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.

Beginnings of Indonesian Trade

800 AD Indonesian Ship Carving at Borobudur

Recognizing that statistically Indonesia can be called a poor country, that does not mean that it is a country that is without anything of value.  Far from it.  It has plenty of resources that have always been sought after by its neighbors and by people from far away.  Asians began visiting the islands that we now call Indonesia from as far back as historians kept track of the comings and goings of people.  

Nearby neighbors from the Malay Peninsula visited Indonesia on relatively simple missions; stealing whatever they needed from the villages near the coasts.  When you think about it the visits of the Malays to Indonesia were not very different from the raids Norsemen made on the British Isles or the Chinese made on the Formosans.  Raiding neighbors has been a part of how humans have always acted.  It seems that taking whatever you can from those folks over the mountain or across the strait was the basis for commerce until the neighbors got tired of getting beat up and decided to arm themselves well enough to discourage their rapacious friends.  Thus international trade was born.

The way trade developed in Indonesia had a great influence on how the country developed.  Arab traders from the Persian Gulf ventured eastward and called at ports in the Indian subcontinent,   Because commerce works best when it is two way, Indian sailors soon began voyaging to the Persian Gulf and the East coast of Africa where there were goods available that they could swap for their commodities or products.  

With the experience of trading to the west the Indian subcontinent sailors thought they could go east and be the dominant sea going force in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea area.  When they visited Indonesian islands they not only were interested in trade, they wanted to give the natives the benefit of their religious beliefs.  Does this sound familiar?  Think of the Spanish in Central and South America or the Philippines or Muslims in Turkey.  Religions are either official sponsors or behind the scenes influences of ventures to foreign lands.

Recognizing that statistically Indonesia can be called a poor country, that does not mean that it is a country that is without anything of value.  Far from it.  It has plenty of resources that have always been sought after by its neighbors and by people from far away.  Asians began visiting the islands that we now call Indonesia from as far back as historians kept track of the comings and goings of people.  

Nearby neighbors from the Malay Peninsula visited Indonesia on relatively simple missions; stealing whatever they needed from the villages near the coasts.  When you think about it the visits of the Malays to Indonesia were not very different from the raids Norsemen made on the British Isles or the Chinese made on the Formosans.  Raiding neighbors has been a part of how humans have always acted.  It seems that taking whatever you can from those folks over the mountain or across the strait was the basis for commerce until the neighbors got tired of getting beat up and decided to arm themselves well enough to discourage their rapacious friends.  Thus international trade was born.

The way trade developed in Indonesia had a great influence on how the country developed.  Arab traders from the Persian Gulf ventured eastward and called at ports in the Indian subcontinent,   Because commerce works best when it is two way, Indian sailors soon began voyaging to the Persian Gulf and the East coast of Africa where there were goods available that they could swap for their commodities or products.  

Dutch East Indies Ship

With the experience of trading to the west the Indian subcontinent sailors thought they could go east and be the dominant sea going force in the Indian Ocean/South China Sea area.  When they visited Indonesian islands they not only were interested in trade, they wanted to give the natives the benefit of their religious beliefs.  Does this sound familiar?  Think of the Spanish in Central and South America or the Philippines or Muslims in Turkey.  Religions are either official sponsors or behind the scenes influences of ventures to foreign lands.

More About Indonesia

Barong Dance: Battle between Good & Evil

The whole idea of something called Indonesia is a recent thing.  Up until the middle of the 20th Century what was there was a collection of islands that were controlled by local tribes, then rulers then European powers.  History didn’t move too fast among the islands.  After all, once you got used to the heat and rain, the place was very livable.  Plenty of fruits and plants and animals to eat.  The waters abounded with fish, shellfish and turtles.  Except for the occasional typhoon, earth quake or volcanic eruption it was easy living.  The seas and rivers were the highways for the native people.  Commerce and trade was waterborne as was the arrival of strangers from the mainland of Asia.  

The strangers came for the usual reasons; rape, pillage, looting and taking over territory.  They brought with them religions that over time replaced the local beliefs.  People from South Asia introduced Hinduism and for a time it was the dominant religion.  It was supplanted by Buddhism and later by the teachings of Islam.  Buddhism was a huge influence and remains an important element in society.  Hinduism faded in most of the islands except for Bali where it is the dominant religion until today.

