The journey that should take only two hours, eventually takes three hours. A long time before we arrive, local people are already starting to prepare themselves for the arrival. The result is that the hundreds of passengers gather at the two exits. People are massively pushing and jumping the queue, just to be sure to exit the ferry as one of the first. The smaller and older the Indonesians are, the more they push in. We try to understand why this is happening, and the only thing that we can think of is that it is probably difficult to get a seat on one of the busses that transport the passengers to their final destinations on Java. We decide to defend our place in the ‘queue’ more actively, to increase our chances on a seat in the bus. After the exits are opened, we follow the horde to the bus station of the terminal. Halfway, we are caught by so-called touts (people that earn commission by recruiting passengers for bus companies) that lead us to the right bus. We want to go to the Kalideres bus station of Jakarta, because it is the bus terminal that is nearest to the area where we want to stay in the capital. When we arrive at the bus platform, we notice that most buses are just about the leave. The engines are running and every second, the bus moves a couple of metres to show that it is really ready to leave. We throw our backpacks in the hold of the bus, buy a ticket and jump in the nearly empty bus. But after all the other ferry passengers found a place in one of the buses, only a couple of them leave. Most buses drive backwards to their initial position and turn off their engines. And even worse, the driver leaves the bus and sits down at one of the many tea stalls. We look at each other and say: “they must be joking”. Our departure looks much farther away than two minutes ago. But it would be very non-Indonesian if the bus would leave the bus terminal with empty seats. We decide to wait till the next ferry arrives and hope that the bus will fill up then. We can wait these extra 30 minutes.

While we are waiting in the very hot bus, we are constantly ‘bothered’ by sales guy. You probably know them, young and smoothly guys that sell items/food that you do not want or that definitely will lead to acute diarrhoea. Of course, we always tell them politely that we are not interested in their merchandise. But probably because of the fact that there aren’t enough customers elsewhere on the bus terminal, they keep on hanging around our bus, and especially around us. They have great fun, especially when they laugh at our big noses and Edwin’s shiny ‘coiffure’. We can understand that it is funny to see two white faces, but they must treat us with respect. But at the moment that they start provoking us and even worse, start touching Ivonne, it is time to ‘get angry’ and scare them off. Fortunately, within a few minutes the next ferry is arrives. The drivers jump behind their steering wheels again, start the engines and move the bus once in a while to show the arriving passengers that this is the first bus to leave. After the touts did their job and directed all the ferry passengers to the different buses, we look over our shoulder to see how many more passengers took place in our bus. The result is depressing: zero! As expected, the story repeated again. Some buses leave, but most of them drive backwards to their initial position, turn off their engines, and again, the drivers and touts sit down at one of the tea stalls to wait for the next ferry to arrive.