Ten days ago, I hired a bicycle (well it looked like one anyway). There was air in the tyres and it had handlebars! I had moved about 50metres from the shop when I realized that this was the bicycle from hell – but hey it was cheap. At about $1 a day, how could I complain if it went sideways, and the chain kept falling off…. I did actually go back and ask Wayan to attach the brakes!
The pushbike was my first foray into being mobile on the streets of Kuta. I highly recommend cycling around Kuta, to anyone who needs to get their adrenaline pumping or the heart rate up.
At one point, I asked a Balinese friend for directions to Legian. “Go to the end of the gang (lane) and turn left: it’s easy”. I got to the end and turned left, but all the traffic was hurtling towards me. When I cycled back and complained about the wrong directions, she just laughed at me and said “But it’s okay. You’re on a bicycle – no problem!”
A couple of days later, I threw caution to the wind, and swapped the bicycle for a motorbike. Now this was really living! I wobbled away amidst the potholes, listening to calls of “hati, hati” from the locals, who were all watching me nervously, but with expressions of great amusement.
I found myself driving along, muttering expletives very loudly, over and over again: this was like one very long bungy jump!!! It wasn’t just the balancing, and the fact that I had never driven a scooter/motorbike before – it was also the fact that the streets and lanes of Kuta are full of potholes, dogs, children and people. Not to mention the other traffic, which weaved around me constantly. If 2 or 3 motorbikes were coming towards me, the riders just calmly swung past me – on either side! I had no idea if I was meant to drive on the left or not – there seemed to be a rather ‘free for all’ attitude towards driving – I just stayed in the middle! I was shaking like a leaf when I finally dismounted.
Actually, once I had stopped quivering, I decided that it was actually fun. Within a short time I was off again, trying out my newfound skill. One problem though, was the wing mirrors – big disadvantage – I could see all the traffic bearing down on me from behind! On the pushbike, I had been blissfully unaware of the chaos that I was causing….
The reason for hiring the motorbike, was that I was due to begin a 3 month stint as a volunteer in an office in Denpasar. But riding a motorbike to Denpasar every day? Could I actually do it? I’ve seen the hordes of motorbikes all beeping their horns and jostling for position at the intersections - how would I cope?
I had an idea. A couple of practice runs so that I could try to understand how to cross major junctions; avoid dogs in the middle of the road; go round carts and ponies; and generally get the feel of being a ‘bikie in Bali’….. I asked my friend, Ketut, to ‘guide’ me to the office, on a trial run.
Believing that the roads would be quiet early in the morning, I asked him to meet me at 6am at the front of my hotel. Quiet at 6am? Wrong. Other obstacles to be contended with, were the swarms of children going off to school, also on bicycles and motorbikes. (I had forgotten how early they start school here). These children all looked as though they had been to circus school! Behaving like stunt riders, they weaved and darted in and out of the traffic, sometimes on two wheels, often just on one – at the same time as holding hands with a friend alongside them.
How on earth was I to get to Denpasar without killing at least one of these young acrobats?
We made it, but Ketut said that it usually it took about one third of the time that we did this morning. He had also been slightly frustrated, by the fact that I had a tendency to slow down, or even stop at junctions, whenever I encountered fast moving traffic blocking the road that I wanted to enter.
He complained “You drive like that, you cause accident. Nobody understand what you do.”
“Don’t slow down or stop. Just keep going, they won’t hit you”, he said.
Of course, most of the time that’s true. From the footpath, the driving looks rather chaotic, but in fact when in the midst of it all, there appears to be a kind of rhythm and form.
