Why You Should Take the Ship's Tour

The View from the top of Borobadur

Many cruise ship passengers agonize over whether or not they should use the shore excursions offered by the ship or go it alone and make their own arrangements either on line before departing home or on the pier when the ship docks.  The calculus goes something like this:  The ship charges more than the local entrepreneur but if you are on the ship sponsored trip you can be sure that whatever happens the ship will be there for you at he end of the trip.

So, go on the cheap and take your chances on getting left behind if your car/van/bus has a flat tire/engine problem/gets caught in traffic, or, take the ship’s tour and know that  come hell or high water, the gangway will still be there, welcoming you on your return, whenever that may be.

On my last trip to Borobadur I experienced a whole new element that a passenger needs to crank into the equation.

Holland America’s MS ROTTERDAM made a port call at Semarang, Central Java.  Semarang is a middle sized Indonesian port with a history that goes back to Dutch East Indies times.  It also had some World War II history that I may cover in other posts sometime.  For the usual discriminating passenger the reason to book passage on a ship that docks in Semarang is the lure of being able to visit one of the UN’s World Heritage sites, BOROBADUR, a 1300 year old Monolithic Buddhist Temple.  It is around 60 miles up the road, up the hill, from the port.  Not too far.  Check a map for yourself.  The only problem is that, as any world traveler knows, there are 60 miles in this place and there are 60 miles in some other place.  All 60 miles are not equal.

In developing nations 60 mile of good paved road can still be a challenging distance.  That is the situation for the road to Borobadur.

Rotterdam’s busses had an additional feature that made all the difference in the world:  honest to goodness official escort of police cars complete with a three man crew, sirens flashing , lights and lighted batons waved out the windows at cars and trucks ahead.

Traffic in Indonesia is British style with passage on the left , the opposite of what people from the USA  are accustomed to seeing.  However, even the Europeans got a thrill out of our escort.  Cars, trucks, mopeds and motorcycles going in our direction were pushed all the way over to the extreme left of the roadway, usually well past the edge of the paved road.  The cars, trucks etc. heading in the opposite direction were also waved to and past the margins on the right side of the road.  There are no sidewalks but there are normally pedestrians walking on the road sides as well as businesses with goods for sale at the road edge.  The police sirens, flashers and batons forced the opposing traffic so far to the right it was a miracle that they did not run into the people, vegetables, cans of oil, advertising signs and bicycles propped against the front of the buildings.

The Difference Makers

Picture a two lane highway completely filled with traffic in both directions.  Then add a caravan with maybe a dozen 48 passenger Mercedes busses led and trailed by police cars with lights flashing and sirens screaming  cutting a hole in between the chocked lanes.  That’s how we traveled most of the 60 miles.  It would be no exaggeration to say that our busses spent more time driving down the wrong side of the road than the left hand side where we nominally belonged.

If  passengers arranged for a vehicle & driver there is no doubt that those folk would have spent the time after they got to the place at the pier where Rotterdam had been docked making arrangements to book and buy plane tickets to get them to the next port of call to catch up with the ship, their clothes and maybe their spouses.

The 8 1/2 hour ship’s excursion was taken up with 90 minutes at Borobadur, a meal and a pair of comfort stops.  Without the escort there is no reasonable way to estimate how long it would have taken but 10 to 12 hours would not be a bad guess.  The Semarang port call was only set up for 10 hours total and clearly visits to Borobadur would not have been possible.  Since that was the real reason to visit Semarang at all there would have not have been a port call.  Result? No visit, no port fees, no money spent in the local economy by ship and passengers and no time for Indonesian crew to visit with their family and friends who lived nearby.  And, did I mention, no reason to plan to have any other ships visit Semarang because the motivation to visit was literally out of reach on a normal port call schedule?

So, sometimes the logic of saving a few bucks or even more than a few bucks, doesn’t end up being the right answer.  Think about it and you will see that often the umbrella of care that the ship extends to their passengers is worth the money for a lot of reasons.