Reader’s Ride: Borneo

This entry is part 16 of 26 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #4

Borneo

When Suzie and Colin Dawson, a middle-aged couple from Sydney, decided to see Borneo, they grabbed a Triumph 800XC Tiger and set off on 6000km of serious riding.

“You’ve got the bike key, right?” After a year and a half of planning, I surely didn’t expect to be asking that on a flight halfway to Denpasar.

Suzie’s blank look wasn’t reassuring.

As it happened, she did have the key and found it on our connecting flight, but it wasn’t the last of our challenges. Overseas adventure riding is like that – a new problem every day, especially if you have a tight schedule.

Lock up

Our destination was Borneo, where we planned to complete one lap of the island.

It was my second ride there, but my first ‘two-up’. Planning included purchase and preparation of our Triumph Tiger 800XC. My previous trip was on a BMW 650 Dakar that struggled with the poor-quality fuel – it’s mostly 87 RON outside of the cities. Triumph tech support assured me the Tiger would be okay, and that turned out to be mostly correct (there was still some pinging).

Around Borneo. 6000km of genuine adventure.

Finally all the planning was finished and the bike was standing in front of us, ready to go. It’s a surreal moment – your own bike in another country.

We shipped to Surabaya, which is Indonesia’s major seaport. It’s also very conveniently connected to Borneo by ferry, with a service roughly every second day.

It’s only a few kilometres from the shipping terminal to the ferry, so it was a lazy day waiting for the “roll-on, roll-off” experience.

The ‘disposable’ shipping crate had to be reused for the trip home.

Very lazy. The ferry departed seven hours late. Forget about a departure lounge: it’s a case of finding shade underneath a truck if you can. Then the loading ramp was sitting about 250mm off the ground due to low tide, and that was enough to beach the fully-loaded adventure whale on its bashplate. As usual, there were plenty of willing helpers and it was soon lifted onto the ramp.

The ferry takes 24 hours on its way across to Banjarmasin in southern Borneo. We lashed out on VIP bunks as we didn’t fancy the longhouse-style accommodation in Ekonomi. That got us a little four-bunk cabin. We also sprung for the two spare bunks so we got the cabin to ourselves and the key to lock it. It cost about $50 all up and the bike was about $30.

The nearest thing to a waiting room at the Surabaya ferry terminal.

Facebook friends

Many people asked why I didn’t simply hire a bike over there. After all, thousands of people hire bikes in Bali, Thailand, Vietnam and other Asian destinations.

The first problem is the bikes themselves: would you want to ride 6000km two-up on a Honda Tiger 200? Except for some local rentals in Bali, that’s the biggest available. Anyway, vendors won’t allow their bikes to be ridden too far afield – maybe from Bali to a few nearby islands, but even that’s uncommon. Foreigners are not allowed to register motor vehicles in Indonesia, so it’s a case of BYO bike or get a bus.

The next question is usually “why Indonesia?” For me, the most obvious reason is it’s our nearest neighbour. But it’s the locals that make it irresistible. They’re always interested to meet a foreigner

In Asia, every river is a highway

riding there. Sometimes there was a posse of riders waiting for us at new towns, with word having gone ahead to watch out for two foreigners on a big bike. We were humbled when they adopted us as friends, fed us, and showed us around, but wouldn’t take any money. It’s really a contrast to the bad press we often hear about Indonesia.

Instead of freighting all the way, some riders prefer to ship their bike from Darwin to Dili, then ride up the Indonesian archipelago. It costs $450 on a Toll ship out of Darwin, and no crating is needed. However, it involves one week of downtime waiting for the bike to get from Darwin to Dili and passengers can’t travel on the ship. That’s a problem for anybody using precious holiday time.

Most people assume Borneo is dense jungle and bamboo huts, complete with orangutans and tropical fruit. It’s all there, but not near the cities and major roads. Borneo is being ravaged by palm oil plantations, on top of longrunning coal mining operations.

Cities like Balikpapan and Kuching are very westernised, partly due to the number of expats working at coal mines and offshore oil rigs.

Suzie really didn’t know what to expect in Borneo and she was uneasy about personal safety.

However, she soon relaxed when we were met by the local chapter of the Byonic Riders at the ferry. They even gave us a presidential style escort to the hotel. This was the flesh-and-blood reality of the Facebook brotherhood that grew out of my first trip.

Distance over time

From Banjarmasin to Balikpapan is about 500km and it took us 13 hours of grinding riding. Roads in Indonesia are abominable, and not in a fun, forest-trail sense. There are potholes and avalanches that require constant vigilance and a lot of emergency braking. We both ended up with blisters on our bums from sliding on the seat.

And there are trucks – millions of them.

The best bike accessory is a bashplate. Ours got a hiding, with the bike frequently belly-flopping on deep holes. The only damage sustained on the trip was the rear speed sensor cable being severed by the pannier mounting arm. That happened on the first day, and we had no ABS or odometer for the rest of the trip.

Heading north from Balikpapan, fewer roads are sealed, and the variable conditions are one reason Indonesians refer to journeys in hours rather than kilometres. It’s better than nothing, but you need to filter the information based on what mode of transport they’re talking about.

The right direction

Borneo is occupied by both Malaysia and Indonesia. There are border crossings on the east and west coast, but nothing official in between. In the 1960s there were armed border conflicts between the two countries and customs is still very formal. Going back further, the cities of Tarakan, Balikpapan and Ranau resonate with Australian military history due to bloody WWII battles.

