Marco, Lahiri & Rory: travelling gypsies. Turns out we have the same father...what a coincidence...We plan to get lost throughout the world, get kidnapped by pirates and have a journey of a lifetime.....ooooh so exciting!

We had bumped into Adrian (Canadian dude who we knew from Sydney Mate's Place) at Darwin Airport who was also going to Bali and met up with two mates of his Rob and Leanne in Bali. We rented scooters and entered the world of hectic Asian traffic. It's such an uncontrolled chaos where you just have to grab every opportunity you can...when there's a gap, just go for it. It's so much fun driving around and the amazing thing is we didn't see one accident.

The next day Paul arrived from Perth for a 10 day vacation. It was so much fun seeing him again and we had a blast. First of all we decided to go on a little tour of the island, see the monkey temple, swim at some nice beaches and generally just enjoy driving around as we had the previous day. Within 5 minutes and I think it was the 3rd turn we made, we had lost Paul. He must have been dreaming when we all turned right as he just happily drove straight ahead. Leanne had tried to call out to him but he just had eyes for the road. Well it's pretty impossible to find someone back through the traffic in Bali, even though we had split up and found Marco the day before, but then again this is Paul we're talking about. We had such a laugh about it in the evening when we met up with Paul again and we decided to go out for a few drinks.

We met some friends Kelly knew from back home Ben & Chloe and Garry & Kim and pretty much chilled at La Walon bar most of our time in Bali. Lahiri had a few funny incidents when trying to get his dreads, but I think I'll let him write a little about that himself. Glue, nail varnish, shiny toes, oh boy how we laughed. We had such an ace time in Bali and were a bit sad to leave but we had a big trip ahead of us. Oh I forgot to mention my mission on kidnapping Kelly was a success. She had decided to travel with the three of us so from this point on we became the 4 travelling gypsies.

It got a bit emotional saying goodbye to Paul, but we had left him a little something in his hotel room to remind him of us. Let’s just say we redecorated his room and had a good laugh doing so.

Next was a night bus to Surabaya. Tried to sleep a little but got woken in the middle of the night to passengers singing Indonesian karaoke on the buses entertainment system. This was our first encounter with Asian karaoke. 

Surabaya was a busy busy city with a lot of traffic and not much more going for it. Our main reason for going there was to catch a boat to Borneo. Another reason for choosing Surabaya for me was that a very good family friend had passed away in Canada a week or two prior and he was born 80 years ago in Surabaya, so we had a drink on him.

We managed to book a boat for the same day going from Surabaya to Pare Pare on the Island of Sulawesi. Then it would hop over to Balikpapan (Kalimantan) on the island of Borneo and then back to Sulawesi to Pantaloan. It would continue to Toli-Toli and then back to the island of Borneo to Tarakan our final destination. This was a 5 day boat trip economy style. It was going to be a tough journey but turned out to be an amazing experience.

On arrival at the port it wasn't hard to notice that we were the only white people to be boarding this huge ferry carrying about 4000 people. We got many looks and many smiles off the locals and some tried to talk to us, in Indonesian funny enough. Marco got chatting or actually some dudes got chatting to Marco and he just smiled, laughed and agreed but mostly tried to explain that he didn't understand. Nevertheless they didn't mind, they just happily chit-chatted on. Then one little dude tried to sell Marco his cell-phone for peanuts just because he didn't have enough change to pay the porters to carry his luggage onto the ferry. Marco offered that we would help him carry his luggage onto the ferry so he could keep the little change he had. This kid was delighted and what a happy little dude he was. The gates opened and off we went into the impatient crowd of people trying to board the boat, all 4000 at the same time. They have a funny sense of logic in Indonesia. They see a door open and all of a sudden they all head straight for it without thinking that it's too small for everyone to pass through at the same time. All of a sudden some police or security dudes were screaming and trying to get some system going to get everyone in and then noticed the four of us. They made way for us which made us feel a little uncomfortable as we were all in this together. We all needed to board the boat and we didn't really want to be treated differently to the rest. On the other hand we were quite happy to get on the boat as we were carrying heavy backpacks plus the excess luggage from the funny happy little dude. Marco must have had the biggest load carrying a huge box full of hard cover books, I was carrying a computer and Lahiri had a box consisting of I think the components of the computer. We showed our tickets and got escorted through the ferry to a place where we could place our bags and sleep. It was like sharing a dorm with a few hundred staring eyes. We slept on wooden boards and used our backpacks as pillows. Our fellow passengers just couldn't understand why these 4 white tourists were in economy class and didn't book themselves a 2nd or 1st class ticket which entitles them to a private cabin. That would have been no fun at all.

