A journey to Nias island

Melaka was great, but beaches and ocean were not really inviting and I now was really looking forward to some nice beach time, again. 🤩
So I decided to learn how travelling in Indonesia will be, by diving in full throttle!😅
Challenged myself to get from Melaka to Baloho beach on Nias island, at the west coast of sumatra, directly and asap. Well, it took me nearly three days. 😅🤣
Ferry from Melaka to Dumai on Sumatra was the most comfortable part, a nice, fast and modern ferry, where I met Mitso, another traveler from Greece.
Arriving at Dumai (my first drug control by a drugdog at the Pier 🫣) was smooth, Mitso and me walked into town, to explore and orientate. So I decided not to take directly the night bus, as I wanted to avoid travelling at night and get some first impressions from Indonesia.
That didn't work out well, as the morning bus had left at 7am 😅 So as bus travelling is organized decentralized by private companies here, I went around a lot asking for buses and prices, ended up in a minibus, heading from Sumatra's east coast to the west coast. Expecting a 13 hours ride in a 8 pax minibus, so lack of comfort was obvious, (as expected for Sumatra) but streets here and driving style, are ... different. When bus started, we were like 3 adults and 2 children, very spacious, but that changed soon, after some stops and 2 hours, we ended up with being 8 adults and 6 kids 🤣🤪
Locals are having an amazing superpower: After a break, they just jump into that bumping and shaking bus, crowded as hell, closing their eyes and having a great nap. Next stop they weak up, are proper relaxed, having some chitchat and some food, jumping in again, sleeping, aso... 😅
So lacking that superpower, I got like 3x 20 mins of sleep, so after arriving in Sibolga at around 8 am, I was wrecked.
Luckily I had like 12 hours to kill till the ferry would leave, so I directly went to the first hotel I found, got a room like Indian standard 🙈 (note to myself: remember that hotels in the harbor are ALWAYS shitty 😅), but finally had a great and very needed sleep for like 6 hours. 🤩
Buying a ferry ticket from Sibolga to Nias island wasn't that easy, no more ticket counter, only Online-Sales, but you need a local bank account 😱
Found some nice staff at the harbor, booking me on their account, charging a little, reasonable fee, so overnight ferry was ready to leave.
Ship was in a quite good shape (built 2016), beds were not really beds, but huge blank wooden bunk beds, biggest "dorm" I've ever seen, around 200 people in there. Of course I was the only foreigner on the whole ship, carrying about 350 pax in total.
Love sunrises on a ship, had a smooth and chilled trip, and finally arrived at Gunungsitoli, Nias' capital city.
Took two attempts to get to the bus terminal, unfortunately a more or less abandoned place. There had been several bus lines on Nias, nowadays only one from Gunungsitoli to Teluk Dalam is left, did not yet find out, what happened.
Public Bus was really nice, like an old small big bus, bumping and shaking was little less than in a Minibus 😅
Had a real cute puppy on my side, for a while, as always, passing through Nias daily life was so fascinating! As usual, any child seeing me looking out of my bus window, pointed at me and shouted "Bule", the local term for foreigners, or waved smiling, shouting "Hello Mister!" 😅
After uncounted selfies and telling from where I am, 3 hours later I arrived at Teluk Dalam, had a great welcome at my hostel and a nice evening! 🥰Leia mais