Day 182
The railway system in Indonesia is indeed very good. Not only do they have an extensive railway network throughout Java, the customer service counter is very helpful as well. They answered all of our questions we had before lining up at the ticket counter and verified that we could bring our trikes on the train as long as we put them into bags. Only one small caveat when dealing with the customre counter. If you are a foreigner they assume that you will take the first class train and didn’t tell us about the ecomomy train until we asked.
We found that the 10pm train was first class only, and a ticket would cost more than 400,000 IDR from Purwokerto to Bangyuwangi. We asked for economy class, which was apparently a different train departing at 6am and would only cost us 50,000 IDR from Purwokerto to Surabaya, and another 90,000 IDR in business class to transfer to Bangyuwangi. So instead of spending more than 800,000 IDR on first class train tickets, we decided to wait for the economy class next morning and spend a comfortable night at our hotel, which was still much cheaper than the first class tickets. Not fully recovered from the diarrhea, Chopper was more than happy to have a rest day.
We were told that bicycles are allowed on the passenger train, as long as they packed in bags or boxes. This news was almost too good to be true, since cargo trains run on a different schedule and we have been carrying two large bags for packing up our trikes for the last 6 months. We repeatedly asked if we can carry very large bags on the passenger train, and after several confirmations from the security and the customer service, it looked like we would be able to bring them on without any problems.
On the way back to our hotel, we witnessed some teenagers throwing a bag of garbage into the river, and then fishing in it immediately afterwards. Along the way, we constantly found locals bathing in rivers overflowing with piles of garbage and raw sewage. It was hard to sugar coat the consequences of the lack of waste disposal system. At least we could escape to our hotel rooms or hop on the train to a different location, but for most local people there is no escape.
Back in our hotel, we received emails from Australian Immigration, requesting a chest x-ray examination in order to process our visa. We plan on staying in Australia for at least 6 months. Our travels from Darwin to Townsville and from there down the east coast to Melbourne will be longer than our total distance to date. And there are 3 great climbing spots which we will stop at for at least 3 weeks each. If you plan on staying in Australia for 6 or more months and have been in a high risk tuberculosis country for 3 consecutive months, you will need to get a chest x-ray at a hospital approved by Australian immigration. We soon found that the closest hospital was located in the extremely touristy destination of Kuta, Bali. We booked our appointments and braced ourselves for the crowds.
We spent the rest of the day stuffing our faces at the 15 Rupiah bubur (Indonesian congee) buffet. It will be a long 28 hours of train ride tomorrow.