From Penang, Malaysia to Belawan (Medan), Indonesia - May, 2006

Mr. Lim's office is centrally located in Georgetown. He has a boat which goes between Butterworth and Belawan twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.

The process is easy. Contact Mr. Lim a few days before you want to leave and he will get the paperwork together. The day before the boat leaves, Mr. Lim will accompany you to the customs and port in Butterworth and help you get the carnet processed and your bike loaded on the boat. After this is done, you will ride the ferry back to Penang from Butterworth and wait until the next morning to catch the high speed passenger ferry to Belawan.

The bike will be shipped the night before you leave, but your journey will take about 5 hours on the passenger ferry and the bike will take significantly longer. Try to pick up the bike at Belawan that afternoon, but if you can't you will most likely have to wait until the next morning. The boat your bike will be on is a small "vegetable" boat or "onion" boat.

There will be lots of people wanting to "help" you get your bike, but ignore them unless you want to shell out lots of extra money. These people will be all over you when you get off the ferry. Its easy to get the bike yourself. Everyone at the port will know where your bike is, it will probably be on display somewhere and folks will be checking it out. For this reason, keep your things secured. Mr. Lim gave us a phone number of a person to help us in Belawan, but we could not contact this person as the phone number wouldn't go through.

After we located the bike, we had customs stamp the carnet, no cost for this and customs was friendly and quick. A carnet is the easiest way to get your bike into Indonesia. The port fees took a little while longer. We had to go into town and located the office at the address of the contact Mr. Lim gave us. We would have never found it on our own, one of the guys in the port took us there on his motorcycle, its close to the port, but a bit far to walk. The office gave us a "delivery order" and then we went back to pay the port fees. Make sure you get a receipt for the port fees to avoid being overcharged.

We had heard about registering with the police upon entering Indonesia, however I would NOT do this, police in Indonesia are best avoided as they are very corrupt. We never checked with the police and it was never an issue. The police stopped us three times to check our license while we were in the country.

Belawan is not the best introduction to Indonesia as we found everything overpriced. We stayed at a hotel literally outside the gates of the port terminal and while it was very comfortable, it was overpriced at $20 for a double. This will be your best option, however.

When you leave Belawan, don't use the motorway, motorcycles are banned on motorways in Indonesia. We got on the motorway, but were turned back by the friendly toll workers.

Cost breakdown for one 1989 Honda Transalp:
Shipping 300RM
Butterworth Port Charges 27.20RM
"Looking after the bike" on the boat 10RM
Delivery Order 20,000Rp
Belawan Port Charges 207,000Rp
Total approx $118USD ($1USD = 3.65RM, 9000Rp)

Passenger tickets on the high speed Penang-Belawan Ferry 150RM per person ($41USD).

There was a roll-on, roll-off ferry which used to do this route on a regular basis, but this service had been suspended at the time of shipping.