hi all,
we just crossed the melaka strait and shipped our africa twin on an "onion boat" from dumai to melaka.
the bike was lifted into the wooden vessel by 12 people...
no problems at all, bike arrived in melaka's KUALA LINGGI cargoharbour with no harm (its about 60km north of melaka city).
it took the customs only 5 minutes to stamp the carnet and we could take off!!! great!!!
the price for shipping the bike is highly negotiable but we paid 800.000 indonesien rupiahs, which is about 80US$.
we were not allowed to bring it along on the passenger boat but it was good because it would be hard to lift the bike 3m up by manpower only.
here is the phone number of the agent we were dealing with:
WAN YANFITRI, Pt arena bahari tirtatama 0811 750839
office: Jl. datuk laksamana 292, dumai, sumatra, indonesia.

ride safe

darius

Hi,

Would you be so kind and enter the details into the shipping database, link on the left? Your fellow travellers thanks will follow you wherever you go.

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Cheers,
Peter.

Europe to NZ 2006-10

Unfortunately Wan Yanfitri is out of business now, but the good news is we found another agent who handles 8 ships that do the run from Dumai to Port Klang (actually a really helpful customs guy found him if we're honest).

Because we arrived at the end of Ramadhan we had to wait over the weekend for a boat, but normally there's one going over every day. For some reason which we still can't fathom, finding someone who'll ship to Melaka is difficult. Every time we asked about Melaka we were told no. Port Klang (KL) on the other hand doesn't seem to be a problem.

Cost was $US100 per bike (BMW650), which in comparison to other accounts we've read seemed reasonable. And yes it's just a wooden "onion" boat, but the bikes were craned on, tied down undercover behind the wheelhouse and seemed to have been well treated when we picked them up.

We're a bit bemused by tales of payments to Indonesian customs, because after having been in and out of the country 4 times in the last 7 months no money has changed hands. In fact Andre at Dumai bent over backwards to help us. Gratis.

On the other hand, when we went to pick the bikes up at Port Klang, the captain of the boat was there asking for extra payment. As the deal was supposed to be all inclusive we just shrugged our shoulders and said talk to the agent. That was the only sour note to what was otherwise an ok experience.

Anyway... details are in the shipping database. Good luck.

Lucas & Ann

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Lucas & Ann
http://somemustard.blogspot.com