Hello and welcome back to my blog!
It’s been a while for me to write about traveling, because I haven’t go anywhere since Pahawang Island 🙁 (But soon I will do and I’m so excited!).
When choosing destination, I really love to visit beach. It has wonderful atmosphere, beautiful scenery, clear blue water, lovely wind. I totally can spend entire day playing or just sightseeing on the beach. (sadly I can’t swim)
One day I was scrolling down my Instagram, then an account named @tripwithusindonesia followed me. I click on their profile and they turns out to be a trip organizer for local destination. I saw their latest post about day trip to Kelor, Onrust and Cipir island only for IDR 100.000 and I immediately interested. I really want to go to the beach, and we need materials for our blog and vlog so, why not?
Location
Kelor, Onrust, and Cipir Island located on Thousand Island (Kepulauan Seribu) on the north part of Jakarta. If you ever go to Pramuka, Tidung, Pari, or Semak Daun Island they’re also part of Thousand Island but on different direction. On the map as you can see, even if they’re located on the north of Banten Province, but it still part of Thousand Island, and automatically part of Jakarta Province.
When I mention Thousand Island, is this question crossed your mind: “are the number of island really a thousand?”. If yes, then save the question mark on your pocket because I have the answer! According to Wikipedia, Thousand Island has only 342 islands, including sand and reef islands. Out of 342 islands, only 11 islands used for residency. Others used for tourism spot, cultural heritage, and nature conservation. Kelor, Onrust and Cipir Island are on cultural heritage category. The government preserve it for cultural tourism due to its history.
Accomodation
To reach the location, you have to go to Kamal Muara port. Remember that Kamal Muara is different from Muara Angke / Kali Adem port (port lead to Pramuka Island). To reach Kamal Muara, you can go by taxi/uber/motorcycle taxi.
My route from Bekasi went this way:
Home – Kranji Station – Manggarai Station (change train to Duri line) – Duri station (change train to Tangerang line) – Rawa Buaya station. From Rawa buaya I took Uber. Why is it need to be from Rawa Buaya station? because it’s the nearest station and I want to reduce cost.
Uber car will drop you off at Pasar Ikan (Fish Market) since they cant go any further. You have to take a walk for about 5 minutes to reach Kamal Muara port. Since I join a trip with a trip organizer, then they already booked the wooden boat to go to the island. I don’t really know the price. The boat will take off at 8 am. I came 30 minutes late but they waited for us :”)
The wooden boat is the same like others Thousand Island wooden boat. It’s fit for approx 20 people or more. The machine sound is noisy, and annoys me but yea I gotta deal with it since its the only one that fit the budget. The boat took approx 1 hour to finally reach the first destination, Kelor Island!
Kelor Island
Overall this is my favorite island! Among those three islands, this island has the nicest beach. Aside of the nice beach, this island also has the mascot of the tour, the remains of a historical fortress. And the most important, this island has lots of instagram-able spot! I wish I spend more time in this island to take more picture, haha.
These are few of our shots in Kelor Island
This spot is full by people, mostly taking pictures. The entrance of this island is free. After approximately one hour of sightseeing, we moved to the second destination, Onrust Island!
Onrust Island
If you google this island, you may find horror stories about it. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take much picture in this island. It has long story at the colonial time, we even got a guide book about it. The ticket price is IDR 5.000 and paid by the tour organizer. We also got a tour leader and he will guide us and tell stories about this island, we may not go alone.
This island is mainly covered by the remains of old building, old grave and big trees. Its has museums showing Onrust miniature, historical pictures and remains of stuffs from the past. It has old grave of Dutch and Indonesian people, they buried at different places and treatment.
The history of this island itself is a long story. This island was used by dutch colonial for many things. It ever used as a hospital, dorm for people that going to Mecca, jail, and many more. This island also twice wrecked by nature; huge wave and volcanic material from Krakatau volcano. The tour guide will explain it all, in Bahasa Indonesia.
The tour around the island took like 30 minutes, I felt tired of walking, thirsty and hungry. Soon after the tour is over, the tour organizer gave us food and let us rest for eat and pray. This island has several food stall, toilet and also proper little mosque for us to pray. After resting we feel refreshed and ready for the next island!
Cipir Island
Cipir Island was the last island of the tour. Overall it has the same thing like Onrust Island, remains of building from the past. But here they have open beach where people could swimming or playing with sands but not exactly like I had in mind. I’m craving for white sands with blue water but this is not the place. On the other side, it has a nice deck where people can take pictures or sightseeing. I took few pictures on the deck.
I think this trip is worth for IDR 100.000. This is fit for a weekend getaway sort of thing. But honestly I don’t really like historical trip, I prefer fun trip when we can actually relax and chill. Good to know historical places but I’m not really into it. I feel happy with this tour organizer services and might use them again in the future.
The trip was supposed to be started at 8 am but since we’re late it started at 8:30 am. We come back and arrived at Kamal Muara at 4 pm, so it don’t really take that long. Still got time for hanging out with friends afterward, despite we were really tired. To get home we took Uber and went straight to Jakarta Kota station to find something to eat.
Sorry for not taking lot of pictures of the scenery, because I’m focused on Vlogging. You can see more of the island in our Vlog. Now that I found vlogging is fun I can’t stop and keep looking forward to it. The vlog for this episode will be released tomorrow, please be alert and don’t forget to watch it! 😀
