ASDP Indonesian Ferry - 2016

This article (written and uploaded 20 September 2016) tries to offer latest information on ASDP operation using their (just recently renewed : judged by the 4 Sept. 2016 photo on it) home page.

There are two big problems with their web site.

1. No language option is available - all in Indonesian

2. Foreigners like us do not know geography and cannot use the port list

Despite these formidable obstacles what is on their site is extremely useful. Their URL is as follows:

                            http://www.indonesiaferry.co.id/

This has made almost all of my very recent earlier artciles obsolete and I will be deleting them and renewing route maps according to this new Home Page.

In above photo I marked with red squares only those areas of absolute importance to us. You do not need to visit any other sub-areas at all in order to find out:

1. whether they operate from A to B (A and B may be chosen from their port list)

2.  fares

3. what a specific route looks like on the map

As I mentioned right at the start of this article the port names on the provided list do not mean much to us foreginers, except only a few very well known place names.

My intention, therefore, is to provide a clickable route/port map so that we know what we are looking for with this renewed home page.

Above photo shows us where individual buttons are. This looks easy enough until you open the province list, which is as follows.

Of course, you need to excercise your intelligent guess and I selected "MALUKU" as I remember roughly where this area is. I was disappointed, because "MALUKU" as I know it is different from what Indonesian people think of.

We foreigners just do not know which region of Indonesia a particular port belongs to. So, my gut feeling is that we will have to go by maps.  

There is a map, to speak of, which can be viewed by clicking on the lower right button. It is shown next.

This is hardly useful. Port names are too small and I cannot read them and the legend is unclear. Below this map is the routes list with distances in nautical miles.

This route list is very useful because these routes actually exist. This is in contrast to route finding setcion of the top page.

With this route finding section you first choose the region in which you wish to travel. You then choose the departure port, then your destination and finally press "Show button" at the bottom.

If the route you wish to travel is served by ASDP you get something like below.

It does not give you the distance, but it does tell you just about everything else you want to know. This is about the travel between Bali and the neighboring island of Lonbok.

Here, I do know that this route exists. See map next.

 

However, if the route you want does not exist then you get something like (for Aimere-Rote route):

Or, more often than not,

At first, I thought that this is a reservation sheet, but my dictionary says it is a mail for wanting to see this route establised and run by ASDP. 

This above case was the route in the provice of NTT (whatever it means) between Aimere and Rote both covered by Kupang branch office.

We foreigners do not do route findings this way, because we do not know names. For instance, that I want to travel from somewhere on Banda chain of islands to Ambon is a very good case in point.

In this case, I first look for areas where ferries might be operating and may find places looking like ports. Would I then try to match them with those on ASDP lists? They may not be even exist on ASDP provided lists. I will not know which province they belong to, anyway.

Instead, I want a map, large and clear map, showing me all the ASDP routes that I can see at a glance.

Using the old version of ASDP web page I have created a series of route maps. They will be useful, if I place them on a matrix table, and make names clickable.

In conclusion for this article I have shown:

1. The renewed ASDP web site is available.

2. It is useful if you have enough background information, such as geography of Indonesia.

3. However, you need an "at a glance route map", or something similar to it.

Therefore, my next articles will be about mapping the existing ASDP routes in a user friendly way. It may take a whille, as Goo blog does not seem to accept inframe components and I will have to come up with more robost ways of amalgamating enough and relevant information.