The next 5 days we ate rice and mingled and laughed with the locals. We missed our first and maybe even second meal call as all the announcements were obviously in Indonesian but soon one of Marco's mates was waking us up each time food was being served. He even brought our food to us the first time but after that we decided to go get it ourselves. We took turns walking and each time we strolled the decks everybody greeted us with hello's and smiles and wanted to take a picture of us. We now know what it feels like to be famous, paparazzi everywhere. One dude even kept coming back to Kelly and I with different people and taking pictures with his camera phone. We think he had a little business going on as he kept returning with more different people and started snapping away. Kelly and I also saw a band perform one night, Marco had a karaoke session with a cool Malaysian dude from Borneo who was sleeping next to us on our level and Marco also managed to scare a lady who was flirting with him. That was hilarious and the whole area of our deck had a good laugh about that. Each time we entered a port it was nice to chill on deck and enjoy just seeing land with beautiful views of the surrounding hills.

The five days past pretty fast as we read and slept quite a lot cause there was not much to do on board. On arrival in Tarakan we got our backpacks and waited in line to depart the boat. This turned out to be even more hectic than boarding the ferry. As soon as the doors opened, loads of porters came storming in, in search of bags they could carry. This was their job and the more they could carry the more money they could make. It was crazy, one kid came storming in flew passed us and pushed an old lady out of the way, who fell over, to get passed her. It wasn't a very nice sight. The second we set foot on land we had decided to just walk for a bit because there are so many people offering to bring you somewhere....TAXI...TAXI....So the best thing is to just say you don't need a taxi, you already have it sorted and if you're lucky you're left with just one dude still following you.

We managed to all get out of the rush and got a lift to a hotel for the night. We didn't really want to stay in Tarakan as we really wanted to make it to the Malaysian part of Borneo to visit the Orangutans sanctuary and Marco and La wanted to do some diving. But as we had been in the boat for 5 days just living off rice and an occasional egg we decided we deserved a good session.

Tarakan was a bit of a dirty city and at first it seemed quite difficult to find a bar. We had a few beers at the Swiss Bell Air hotel and I had a little swim in their pool cause it looked too refreshing to resist. The next day we wanted to book a ferry to Tawau in Malaysia, but no ferries were leaving as it was some Muslim holiday. We checked in to another hotel and were greeted with a free Muslim breakfast to celebrate the holiday. They were so lovely and after we decided to go into town to have a proper piss up. We dropped by a pharmacy because Lahiri had an odd growing burn on his chest which came out of nowhere and the look on the lady's face at the pharmacy was priceless when he showed her his burn. Eeeeuwww! She claimed it was herpes and gave him some pills and cream. We found a bar and had a few beers. A few led to loads and we got our proper session. Can't remember too much of getting back to the hotel, but took some funny pictures to remind us of the day/night.

The next day we booked our ferry to Tawau and upon departing the Indonesian port of Tarakan Lahiri had lost his departure card. They made a huge issue out of it and in the end gave him a new one and told him never to mention it again. They told him "You didn't lose your departure card and you didn't receive this one from us." We made it on to the boat when Kelly, Lahiri and I noticed they hadn't given us our Malaysian departure card back. So to avoid having to go through all of this in Malaysia again we asked the captain if we could run back to immigration to obtain our departure card. 20 minutes later it was all sorted and we were back on the boat. A loader of the boat tried to hook up Lahiri and Marco with some Swedish girls who got on board which was quite funny. It was an awesome boat and we received a little lunch box with water, cake and candies. This was a nice welcoming gesture and reminded us of something Paul had mentioned us. "Don't worry guys, as long as you make it to Malaysia you're sweet as. It's civilized over there."

So off we were to our next destination Malaysia.