Aussie Paul. 

I am still shaking from that video. I spent too much time in SE Asian, working on various projects. On one project, I was in Central Java for 6 months, and as a means of relaxation, I bought a 10 speed bicycle. No helmets or anything like that in those days, but I had a bright orange T shirt and terry towelling hat.

Now, in Indonesia, there is a hierachy on the roads. The slowest is the Ox cart. Then the pedestrian, then the local cyclist. The motor cycles with 5 or 6 people on them vies for the next ranking against the Suzuki mini van loaded with up to 15 people. Then comes the private car and the large trucks grossly overloaded with whatever they are carrying at the time. Finally comes the Inter-city bus. They consider themselves King of the Road, and sit in the middle doing 100 km/h or more and don't move over for anything - even a fully loaded cement truck or another Intercity Bus. They seem to get paid by the number of trips they can do in a day. They use their air horns - all the time. It is 33 years since I was last there but when I hear the BARP of an air horn I cringe.

All this ranking seems to work reasonably well - everyone knows their place on the road and they generally stick to it. If there is a Suzuki van unloading people or cargo on the edge of the road and another car comes along, he will have no qualms about forcing an oncoming motorcyclist (or lower ranked object) off the road and keep going himself past the van. All this comes unstuck when a white person (an Orang Putih) gets out on the road on a bicycle. His ranking is higher than a car because they know that if they hit him they are in deep doggie doos, and 95% of them used to realise at the last moment what they were forcing off the road and they would take evasive action. Not that I was insisting on my rights - no way - I was always looking for an escape route into the nearest rice paddy. I said 95% of them, because the odd 5% used to either not realise or not care. The issue was to determine if this car coming towards you was in the 5% or the 95% group...

I did quite a few km in the time I was there. The last Sunday, I left very early and headed out to circumnavigate the 10500 ft volcano which dominated the coastal town where I was living/working. I managed it - 145 km trip with a climb to 7500 feet above sea level and then lots of drops back to about 6000 feet but of course climbs back up again. Water was the main problem on that trip. I had just one little bottle which I got refilled a few times, but leaving in a few days, I didn't want to take a bug, so I resorted to drinking warm/hot sickly sweet lemonade from crates left in the sun. Ugh! I paid for the drinks, but it was not nice. The final run down the hill back to town was fast although I still had to watch for the oncoming traffic doing the wrong thing.

In retrospect, it was probably suicidal to even thing about riding a bicycle over there, but at the time it seemed right. I explored many different places, coming back to the house we lived in from different directions each time One time, I even finished up riding through an army base. I was waiting for the HALT command, but I think that an Orang Putih on a bicycle would have been too much for them to explain to their superiors. There was an ASEAN conference up in the highlands one weekend. As I came into Saguling (where it was being held), all the school kids were lined up on the roadside to welcome the delegates. Seeing a 'Delegate' arriving on a push bike brought the whole town undone. Ultimately I had to get off the road for the incoming ASEAN delegates as they sped by in their air conditioned limos. Similarly, the Harley Davidson club had a rally up there and came along the road riding 8 wide across the full width of the road. Except they had to move over to allow an Orang Putih to keep riding the other way.

Was I mad? Almost certainly, but gee it was fun whilst I was doing it.... Would I do it again if possible? You betcha...