Fixing plans gone bad

Flying to Kalimantan

Natalia and I had an 1145 flight from Kuching to Pontianak.  The international side of Kuching airport doesn’t have many facilities to hang out in, so there’s no point to get to the airport too early.  But with post-Raya congestion a possibility we decided to allow ourselves 2 hours plus plenty of travel time in case we had trouble getting a Grab car.

It took me about 15 minutes to find a car and we arrived at the airport 2h prior to departure.  With bag-drop and a light breakfast of Spicy Korean Burger at McDonald’s, our spare time went really quickly and we soon had to go airside.

The flight to Pontianak is so short that people who have pre-booked hot meals (included with baggage combo) typically take the meals off the plane.  In fact you land before you take-off, if you ignore the one hour time difference.

My previous trips from Kuching to Pontianak have both been during the times when there were no flights, requiring a nine hour bus journey.

When plans go bad

Priorities first, we went to the ATM to get enough money to pay for our transport to Pangkalan Bun and our klotok (boat) trip at Tanjung Puting before hopping into the taxi for the Ibis Hotel.  I had messaged our boatman and also Yessoe Bus (taking us to Pangkalan Bun) tomorrow upon landing.  Then the bad news hit us that our bus had been cancelled due to maintenance.  I had booked through WhatsApp.

Aaarrgggh!  That’s one bad news after another.  Even though I started with the intention of travelling from Pontianak to Pangkalan Bun by bus (about 15h), Garuda had introduced a flight between the two cities connecting at Ketapang.  Having booked it cheaply, they withdrew from the route meaning that I had to revert to Plan A on the bus.

With the Yessoe cancellation, I couldn’t book the DAMRI bus online now as it had passed Traveloka’s cut-off.  We’re now left with booking DAMRI manually or organising a “travel” (pronounced “truffle”, an intercity shared taxi).

We started organising this in the taxi and continued when we arrived at the Ibis at around 1245.  There weren’t any bookable flights left even through Jakarta at high prices.  We tried various truffles:  one I had contacted before, ones recommended by the hotel and one recommended by Yessoe.  Only one appeared to work out.

Our tummies beckoned and we headed to the Ayani mall nearby around 1330 for lunch and came back an hour later.  Our truffle contact wanted to meet up and he came round with the driver, I supposed to ensure that we were firm customers.

They ran us to the Telkomsel office where Natalia managed to buy and register a SIM quite quickly despite the queues for other services.  We continued by walking to St Joseph’s Cathedral about 15 mins away.

Sightseeing

The cathedral looked closed but we enquired at the security kiosk.  We wrote our details in the visitors’ book, putting our religion as Catholic (not sure what got into us).  A stray dog brushed past Natalia and she gasped, nearly giving her cover away!

The cathedral was quite impressive in a baroque and Las Vegas way.  I’ll let the pictures do the talking but perhaps one needs to see it in person to get the real impression.

We continued with a walk to the river to find a jetty to take us to the palace (istana or keraton).  We paid IDR20000 for a private speedboat across where we walked to Istana Kadriah to find the gates closed.  Natalia went to the nearby old wooden mosque for a look-see while I waited outside.

With weather about to break, we quickly took another speedboat back to our side of town before summoning a Grab car to take us to Masjid Raya Mujahidin.  The rain had set in by now.  Natalia went inside while I took cover on the outside.

We continued by Grab to Ayani mall again for dinner and some supermarket snacks before walking the short distance back to our hotel.

For this short stay in Pontianak, I had booked the great-value non-refundable rate at the high-quality Ibis because it was next to the museum which I had never visited on previous visits.  Because it was Natalia’s first visit, I thought it was better to do the other sights which I had done before.  Combined with our transport hassles which took over an hour to organise, we missed the museum.  It would have been better to stay in the centre of town.