Malaysia / Indonesia / Brunei, AMA

[samarrange]

DP and I are just back from a 19-night intensive (8 cities) tour of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei.

We visited Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh, and Penang/George Town (in Peninsular Malaysia); Surabaya, Yogyakarta, and Jakarta (in Java/Indonesia) and Brunei and Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia) in Borneo. One of us had previously been to Bali, so we left that out. There was of course a whole lot more that we could have done (Sumatra, Sulawesi, Papua, Indonesian Borneo, etc etc).

We made all the arrangements ourselves: hotels (looked up on Booking dot com even if we didn't book much with them), transport (4 trains from the local operators' websites, 4 "internal" flights [internal to the tour, although 3 were international] direct with the airlines after researching on Skyscanner), visits (a mixture of GetYourGuide/Viator and some direct contacts after some Googling), etc.

We ate mostly at local restaurants, including genuine street food places, and didn't get sick or the runs even once. About every third day we would find a slightly more upmarket place if we fancied western-style food or a cocktail.

This pace might not be for everybody, but we travel for food/people/nature more than to visit historical or cultural sights. Last year we did a private tour of India with local drivers and guides, and before that Korea/Japan in a group, and one thing we wanted to change from both was to have fewer visits to "the palace of the 9th emperor" or "the fifth-biggest mosque in the country", which is where the incoming tour companies will tend to take you (also passing by the handmade rug shop).

Anyway, if anyone has been thinking about these countries, feel free to ask me anything.

@samarrange love this!
We're planning 3 weeks in Indonesia this summer.
Possibly flying in to Jakarta and out of Bali but not necessarily.
What recommendations do you have from this trip and your previous one for Indonesia?
We will also be booking ourselves and travelling using public transport.
Parent + 3 late teens.

Just to be clear, this was our first visit to any of these countries. The previous trip that I wrote up was to India, not Indonesia.

All right, some thoughts:

• Get a low-fee debit card like Wise. You will be making lots of £5–10 purchases and you don't want to be paying 50p/75p transaction fees each time.
• For getting around, install the "Grab" and "Gojek" apps, and configure them to use your Wise card. Grab is Malaysia and Indonesia, Gojek is Indonesia only. They work like Uber but are much slicker. You can manage with just one, but having both gives you more options. Grab/Gojek were the "lubricant" that made our trip possible, as official metered taxis do not have a good reputation. We made about 25 journeys with Grab/Gojek and had zero issues.
• The trains are great (there's an app called "Tiket"). Pay for "Eksecutif" class, it's worth it. Boarding a long-distance train is like boarding a plane (check-in, get boarding pass, show ID). If your seat is "Eksecutif coach 1 seat 2a", be aware that there is also an "Ekonomi" coach numbered 1. You can buy food on board which is not bad at all (and again, cheap, like £1 for an airline-style meal of rice/meat/pickles).
• We did not use the buses, either in towns or long-distance, so I can't comment on those.
• If you are going to Surabaya, you really ought to stay at the Majapahit hotel, built by the Sarkies brothers (of Raffles fame). It's twice the price of the next most expensive hotel, but that just means £100 per night for a double room. There are a couple of good places to eat right across the road too.
• In Yogyakarta we stayed at the Melia Purosani. Not quite the charm of the Majapahit but still very good. The spa is amazing. We had a great "excursion" in the form of a cookery class at a place called Pedwan Bedhog (which is on GetYourGuide, but we booked direct and split the difference), where we pounded peanuts into satay sauce and various spices into bumbu, and then ate the results.
• In Jakarta, we stayed at the Mercure Jakarta Kota. Not recommended as it is in severe need of a refurb, but the location was good. We took a Gojek to the Cafe Batavia (a must-visit for Dutch tourists - the Netherlands being the former colonial power - but just really nice for everyone) and walked back through a mini-Chinatown where everyone was selling stuff for Chinese New Year. The next day, at the recommendation of an Aussie lady whom we met in a pool earlier on the trip, we visited the Indonesian National Bank museum, which was much more fascinating than you would expect a national bank museum to be!
• Everything is much cheaper than the UK, except alcoholic drinks, which are available (mostly at big hotels) for roughly UK prices. A cocktail at the Majapahit costs £10 including tax and service. The local beer (Bintang) is fine. Wine is hit and miss, expensive, and usually not available by the glass, so we forgot about that pretty quickly.
• Food and transport are incredibly cheap. If you go to a warung (greasy spoon) you can get a plate of rice with chicken for 75p. Across the road from the Majapahit (see above) in a place with nice decor, something similar is £1.50. The hour-long ride from our hotel in downtown Jakarta to the airport cost £5.50.
• Non-alcoholic drinks are cheap, but not as cheap as food. You can pay the same for a juice as for the plate of rice and chicken.
• You will need to carry a certain amount of cash. If you see a card machine then by all means pay with a card, but use your common sense - the satay vendor in the street wants cash. The currency is slightly terrifying because there are 23,000 rupiah to £1, so our hotel bill at the Majapahit was 7,946,616 rupiah (room, a meal, cocktails, spa treatment). The biggest note is 100,000 rupiah which is £4.50. We took cash and converted it, so I can't say anything about ATMs. Do not change money at the airport - go to a licenced money changer kiosk, which you will find in every city.
• The food is generally spicy. A standard meal is rice, meat, spicy relish (sambal), pickles (acar, pronounced achar), often a hard-boiled egg. It's not super-hot unless you stir in the sambal, which is generally served separately. If you are the kind of person who enjoys a curry now and then you will be absolutely fine. In fact we found the food to not be all that "exotic" compared to some other parts of Asia.
• The water is not drinkable, but because nobody drinks the water you don't have to worry about ice - it's all made with bottled/filtered water.
• The country is not rich but you will not feel like you are gawking at poverty. The poorer bits of Indonesian cities look like the richer bits of Indian cities. As your train trundles through the outer regions of Jakarta you will see some shanties and piles of trash, but everywhere else it's very civilised. As we were walking out of our hotel in Jakarta one evening I was on my phone and the gate man said "Be careful, sometimes people snatch your phone", but at no point did we fell unsafe. One or two people (especially schoolkids) will look at you as a westerner (I'm assuming you are white) but it's not at all obtrusive.
• The population is majority Muslim and two-thirds of women wear a headscarf, but you will also see plenty of women (mostly from the Christian or Chinese minorities, we assumed) with long hair uncovered and wearing not-especially-loose trousers. The atmosphere is one of live and let live. There is an elegance on the streets that is less than Japan but more than India, if that makes sense.
• Durian does indeed smell very strong! DP loved it, I wasn't impressed. I guess it's the Marmite of Asia.

Thank you! That's so helpful.
Did you pick up ideas of what you'd do if you had the opportunity to go back to Indonesia?
And where was your favourite place of the whole trip? We've previously been to KL and KK as part of 2 separate 2/3 week trips.

If we went back we would visit different islands, I think. Sulawesi and maybe the Indonesian side of Borneo. Their shiny new capital city, built from scratch in the jungle there, is going to be amazing.

I'm not sure we had "a" favourite place. We saw so many things. Catching fireflies in our hands on the Bongawan river excursion from KK was pretty unforgettable. In Indonesia maybe it would be the hike and stair climb to the rim of Bromo in the rain. (We didn't visit Borobodur although everyone says how spectacular it is, because huge temples really aren't our thing.)

Borabadour is amazing and easily combined with a trip to Prambanan in a day. Crazy to think of 2 very different religions building these massive temples in the 9th century.
I'd definitely spend more time on Java if I was in Indo again. Bali...we ended up longer there than expected but we've done it now and I wouldn't go back. That being said one of the best days we had was snorkeling in the marine reserve in the North West at Pemuteran....out of this world.
Dont rule out staying at little hostels. We would get a private room very cheaply. In Jogykarta we were served a breakfast we still talk about. It was a very thin grain porridge made with coconut milk with a donut pillow on top!! It was just fabulous.