Regular shipping and trade activities benefited from those periodic changes brought on by monsoons. The monsoons blow calmly along the Straits of Malacca, not interrupted by the Sumatra highland and the Malay Peninsula. Traders usually benefited from the northwestern monsoon by voyaging from Malacca to Riau, Johor and Batavia (in Java Island) and then to Makassar (in Sulawesi Island) and to the Spices Islands (the Moluccas or Maluku). They used the route from Malacca to the Maluku Islands along the east coast of Sumatra, the north coast of Java (Banten, Jakarta, Cirebon, Gresik, etc.) then to Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, Makassar and the Maluku
islands. But they could also use the trading route via the southern coast of Kalimantan to reach Makassar.8 The voyage from Makassar to the Maluku islands was made by following one of two routes. The first route is available during the northwestern monsoon of October–December.