Our first border crossing was from the Indonesian island-town of Nunukan to Tawau in Malaysia. The bike was manhandled onto a passenger ferry, and it’s times like this you realise how impractical big adventure bikes can be when everything else around is half the size.

The crossing confirmed that passing from Indonesia to Malaysia is a lot simpler than vice versa. On the last trip, travelling in the other direction, my bike was impounded for three days. The officer demanded a letter of invitation from a motorcycle club, but eventually relented.

For a circumnavigation, the direction is critical. It can only be done anti-clockwise unless you want to shell out $1000 or more per person for a multipleentry business visa. Visa on entry is available on the western border, but not the eastern. The tourist visa you get before leaving Australia is good for only a single entry.

Head for heights

The roads improve on arrival at Tawau in Malaysia, but the standard of driving diminishes.

Overtaking on crests and around corners happens all the time in Malaysia. Bikes are expected to move over and let other vehicles pass, even if you’re waiting for a chance to pass a slow bus. I just kept thinking, “You cannot be serious!” when yet another 1.5 litre Kia hero tried to assert his authority. It’s tempting to just shiftdown two gears and answer in the simplest way, but ego and aggression are two things you don’t pack on an adventure ride.

Next stop was Sandakan, another town with WWII significance to Australians.

The road beyond is glorious, winding through the mountains with an excellent surface and hardly any trucks. A solid day’s ride got us to Borneo’s most northerly extreme where we stayed in a hut right on the beach.

It’s a comfortable day ride down to Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah and a popular holiday city. Nearby Mount Kinabalu is a “must do” activity for anybody who has at least average fitness. It involves a half-day walk, less than six kilometres, but a 2200m climb, finishing at around 4000m. It may not sound that hard, but the altitude really saps your stamina. The summit walk starts at 2:00am the next day. Most people need to stop every 10 minutes for a rest, which the guides find amusing.

Slip up

Our biggest detour was to the World Heritage-listed Mulu caves. They’re the largest in the world that are open to the public and can be reached via a 20 – minute flight from the Malaysian city of Miri, but where’s the adventure in that? The ride is about 200km each way, including some logging roads, with the final two hours by canoe. This would be a suicide run without a guide because the road is neither ‘keep left’ nor ‘keep right’. Instead, it randomly changes to give logging trucks a straight run. Without local knowledge you’d certainly meet a four-wheel-drive on the wrong side of a blind corner.

The caves route was dusty on the way in, but slick mud on the way out. At times I became a mere passenger on the Tiger and gravity had its way with me twice.

Happily, there were no injuries and only a bent brake lever to show for it. Suzie was riding in the guide’s car so she thought it was all a good laugh.

Fitting in

There is a third country in Borneo, so small that many people don’t know about it: Brunei. It’s the home of magnificent roads, 2.6 per cent unemployment, clean waterways, $5.00 per month comprehensive health care, very low crime rates and 98 RON petrol at 56 cents per litre. That is what a country looks like when its citizens benefit from a mining boom ahead of foreign-owned mining companies.

But Brunei is the pits for on-entry visa issue. They only accept Brunei currency, and only the correct amount ($30 per person, for the record). We turned up with Malaysian ringgits, US dollars and Indonesian rupiah, all to no avail. After a two-hour round trip back to the nearest Malaysian bank, we returned with a shiny Brunei $100 note, which was all the bank had. Eventually one of the staff gave us change from his wallet, when we made it clear we would turn around rather than let them keep the change.

The western route through Borneo passes from Malaysia to Brunei, then back to Malaysia, then finally into Indonesia. Even passing between the Malaysian provinces of Sabah and Sarawak requires a passport stamp and fee.

The concept of a queue seems to be open to interpretation at these land crossings. First mother and baby squeeze in front of the bike. What can you say without looking really antisocial? Then one by one they’re joined by the rest of the extended family, then the rest of the bus group. Or else a few guys just brazenly walk in front of the bike because they see a space there. Suzie looks like an Indonesian, so we avoided confrontations by letting her stand alone in the queue. I’d saunter over to the window when it was our turn, complete with loaded Triumph and a lot of attitude.

Panic stations

The last border crossing is from Sarawak into West Kalimantan, which leads to the city of Pontianak, bang on the equator. The name means “ghost ate my baby”, in case you are wondering.

After that we enjoyed some of the prettiest and least spoilt countryside of the trip. Farmland gives way to towns and cities heading south, but the roads are uniformly better than the east coast. It took a solid four days of riding to get back to Banjarmasin.

Due to storms on the Java Sea, we wimped out and flew back to Surabaya. The bike followed on the ferry. Here’s a tip: take a photo of the ferry. They all look the same and there are a lot of ferries in Indonesia. It doesn’t look good to be racing around the dockyard in a mad panic trying to figure out which ferry your bike is on. Especially when one of the officers told me it had already left for another island.

Price check

A last observation on Borneo officialdom. Police are entitled to inspect your personal and bike papers on request. They
will certainly do this in the remoter parts where few foreigners travel.

Fortunately I knew somebody in the next town and she verified my story when they checked. I can only speculate how that might have ended if my story hadn’t checked out.

Apparently the price of airfreighting the bike home had doubled while we were there, so my ‘disposable’ home-made steel crate was recycled for the return trip. Sea freight isn’t always cheaper than air freight and it’s surely a lot less convenient. However, I will probably try the Dili option on the next trip, which I’m already planning.