23-OCT - Wed - Traffic “a la Indonesia”

Traffic rules in Bali are completely different from what we know them in Australia. One rents a scooter, if one is not foolish enough of renting one without ever having ridden one, and thinks that’s it. Luckily these two lads have Italian traffic blood in their veins and were prepared for what is absolute fun, when you do it responsibly. As one rides in a straight line, there will be cars and scooters pulling right in front of us, at the last minute. Anger and frustration have no place here, as Indonesian traffic rules clearly say one must give way to any traffic popping up in front of you. But as the main roads are often congested by taxi drivers proceeding at snail pace and honking each and every tourist, trying to get business, scooters are the preferred means of transport and whilst observing traffic from a café, one realises they are like wasps or flies swarming in and out of cars, suddenly appearing in mass, to only disappear again in matter of seconds. On a congested road, as a scooter rider, we have learnt the local’s way to cope with it! You try and squeeze your way between the footpath and the standing cars and keep riding along. If there is not enough space, switch to the incoming traffic lane and make your way forward disregarding the incoming traffic, whilst there is enough space for said incoming traffic to pass. If the space is tight for the standing cars, you travelling on the incoming traffic lane and the incoming traffic itself, pull tight against a standing car; wait for incoming traffic to pass and proceed as normal, only to repeat this step each time you need to. If both these techniques are not working for you, ride onto the footpath and proceed on your journey, till traffic movement allows you to pull off the footpath back onto the road. Traffic lights, the few there are, again have to be looked at a bit lighter than the clear cut Western perspective. Some traffic lights have countdowns, alerting you when they will switch to red or green. If one is standing at a red traffic light, cars, trucks and scooters will start accelerating and moving out of the intersection anything 10 to 5 seconds before the red light is actually due to turn. Vice versa the crossing traffic will keep travelling through the intersection 2 to 5 seconds after the light has switched to red for them. You can imagine a bit of caution is required when crossing an intersection… It even gets a bit more complicated when one intends to turn at an intersection. We are used to turning traffic having to give way to people travelling straight through the intersection: not so in Bali. As one is intent to cross the intersection and cross a lane to turn right, as the traffic light goes green, it is quite normal to accelerate and cross the intersection straight away, as the people travelling straight will slow down and give way (as per the Indonesian rule that any traffic popping up in front of you has right of way). Alternatively if traffic is a bit too slow for your liking, as you are turning right, don’t select your lane but rather ride into the incoming traffic lane, against traffic for a while, till you find a clear spot to merge across to the correct side of the road. Whilst we are on the subject of turning, as it seems both Indonesians and tourists alike do not master the use of indicators on scooters, these are constantly left flashing, even miles after one has actually turned (cars thank God have the automatic indicator re-set in the steering wheel). Therefore there is a bit of confusion as to if the rider ahead of you is actually intending to turn or just forgot to take the indicator off. But not to worry, a solution has been found. When on a scooter and wanting to turn, not only put your indicator on (or have it on all day long), but also wave your hand indicating you are going to turn that side. And the overriding road rule is: If a road user is getting too distracted and not noticing your approach, quickly honk! Not an angry honk, just a quick beep alerting them you are there or behind them or approaching, it works a treat! The funniest traffic situation we have encountered is absolute grid lock at a smaller intersection, with hundreds of scooters wanting to turn into every and each way, mixed with cars and trucks. But as per the above traffic rules, it can become chaotic, as scooters are progressing on the incoming traffic lane, turning into incoming traffic lanes, riding on footpaths, squeezing themselves into car spaces to let a truck through and occasionally, as we witnessed, it becomes completely jammed, as people have left not an inch of space for any traffic to move. The result is a complete traffic lock down, with honks going crazy and scooters and cars pushing their way forward millimetre by millimetre. As we finally made it to the centre of the intersection, it was amazing to see how one needs to manage his way forward! It was like solving a puzzle of scooters: “You move your front wheel into there!”; “I incline my scooter to the left, whilst you push your foot forward!”; “Move back a bit, so I can put my scooter forward!” all done in gestures, nobody getting angry, the occasional laugh at the mad situation! But it worked; we got out of it and rode happily into the sunset, having succeeded in another day of absolute fun on the roads of Bali!