks, many people gathered around us asking where we want to go etc. A bemo (mini-bus), at least 4 or 5 motorbikes… This was hilarious as it became difficult to stop vehicules anymore with all these guys around – they wanted to help us, but the result was totally opposite. We decided to divide roles: Chrys was dealing with the guys, I went further on the street to find a ride. We finally left in a pick-up with three guys hilabilly looking. They were going to pick up cows in Lape, around 2 hours from Sumbawa Besar. We climbed at the back of the pick-up with one of the guys who traveled a a lot around Asia, he used to drive boats in Brunei. He was carrying handcuffs in its pocket – I still wonder what these had to do with cows. Anyway, we had a quick lunch with them in Lape before continuing our route.

 

Sitting in the cows’ spot!

 

Chrys surrounded by curious people who wanted to help us

 

We were lucky again as we didn’t wait for long before climbing on the back of a small truck carrying women who were going back home after selling their fish. All the way they were making stops to collect empty buckets and money from their intermediaries. And if their was not enough money, the bucket would be filled with some rice. It was really interesting to see and try to understand the women’s business. However, the ride was short, as when we reached the village of Maronge, a guy stopped the truck and invited us in a good English to get off and join him and his family. Actually, we took a while to understand what was going on. As he was speaking English, we thought he would try to sell us something or bring us to his homestay. He told us that for the moment there was no ferry to Flores because of the swell and that we could stay at his place for free as long as we wanted waiting for the ferry because here it was much safer than Bima or Sape (where ferries leave). Quite confused, we decided to follow him anyway as his house was just a few steps nearby. We could still continue to hitchhike later in case…

 

Women going back home after selling their fish, we shared their truck for a while

 

That’s how we ended up spending an amazing evening with a nice family (who had already hosted several foreigners) and visited wonderfully warm remote hot springs in the middle of the jungle and rice paddies. Seiful (the guy who stopped the truck) called his friend in Bima who confirmed that there will be no ferry to Flores for maybe another 10 days because of the swell; which would mean I’d miss my flight to Bali (to go to Singapore do a 60 day tourist visa). Chrys and I decided to spend the night with the family and leave the following day straight to Bima (5 hours from Maronge) to be sure of what was really going on with these ferries – we kept receiving different informations from everyone we asked.

 

Hot springs in the middle of nowhere in the jungle surrounding rice fields

 

This evening turned out to be the biggest cultural shock I’ve experienced so far. Chrys told Seiful that she’s been traveling for a year and a half, showing him her itinerary on a map etc. His reaction was incredible. He was SO sad. Really sad. We could feel he could cry anytime. He was sad for her. Spending endless minutes speechless, lost in his thoughts. In his world, it’s not conceivable to be on the road for such a long time. You cannot be happy living this way. Happiness, for him, is getting married, having children, rice fields, animals and a big garden. The way he reacted was truly intense. He told Chrys she could stop to travel here and now in Sumbawa, he would find a husband for her. We tried to explain him what is marriage in our countries nowadays, that it was often not the most important aim to achieve in life for us, that some couples would never get married nor have children, and others would get married but would never have children, etc. Of couse, he was quite devastated and could not understand. As at some point it was also not possible for us to understand him anymore. It was intense, but we reached a point where neither him nor Chrys and I could explain the reason/meaning of our respective path. I guess that’s a real cultural shock. Seiful, in his new mission to “save Chrys”, even told her he would talk to his wife and maybe she could become his second wife. He truly wanted her to be happy – even though she told him she was. Seiful also wanted us to promise him we won’t have sex before getting married, otherwise we would not be happy in our life. Well, we told him it was already too late, but apparently we could “start over” from now on and it would be ok. Lol.

 

With Seiful who hosted us for a night

 

It was not easy to leave the following day – Seiful didn’t want us, especially Chrys, to leave. He was still really sad, trying to find a way to help her (and then he kept calling and texting her for a few weeks…). Anyway, he helped us to stop cars, and would usually know in advance where each car / truck was going to. In the beginning of the afternoon, we found a pick-up going straight to Bima. The driver was nice tho not really chatty and the three of us sitting at the front was painfully not comfortable at least for me. But hard to sit on the back since it was raining during almost all the afternoon. In Bima, the driver was nice and brought us to the port, where we understood that there would be no ferry to Flores before a few days but that there were daily ferries in Sape. So we decided to spend the night in Bima and leave for Sape (the last town eastern Sumbawa) the following day. After dinner, we stopped for a tea, chatting with locals. The guys were a bit tipsy, and one of them, a policeman, of course wanted to marry me after 2 minutes. We told him how much he should pay to come to Switzerland (and that I would not come back maybe before months), and we even told him that you must pay a huge amount of money in Switzerland to marry a woman. That didn’t seem to stop him at all aha.

 

A looong wait just outside Bima

 

The following day was our last day of hitchhiking. Like in any “big” town, getting out of Bima was not easy. We became a big attraction on the street (waiting for cars in the only little spot of shade we found on the sidewalk) – two women in the store on the other side of the street seemed to really enjoy our little show! After 10-15 minutes a whole bunch of motorbikes was around us and we couldn’t stop cars anymore. We moved further on the street, and the same thing happened again. A guy told us it would be easier to take a mini-bus to get out of the town and start again from there. Which we finally did, so technically for a few kilometers we didn’t hitchhike! We waited for almost 2 hours this last ride, hopefully around some small shops where we could eat and drink. Some guys there were helping us to get a ride, everyone hoping we would accept to go with them by ojek (motorbike). After 2 hours, the price they were asking for were ridiculously cheap. Of course, we wanted to hitchhike, because that’s what we did for hundreds of kilometers, no way we would stop now! And all these guys could not understand what we were doing… Anyway, we found a free ride to Sape, a father and his young child in a nice and cosy car. The guy was coming back from a meeting. It was only about an hour to Sape, but the landscapes were the most stunning we’d seen in Sumbawa: quite high mountains with a lot of nice little villages and huge rice fields all around. A beautiful last ride. We reached Sape in the end of the afternoon and left to Flores with the local ferry the next morning.

 

The lovely harbour of Sape where we took the ferry to Flores

 

We spent only 4 days in Sumbawa, which is pretty short, but as always when hitchhiking, these were pretty intense days, full of interesting meetings and interactions with locals. I got the awesome feeling I was really on the move again!!

 

Sape

 

Pictures of the ferry journey!

 

Playing yatzi with locals in the ferry from Sape to Labuan Bajo!

Inside the ferry

Great ambiance…

Every place is nice to take a nap in the ferry