The First Step Away From the Land of Birth.

Right. So last week I was in Bali for a holiday; one planned over a year ago. Now, I’m not going to be talking about sights and food and whatnot; you can go look for some crummy tour guide or something for that sort of stuff. What I’m going to talk about is something that I feel for on a personal level, and that is the culture there, or rather, the difference between theirs and ours.

First of the differences is the traffic culture. In Malaysia, people use their honks in a sort of ‘get out of the fucking way’ kind of way, where if someone is slow to respond to a green light by more than a second, other drivers behind will start blowing their honks away, never relenting until their temper has been cooled. Which may be a good 100 meters later. That, or they use it in a ‘do you have mud for brains?’ way, where it used the same way a short fused bugger would be scolding another for some mistake someone made. In short, Malaysians use their honks very aggressively, always scolding people using the honks instead of their own voices.

In Bali, however, things are a bit different. Actually, things are very different if I’ll be honest. There, people use the honks in a ‘hey, notice me’ or ‘look out, I’m coming through’ kind of way. The way it was meant to be used, if I may say so. I’m not saying that they don’t use aggressive honking over in Bali. It’s just that, it is so much rarer. As a result of all this though, you hear the honks almost every minute there, but each time you hear it doesn’t make you feel guilty of committing some sort of offence or like the guy who just sounded his honk needed to spend seven centuries in burning hellfire like you probably would here.

Let me give you an example.  Imagine a narrow road with only one lane going in each direction and there is a fast car coming behind a slow lorry. In Malaysia, the driver of the car will drive up next to the lorry when the opposite side is clear and honk while showing the finger through the window, before speeding up and actually finishing the overtaking manoeuvre. In Bali, when the driver of the car sees that the coast is clear on the opposite side, he sounds the honk, which catches the attention of the lorry driver, who notices that someone wants to overtake, who then proceeds to slow down and drive a little closer to the edge of the road so that the car can overtake a little easier.

Now, there are a few things that I’m unsure of, first of which is if this kind of driving style is an Indonesian or strictly Balinese style. I am also unsure if this driving style is the result of the narrow, single-lane roads that I described above which make up most of Bali’s traffic network. What I’m sure of is that people should drive like how the Balinese drivers do. I don’t know if drivers in other countries drive like they do, but those in Malaysia really should learn to do so.

That aside, many other things remain similar to Malaysia; the flora, the fauna, the food, the architecture, the lack of a nightlife, and probably most important to some, the cutthroat prices that helps one sharpen their bargaining skills.

And on that bombshell, adieu to y’all.

P.S.: You may notice that I’ve changed (finally) the background picture. This is because ImageShack is a completely incompetent shit that loses uploaded images and when you ask them to try to retrieve it, they make you go through useless and troublesome procedures. Since I’m sick of seeing a blank background I decided to get another, but because this setup of mine doesn’t not have Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator installed because I’m too poor (and lazy) to get another copy, I’m unable to make my own and thus shall resort to the raw materials provided by Capcom.