beep beep
Annie Lin | Thursday, June 3, 2010 at 6:56PM 
Sharing the road with the local water buffalo. (Kuta, Lombok)
In Bali there is a universal language understood by all people and animals called beep beep. It can mean a lot of different things so you have to be careful how you interpret it. It could mean a turn signal, warning to dogs, pedestrians, and/or other cars that a vehicle is passing by, someone is driving too slow and needs to speed up, sign to oncoming traffic that you are not slowing down to let them in or simply saying hello to someone. In many of the villages there are no sidewalks so motorbikes, cars, horse drawn carriages, people, dog, chickens, and water buffalos all have to learn to share the road and beep beep.
It took us a few days to learn the language and after driving around in a motorbike we have become proficient in it. Sometimes I get too eager or maybe nervous with all the traffic and say the words beep beep rather than waiting for Jon to honk the horn.
We have seen some pretty crazy things on the road. One day we were on a motorbike in Kuta, Lombok on the way to the beach. There were a group of water buffalos coming our way. The road was pretty narrow so we had to pull off to the side of the road to let them pass. I wanted to take a picture so I grabbed my camera out of my bag. One of the water buffalos got spooked by what I was doing because he came to a stand still and stared us for a good ten seconds. I thought he was going to ram into us. They were huge animals and if they decided to hit us it would have been detrimental. That set off a chain reaction because some of others got so scared that they would stop and stare at us while taking a poop on the road. After they all passed we had a huge poop pile to drive by. I guess it serves me right for scaring them.
On our way to Lembar to catch the ferry to take us back to Bali we had a very gregarious driver. He beeped every two seconds at someone. He got calls on his cell phone and scream into the speaker while keeping another hand on the horn to continue beeping. Later on he blasted Indonesian music and started singing and dancing. We thought that would calm his road rage but he just continued with his beeping. At one point he came to a screeching halt because a hen and her five chickies were running across the road too slowly and of course that caused another beep. We all just laughed. It felt like we were in the middle of an arcade game and every time we darted an animal or car we scored points. We’ll never forget that car ride.
Another memorable experience was our ride from the port in Bali, Padang Bai, to Candi Dasa. When we got off the ferry we were directed to follow a driver who would take us to our home stay. However, he handed us off to another driver since we were the only two people going to Candi Dasa. We got into a beat-up minivan that had about ten 5-gallon water jugs in the back. I think the man was a water delivery man who wanted to make some extra money by picking up people going his way. As we drove along he stopped to pick up some people. We didn’t know how we were all going to fit since there were only two rows of metal seats along the window and we also had our luggage. But just when you think you couldn’t fit any more people one more hopped on. At one point we had a total of seven adults and one child in the car. The most interesting part was the last two elderly men who got on. They had a bundle of long bamboo sticks and a few canvas bags with them. One of the bags started moving so we thought they were fisherman. I asked the person sitting next to them if they had fish inside the bags. The man said no they had something else. Jon couldn’t really understand what the man was saying but I was sure he said bats. I started getting really nervous since I was less than a foot away from them. I just kept my eyes forward and hoped we would arrive at our home stay soon. When we got off I asked the man again if it was really a bat by flapping my hands. He said yes. Yikes!! We later learned that we were on a bemo, which is Bali’s public transportation system. They have larger vehicles which are called buses.
There are many other stories but these are the highlights of our Indo road adventures. We have gotten used to driving on the left side of the road so it will be an adjustment when we go back to the states.
If you see us on the road please beep at us. It will make us feel like we are in Bali again.
Reader Comments (3)
ooh i forgot to tell you im graduating this thursday 6/11. i wish you could be there <3