This post is based on our experience crossing the Malacca strait from Malaysia (Port Dickson) to Sumatra, Indonesia (Tanjung Balai) in June 2024. From Tanjung Balai we carried on to Medan.
You can of course fly from Kuala Lumpur to Sumatra’s capital city Medan in less than two hours. But if, like us, you’d vastly prefer a lengthy overland excursion instead, you can travel from one country to the other on a combination of public transport offerings by land and sea.
Crossing by ferry between Malaysia and Indonesia is easy, it’s just time consuming: it took us a bit under three days to get from KL to Medan.
So, if you ever wondered how to cross from Malaysia to Sumatra, Indonesia without flying, then read on.
Before you go
Indonesia has an e-Visa online application system, check if your country is eligible and make sure you’re applying on the official site. We applied a day in advance and got it almost instantly. A 30-day visa cost around 30 USD. Along with the usual passport details and a hideous photo of yourself, you need to provide a hotel address and a flight or ferry ticket for your eventual ‘departure’ from Indonesia. If you don’t actually know when that will be, you can get one of those fake flight reservations online for about 10 USD.
If you are travelling the opposite way, to Malaysia, check if your country is visa exempt before you set off.
There are moneychangers on the ferry. We didn’t see any on either side of the border. There are ATMs in both Port Dickson and in Tanjung Balai. It’s good to have some rupiah on arrival in Indonesia since the port is a short distance from town and any banks.
We booked our ferry tickets (40 USD) online at Indomal Fast Ferries, selecting to depart from Port Dickson. There are a few destinations: we went north to Tanjung Balai which is pretty close to Medan.
Bring some cash to the ferry port with you for various fees. Print out your ferry tickets, visa confirmation, and whatever flight document you happen to have/made. You might also want to bring some snacks for the ferry.
If you haven’t already got Grab, download it. It’s a very handy taxi app.
The route
Our ferry was due to depart at 10.00 am, so the day before that we travelled from Kuala Lumpur to Port Dickson and stayed overnight. The next morning we showed up at the port about an hour prior to check-in. The ferry to Tanjung Balai port took almost six hours. On arrival we processed immigration and get our luggage back, and headed into town. We stayed overnight in Tanjung Balai and took a bus to Medan the next day.
Kuala Lumpur to Port Dickson
Take a Grab or the metro to your closest KTM commuter station. Buy a ticket to Seremban (KTM Seremban Line). A ticket costs about 9 ringgit. The train took a little over two hours and it was standing room only.
Exit the station at Seremban and then you can take a bus, or book another Grab, from there to Port Dickson. We took a taxi, it was about 30 minutes. In Port Dickson we had him drop us off at a smart hotel called The Best Location. It is probably the best, and is comfortable, nice, and clean.
The ferry: Port Dickson to Tanjung Balai
Give yourself at least 1 hour at the ferry port office to check in, weigh your baggage, and pass immigration. You can take a Grab or walk to the ferry port, it’s not far from The Best Location hotel.
It was pretty chaotic at the ferry port: tons of people milling around out front and mountains of luggage. Nothing much in the way of signs or instructions, so we just kept asking around until we found out which ‘queue’ (there seemed to be several, all outside) to join for check-in. Be careful as more than one ferry goes at once.
Eventually it was our turn to show our tickets and the Indonesian visas. The tickets and our passports disappeared into the building. Here you also need 25 ringgit per person, for the boarding pass. Then you wait until a man comes out of the building with a stack of passports and calls out names (he didn’t bother calling ours out, just held the passports up til he caught sight of us and smiled in relief – we were the only foreigners anyway).
Take your passport and your boarding pass and join the queue for luggage. You’ll spot it right away: disorderly piles of baggage and a harassed-looking man behind a table next to a big scale. You pay by the kilo, ours cost about 50 ringgit for 40 kgs.
The crew will load your luggage, so you can leave it there and go inside the building, finally. There you process Malaysian immigration, get your passport stamped, send your carry-on through an x-ray, and wait in the next room until a staff member checks tickets and says you can board.
Bon voyage!
The ferry was 40 minutes late departing, and took around 6 hours including that delay. It’s comfortable. They served some very unappetizing food, and also sell some snacks. Smooth sailing all the way. At some point you’ll get a customs declaration to fill out.
The border
On arrival, disembark leaving your luggage wherever it may be. Inside the immigration building there is a ‘Visa on Arrival’ office. It was closed and empty, but a man called us over and took us inside. He asked to see our visa paper and then did absolutely nothing, except request a selfie ‘for his work’. So that business over, we joined the crushing mass of people main queue at immigration.
The officer took our passports inside the booth and had us sit down and wait. It took quite a long time, but he was very friendly and just looked over the visa paper we had, asked a few typical questions, and didn’t ask to see any flight confirmation (I have read, OTOH, that they always ask for this…so I’d bring one). Eventually he put a very small sticker and stamp into our passports and sent us to customs. That’s just a counter where you hand over the declaration form.
Go back outside onto the dock and start rummaging in the various piles of luggage for your stuff. Then, they scan you luggage and you can exit out the front of the building.
Tanjung Balai to Medan
The port is around 7 km from the town and there are plenty of drivers lying in wait with their becak (basically a motorcycle with a roomy sidecar). The ride cost about 50 000 rupiah. It’s a pretty, scenic ride and half the time we had locals jogging alongside shouting ‘Hello, mister!’ so it’s a nice and friendly arrival.
We checked into a hotel, walked around and ate some dinner – it’s a very friendly town and I guess foreigners aren’t super common. The next day we took a becak to the place where buses depart from the side of the road (ask your hotel or a becak driver). From there, we got a bus going to Medan for 50 000 rupiah per person. They leave frequently and don’t even wait to fill up. It took 4-5 hours. Get ready for some loud music. And also some live guitar.
I’d do it all over again, no worries. Welcome to Indonesia!
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If you’d like another roundabout journey in the region, you can check out this post about travelling from Thailand to Malaysia by road.
