The Journey

Moving! 

Do you recall that feeling of having to organise each and every box of personal belongings in such a way as to be able to find it later after relocation. Moving to a remote area with limited supplies means you would benefit tremendously from having excellent organisation and planning skills! You need to be able to pre-empt what may be needed during a construction project so as to avoid any disruption to the works. We had a headstart as my partner has been involved in building projects for most of his life.

nearly done

loading the truck

making sure our stuff arrives at its destination

Given that we were moving to an empty house in a remote area with two Javanese tradesmen (H & A), we had to organize ourselves to be able to ‘camp’ as comfortably as possible. 

We packed substantial quantities of food, drinking water, a small stove, a rice cooker, crockery, cutlery, pots, a wok, glassware, sunbeds, a mattress, dishcloths, cleaning products, building tools, paint, gypsum, cement, sanitary-ware for the bathrooms…the list is endless. 

I was keen on keeping the stuff we packed to a minimum as I envisaged lots of dust from the building works, having to move stuff around due to building, etc. All in all we managed to pack quite well. Sumbawa here we come!

After a few hours of loading a truck and a van, we were on our way from Bali to Sumbawa. The journey, by road and ferries, started at 3pm and lasted just over 14 hours. 

 

we love indonesia!

We travelled through the night and arrived at our destination at dawn the next day. The truck travelling through the small roads in the tiny fishing village at 5am was quite a sight to behold (a very rare occurrence!). The truck was several storeys higher than any of the buildings. As we watched the truck through our rear view mirror, we were hoping that the final lap of our journey over gravel would run smoothly. Suddenly, the truck came to a halt. 

“This is it, a puncture with only a few miles to go”, we thought to ourselves. To our relief, we realized that the guys had stopped to lift the electricity cables, which were too low for the truck to pass under. We were visualizing a blackout in the village…an excellent way to “announce our arrival”.

A few hours later we had unloaded all our stuff and set up our temporary home with our sleeping quarters and kitchen upstairs, while H & A had their makeshift bedroom downstairs. The next stage of our adventure starts here…

our makeshift kitchen

our temporary bedroom

Tip: Always pack some drinks and snacks for the journey as there are no kiosks or canteens on Indonesian ferries. Toilets are very basic...always be prepared!