My first experience outside of Malaysia happens to be Bali,
one of the southern islands of Indonesia and its greatest tourist destination.
It was a holiday that my friends and I have planned for over a year, which was
reason for me to rejoice and despair at the same time; because it was an island
of a neighbouring country which meant a similar culture. Part of me wanted to
go somewhere further to experience cultures completely different from ours,
while another was glad that the similar culture, and language, incidentally,
meant easier communication. Despite the similarities, there are some
differences worth noting though.
First of the differences is the traffic culture. In
Malaysia, people use their honks in a sort of ‘get out of the way’ or ‘what are
you doing?’ kind of way. I’m confident many drivers will agree with me, more
often than not, that the honks will start blowing when someone is slow to
respond to a green light. The same can be said in almost any situation where
emergency braking in involved, be it when someone tries to make a turn off the
main road only to realize he will not make it without being hit by oncoming
traffic, or when someone cuts a long queue when a traffic light notorious for
being red for extended periods of time finally turns green for a mere couple of
seconds. In other words, Malaysians use their honks very aggressively, and
rarely for any other reason.
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 giving the 'I’ll kill you’ look, sometimes even showing the finger, 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.
Then there’s the language. As our history classes in school
have taught us, the first Malays came from Indonesia, who made a stop at
Singapore for a few generations before going to Malacca. So it would make sense
that the language we use today is still very similar. But what I want to point
out is that, sometime in between the first Srivijayan price and the
establishment of the Malay language as a language on its own, the two branched
out into two different paths of evolution, the same way animals would evolve
differently if part of the population of a local specie migrated to or was
transported somewhere else.
To put this description into actual experience, they use
words which we don’t normally do but are aware of the existence of such words,
we are sometimes confused by their choice of words when they speak and we
understand them when they speak but not every single word in a sentence. This
goes both ways I guess, because they would probably experience the same.
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.
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