FYI: Public Transport Availability in Jambi City

As capital of Jambi Province, City of Jambi have many varieties of public transport services. From "angkot" or "ojeg" to airplane, and from boat to large size buses. When you need vehicle for your trip, except within the city and you are not planning to rent a vehicle, you need to make sure which direction your trip is from Jambi City. It helps you to pick which company of public transport service correctly. And it also helps you when you catch the public transport service not in their official ticket box which it means you will pay cheaper for its ticket price.

Here is some stuff about public transport service in Jambi City and commonly in Jambi Province.

• Ojeg is a motorcycle which acts as a taxi and it can have only one passenger. There is no official tariff rate for this very common type public transport so you need to ask (and haggling) to the driver how much the price for riding you from you are at now to your destination place. Make sure you do this thing to avoid a dispute with the driver.

Ojeg with extreme loads

An expat on ojeg

• Angkot is mini vehicle that is modified to load (normally) 11 passengers. There is official tariff rate for every trip route of angkot. You have to ask local people around you which one is correct angkot to ride you going somewhere. In Jambi City, usually angkot turns their music on so loudly, so loud enough to make you have headache.

An angkot in a traffic

March of angkot at main terminal of Jambi City

• "Travel", a special term to refer to vehicle armada that being used and operated by local transport companies. Normally the company have structured tariff rate, they give you transport services to ride you all around the province or to other provinces. Commonly, the vehicle types are MPV (like Toyota Avanza or Daihatsu Xenia) and mini SUV (like Toyota Kijang) but sometimes a company launches special armada like Toyota Fortuner to attract consumers.
• Engkel or elf, is a kind of larger "travel" with same services as "travel" do.

A "travel"

Another "travel"

An engkel of elf

Rear view of an engkel or elf

• Ketek or pompong and speedboat are special transport utilities. Since Batanghari River is still suitable to be transport medium, ketek and speedboat have big role as main transportation in areas that connected with the river. Ketek or pompong is a small and traditional skiff boat with single small engine (sometimes people still use rows instead) and it can load only a few passengers while speedboat is called for a larger with modern engine boat that can load dozens passengers. Official tariff rate is normally applied to speedboat.

A ketek or pompong

Another ketek or pompong

"Speedboat" in a row

"Speedboat"