That Bus ride from Pekanbaru to Jambi

From the city, we drove into the bus station in Pekanbaru to arrange for the travel to Jambi.

As expected, toutters have come and won’t leave me and my friend alone to make a decision.  There were a number of bus company booths but no one person in them. The toutters would even take you inside these booths, and show you the cost of the tickets just to get you comfortable dealing with them.

The cost of the travel was minimum 200, but later, we were able to settle for IDR170,000 to Jambi. This bus is with toilet (and 150,000 for no toilet). From there, my friend dropped me to the booking office of the company where they said we will depart from at 5pm.

The bus arrived at about 4:15pm; It was a 3 x 2 bus that was filled up because of the holidays. I was surprised somehow that we are moving even ahead of schedule. Yet, from that point though and up to the next 2 hours, we were just going round and round the city, with unlimited waiting on some stops. At about 7pm, we were back in the same office where we took the bus.

From that time though, it was a continuous drive. Everyone in the bus was asleep such that inasmuch as i’d like to use the toilet which I hope i’d have the convenience with in the additional money that I paid for my ticket, I don’t have the guts to wake up my seatmate just for me to pee. Also, my seat was about 7 rows away from the toilet, but the stink of the toilet was strong until that point. 

I was so hungry and we did not have any stop until 12mn just almost near the boundary of Riau and Jambi. Gladly, there was a warung in front of the stop that seemed to be open 24 hours and I did not have to pay for the junked prices of the appointed bus stops.

It was about 7am when we got to the bus terminal in Jambi.

This is my experience with PO Mandala Bus Company.

In Summary, take the bus from the bus station, make sure to have a seat number, and probably a little bit away from the toilet, and next to the aisle. Or better yet, fly.