Bali Culture

Those hundred or so ethnic tribes mentioned before speak 300 or 400 different languages.  Many of these languages are similar and tribes or groups living on the same island or near other tribes could conceivably communicate.  However, absent a common written language the likelihood for lively interchange of ideas and information is limited.  This need to create some sort of national tongue is why Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian Language has been adapted as the official national language.  Bahasa Indonesia effectively is the Malay language in use in the Riau Islands near Singapore augmented with works and phrases that are peculiar to Indonesia.  This unifying language was put in place by Indonesian nationalists during the time the country was still a Dutch Colony and was officially declared the national language in August 1945 as a part of the declaration of independence  that signaled the break with the colonial masters

Remarkably, it all works.  

Some Thoughts About Indonesia

Indonesia from space

Indonesia is another Pacific island chain with a super simple name made up by early European explorers with limited imaginations. [Indo = India : Nesia = Islands]  Just like Polynesia = Many Islands or Micronesia = Small Islands or Melanesia = Black/Dark Islands.  At the same time by naming the island chain the Indian Islands they acknowledged the influence and sustained contact that traders and explorers from the Indian subcontinent had on the islands.

Generally Indonesia is described as an archipelago or major island group with 17,508 +-islands.  That number, like many statistics or numbers used to describe Indonesia is an estimate.  Since only 6000 or so are inhabited, it really does not matter much if there are 17,502 or 17,509 islands.  There are also 80 or more ethnic groups among the 240 million population.  Indonesia is actually the world’s 4th most heavily populated country and the home of more Muslims than any other country.  Some of the hundreds of ethnic and language groups have sub groups and those sub groups have sub-sub groups and on and on.  The point, if there is a point, is that the Indonesian population could not be accused of sameness or homogeneity.

Jakarta Crowd

The island chain, however many islands there are, stretches from the island of Sumatra on the Western side of the Malacca Straits ( that is the body of water that separates Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand from Indonesia) all the way down to New Guinea near Australia.  That is a far stretch.  The northern end, the tip of Sumatra, is further away from the southern part of Indonesia than Seattle is from Miami.  Or London is from Moscow.  The big difference is that what is in between those places is not land that has been occupied for centuries and which is criss-crossed by roads, power grids and established cities but by water with tropical islands covered with forests and inhabited by what could best be called tribes.

We will pick up on the general topic of Indonesia over the next few posts.  For most of us that come from European ancestors Indonesia is just another incomprehensible 3rd World place.  The Country and the people are both worth knowing and I would like to help introduce them to you.

Prince Henry the Navigator

HENRY THE NAVIGATOR (1394-1460) sponsored a great school for navigators in SAGRES on the Atlantic coast of Portugal.  For a guy who apparently never went to sea he had a fine reputation as a Mariner.  His school also has a great reputation even though no one has actually found any buildings or tangible evidence that there was a school per se.  During a recent speaking assignment on MS NOORDAM's trip back to Fort Lauderdale I tramped Sagres and Lagos and was treated to great views but sure couldn't find the school.  

Prince Henry's Statue, Lagos

Henry was a real force who facilitated the drive of the Portuguese to continue to venture further and further down the west coast of Africa.  They established trading posts and befriended the local chiefs with whom they traded goods for gold.  

Business was good and Portugal's economy flourished.  Long range international trade by ship came into focus for a number of reasons.  One big one was the fact that Europe had developed an appetite for the riches of the Orient and events made it harder and more expensive to feed that demand.  Mongols controlled the trade over the land route called the Silk Road that carried the sought after goods from Asia to the edge of Europe.  For quite some time Italian maritime city states acted as their intermediaries on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea.  The Italians made a hefty profit but Europe’s wealthy were willing to pay. 

Henry at the head of the crowd of explorers; Golden Age Monument in Lisbon

This cozy arrangement was derailed when Turks captured Constantinople, renamed it Istanbul and jacked up the prices.  They still allowed the Italians to market the Asian goods, but the power and dynamic changed in favor of the people who controlled the supply of product and away from those who had access to the market.  The capture of Constantinople was not a stand alone event.  It was part of the greater conflict between Christians and Muslims in the region that has waxed and waned seemingly forever, right up to today.