Indonesia Solo Travel Tips
Traveling Indonesia was both a beautiful and challenging experience for me, so here are some tips on how I did it to help you along your way.
1. Do some research ahead of time.
Indonesia ain’t a small fish, it is a massive archipelago consisting of over 13,000 islands and home to over 250 million people.
My main goals for this trip was to dive, eat, and trek. As such, to pick my ideal destinations I learnt about what each major part of Indonesia had best to offer (Sumatra, East Java, Komodo Islands) then worked my itinerary around that. My best resources were Travelfish, Lonely Planet, and Tripadvisor Forums. These forums and sites offered a plethora of free objective information, which more than suited my needs as a solo female traveller.
In doing this I discovered that East Java was renowned for its volcanoes, Sumatra for its forest wildlife (sadly rapidly declining due to the devastating palm oil plantations), and Lombok and Komodo islands for its diverse and colourful marine life. If you are Australian, you would be well aware that Bali tends to be overrun by obnoxious Australians, which is why I avoided spending too much time there. I did spend 1 night in Ubud since travel to the Komodo Islands is best done via air, departing Bali airport. After my slightly chaotic travels through Sumatra and East Java prior to Bali, Ubud proved to be a comfortable place to stay scattered with clean restaurants and beauty spas (yes I luxed out and paid a whole $30 (AUD) for a 3 hour beauty session and drank cocktails with all meals).
More importantly, the research that I did beforehand allowed me to lessen any fear of the unknown and understand what I did need to book in advance and what I could wing it by, like climbing to see Gunung ‘Mount’ Bromo as opposed to an overpriced paid jeep tour. In retrospect, I found that it was possible to wing a lot of it, there were very affordable home stays left, right and centre at most destinations. Though I did not do any tours (except for Lake Toba), it appeared that most tours did not need to be booked in advance. With regards to the unplanned Lake Toba day tour, I met Mr Posman at a scenic pier out of sheer fortune and it turned out to be one of the most memorable parts of my trip.
For diving, I ended up booking a 4 night live aboard trip with Dive Komodo in advance, which was fortunate as the trip was fully booked out in the weeks leading up to my departure from home. For the dive day trips I booked most accommodation in advance as forums advised that central accommodation was limited in the harbour town of Labuan Bajo and this turned out to be very true.
For trekking, I booked at the Jungle Inn (10,000 rupiah per night) at Bukit Lawang, a popular tourist destination. I normally try to avoid tourist crowds when possible, but the location, price and small comforts were well worthy as I was pretty ill at this point. I also put myself down for an overnight jungle trek, which is easily organised through Jungle Inn. WARNING: I had a scary terrible experience with an overnight trek booked through Jungle Inn (to this day I am still uncertain if Jungle Inn run the tours or if it was an independent tour company but either way I would caution all solo female travellers if booking the tours through Jungle Inn and perhaps just generally speaking).
I also took care to learn what the general local prices for most things were, such as ojeks, taxis, long haul bus rides, home stays etcetera. This will help in preventing falling into the traps of some ‘local opportunists’.
2. Pack light…then pack lighter.
Transport in South East Asia usually comes in the form of cramped buses and shabby tuk-tuks.
Packing the pure essentials in bags compact and light enough to carry on my person made it so much easier to travel on foot and in cramped vehicles, especially with my constantly changing plans and love of busy crowded markets. It also allowed me to keep track of and travel securely with my belongings which were always within reach or view. Unless you are someone that enjoys waiting in crowded places (said no one ever), not having check in luggage always speeds up the airport arrivals and departures.
Cull your luggage and take only the bare essentials.
3. Buy a local sim card + data (for all of $6).
These can be bought at all major shopping centre phone stores and most small road side stalls. My first night in the main Sumatran city of Medan, at House of ZaZa ZiZi, was located right next to a shopping centre which is where I bought my sim card pre-loaded with 6gb of data and 3000 rupiah credit for all of $6.
The credit and data was super handy for checking availability of local home stays (most of which are only contactable via telephone) and hotels on the go, and can be topped up easily at any of the above mentioned stores.
4. Learn the language basics
Like any travel, knowing a few words of the local language helps in all kinds of sticky situations. Bahasa Indonesia is a fun and easy language to learn as the spelling and pronunciation are quite akin to English. Also, other than Bali and other major cities, English is not a commonly spoken language. I spent most of my flight from Brisbane into Medan learning from a free download ‘Learn Indonesian’ application (Duolingo and Learn Indonesian) and never regretted it.
5. Converse with locals and fellow travellers.
The most memorable parts of my travels in Indonesia were moments spent with kind hearted colourful locals. Gaining insight into what drives their livelihood and vibrant culture was truly eye opening and soul awakening, especially in contrast to the mundanity that can arise in our day to day western lives over here.
In saying that, meeting and the exchanging of ideas with fellow travellers also helped me along the way. It was refreshing and comforting in that it felt like I was touching base with something familiar and in a few dangerously aversive situations I was very thankful to have those new friends to reach out to.
I hope these few tips help you along your journey and feel free to comment with any queries below!
