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Other big shipping companies are Arafat and Sriwijaya; always check with them, they could have smaller ships, friendly crews, cheaper fares and better food than Pelni. Always call to confirm embarcation time on the day of departure. At ports, custom officials don't want to hassel anyone who's talking friendly to them. Take a big durian through customs; it creates such a conversation piece if a westerner is seen carrying one that the police and the customs guys forget to be mean.sea travel: You definitely must be open-ended with your schedule if traveling by sea; in other words, don't have one. Indonesians call it jam karat (rubber time). Sometimes you wait 30 hours on deck for your ship to leave port. Most smaller boats don't carry flares, radios, or spare parts and you could be riding anchor 2 weeks in the middle of the Makassar Strait with a missing propellor before help comes. Take along a woven rattan mat (tikar, costs Rp200) with which you stake out your territory; the tikar serves as your carpet by day and mattress by night. Or sometimes you can rent a folding bed from the crew, Rp2-300, or crew members could even give over their own cabin for rent.

Go onboard early or the night before to get a good place to avoid sleeping in piss and mire amongst masses of people; also much of the available space could be taken up by merchandise. Though the food is monotonous, deck class is not only the cheapest but often superior to the small hot cabins. On the big ships unless you fancy chunky white rice and fishheads, bring your own victuals. They only serve meals twice a day. Some smaller boats serve freshly caught fish but most give you salted dehydrated fish which smells like wet dog fur. For sustainance and divergence through the voyage bring fresh fruits and vegetables, canned cheese and fish, sago cakes, dried toast, biscuits, nuts, candy, coffee, tea, and sugar. There's always hot water. Bring your own tin cup, plate, and eating utensils, these are seldom provided. Cork up a couple of bottles of drinking water. On bigger ships sometimes you can slip the 2nd class kitchen or the officer's mess some money or a shirt and they'll deliver you food even if you're traveling deck class. You get a lot of mileage out of your white skin in Asia. If you pay a bit more to go 2nd or 1st class, the Indonesian islands are a place where you can still experience leisurely, luxurious 19th Century travel in ocean-going ships; by the time you buy your 6 kilos of peanuts, oranges, etc. to sustain you through the deck class journey, you might have spent more! kapal layar: It's harder than you think getting on one of the bigger Bugis kapal layar cargo boats to the outer islands from Surabaya or Jakarta. Unless you just show up with all your luggage and sit on the boat, a lot of times they sail off without you.

They make enough money shipping their cargoes and don't really need your piddly 5000 rupes to take you to Ujung Pandang or elsewhere. Besides you might prove more trouble than you're worth. These huge motorless boats, which look like a fat, round bilged sailing hippopotamus with an enormous and unweildy lateen sail, are sometimes stuck out on a windless sea for a week. You could get sick or get washed overboard. It's much easier to get on the big sailing boats on the outer islands to other outer islands (from Flores to Sumbawa, for example) where they depend more on passenger fares. Try to get on one just for the sheer medieval experience of it. A little grass and a bottle of Chinese wine is enough to guide you in the night like the north star.