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The Kelud arrived three hours late in Batam and left four hours late.
A good part of the reason was the carrying on and off the ship of lots of cargo, most of it by hand and on stevedore's backs .
We watched from above and were fascinated by what we assume was a scene from "On The Waterfront" of fifty years ago in the USA.
The 2,000 or so passengers got on, we'd guess, in under an hour.
Only one or two (of maybe 30-40) first-class cabins were occupied, including ours.
Maybe half a dozen second-class ones (of maybe 30-40) were occupied.
But the third class, which consisted of a set of dormitories, crowded with 40 or so beds in each room, was entirely filled.
As were any flat places, such as stair landings, walkways on the outside of the ship, etc.— people "camped" all over the place.
There was some kind of unspoken rule, although more probably a rule enforced
by the crew that some areas were fair game (stairwells, for example) while others were not (lobby areas, for example).
Within a few hours we were essentialy out of sight of land and then there was very little to see;
a few hours later night fell and there was nothing.
So we mostly holed up in our very comfortable twin-bed cabin and read or worked with our laptops.
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Immediately before each meal there would be a knock on the door to inform us that it was served.
We'd walk down to the dining room, have our table (set for four people) pointed out to us, and eat by ourselves.
Nearby there were about 10 tables set for eight;
these were the second class passenger tables;
they were mostly unoccupied. Perhaps because of Ramadan.
After having left four hours late we arrived nearly seven hours late.
But it was a good voyage and we didn't mind at all.
It didn't quite rate with our trip from Bombay to Goa some 28 years ago
when we had true first class comfort including afternoon tea served on a private deck by white gloved waiters!
Gerry was happy to cross the equator by boat, although he couldn't find the line marked anywhere!
In fact, we probably slept through it, as the crossing must have been just after we went to bed.
Fortunately, nobody roused us to "initiate" us with a bucket of water over the head,
as we were to see portrayed in an old photo in the Jakarta Maritime museum.
Jan was happy too, because this trip was much, much more comfortable than our last sea voyage
across the Caribbean from Colon, Panama, to Cartagena, Columbia where she was seasick for four days.
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Just before getting on we met a Dutch girl, about 25, who was just two days into her trip around south-east Asia.
She was "brought" to us by the same taxi driver who we'd used two days earlier.
We didn't know it at first but she'd just gone through a big scare:
she'd left her backpack with almost everything she owned on the Singapore-Batam ferry that she'd taken that morning.
She was very, very relieved to have it returned to her in a ferry that arrived just before the Kelud should have departed.
We spent some interesting hours talking to her during the long wait to board and then on board.
She reported to us what life was like in a 6-passenger second-class cabin;
not anywhere near as comfortable as ours.
Once in Jakarta we shared a taxi with the Dutch girl and went to the Jalan Jaksa tourist district.
There we took the relatively expensive Hotel Bumi Johar, selected from LP,
and then made sure she safely found a place, much simpler and cheaper on a quiet street.
We were quite happy with the Bumi Johar, especially when we discovered our laptops would
fit in their safe deposit boxes and that we wouldn't have to carry them while touring.
For that we happily did without easy internet access.
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