This is a world with very few regulations. Traffic and driving is the subject for an entire dissertation. The rules of the road seem to consist of just getting to wherever you're going as quickly as possible. Passing other vehicles is constant, and on the narrow roads we end up spending a high percentage of our time in the path of oncoming traffic. Multiple passing is frequent; as we are passing a slow moving truck, a scooter will be passing us. Vehicles doing the same thing are racing towards us simultaneously. At the very last minute, everyone tucks into their correct lanes and we are all fine. Passing when cresting a hill and having no idea if someone is coming at us is hair-raising.
Then there are the motor scooters. There are a gazillion of them, and they whiz by in swarms, passing, weaving, and occasionally just riding on the side of oncoming traffic (if there's no room on their proper side). Motorcycles and scooters are the primary mode of transportation, and all the business of life is conducted while hurtling down the street on these two wheeled vehicles.
Miraculously, it does seem like there is a concept of helmets, but not for children who frequently ride along with their parents... school aged kids, toddlers, and babies. Roger saw a woman breast feeding yesterday, no lie. Four people to a bike is common, with a toddler in the front, head propped against the handlebars, sometimes sleeping, and another one in the arms of the woman sitting side saddle in back. And the bikes are used for commerce. We drove behind the bike of a balloon vendor the other night, bringing his wares back home, surrounded by a bubble of inflatable paraphernalia about six feet wide and seven feet high, a tarp flapping around it, and his own body completely enveloped. We saw a guy carrying a 12 foot long pipe on one shoulder. We saw suckling pigs in pannier cages. Entire vending stalls are carried on the back of bikes. The degree of danger and resourcefulness is staggering.
Our driver, Made 2, listened to our stories about traffic tickets, greeting this weird new idea with a mixture of disbelief and amusement. Just no such thing in Bali. Not even close. If a policeman stops you, it's not because of an infraction. It's because he wants to stop you. And he'll go away if you give him 50,000 rupiah. A policeman will stop a car full of tourists just because he thinks the driver is getting paid well enough to kick back something in turn. It costs money to become a policeman, the equivalent of $25,000 US dollars. That's a lot, even for us, but for someone in an economy with a median annual income of $3500 (in our currency), it's nearly prohibitive. Made 2 just laughed and said that's why they ask for money from everyone, to try to make up for how much it cost to become a policia in the first place.
The construction of our house, which was very beautiful, was completely erratic. Changes of levels everywhere. Steps of a wildly inconsistent height. Electrical outlets with weird inconsistent logic that we had still not figured out after a week. There was a three inch drop in our bathroom right in front of the sink. It took us days to train ourselves not to step backwards after brushing our teeth because falling backwards on the hard floor would have been, well, a bad way to end the vacation.
So how do I feel about all this? Well, it makes me realize how many regulations we have in the United States, for starters. We have a LOT of laws for some things... and not enough for others. While we were gone, we heard about the tragedy in Colorado Springs, and a day or two after we returned, the shooting in San Bernardino occurred.
How to deal with all this? I have to say that, as much as they restrict us, I am very grateful for most of our regulations. There is a reason, unfortunately, that earthquake casualties are so high in certain parts of the world. The standard of construction is just higher in the states. And regulations sure come in handy when dealing with things like sanitary food preparation.
But, truthfully, I did not yet seen any sign of an accident in Bali in a week of being driven around a lot, nor did I see much body damage on the cars. Dogs wandered across these whizzing streets of chaos (leash-less of course), and managed to survive. (At least some of them.) Our driver said that people just work together in this process of driving. They don't believe they own the road, or that they have any more rights than anyone else. He said they are not... and searched for the word... arrogant. There seems to be an understanding that everyone is doing this together and that it's not in anyone's interest to start owning your piece of the road.
I can see how restrictive and interfering all the regulations are on our daily lives. It takes a whole machine to create, enforce, and litigate a society with so many regulations. It makes us a world of office worker bees, pushing paper and collecting fees. It bloats us and is, in many ways and on many levels, oppressive.
In the end, however, I don't think it actually ends up being about regulations vs non regulations at all. If suddenly all road regulations in the US disappeared, I have a hard time believing that it would work as well in the States as it does in Bali. I think we are too attached to our sense of ownership over our own personal driving rights. We hum King of the Road as we lay on the horn and flip off that asshole who dared to pass into our lane. We are individuals, and our right to get to our very important meeting is far more important than your right to get to yours.
I think it's about a bigger picture. I think that when people are more or less on the same page as a culture, as a cluster of humans living in the same region, with the same goals, then the rules and regs are not as necessary to keep order and sanity on the streets. I am beginning to believe that even the most sophisticated of gun control laws cannot eradicate the hatred and fear that is behind all of the unspeakable violence we have been witnessing.
In Bali, it's absolute chaos. But it kind of works. Amazingly... unbelievably... it kind of works. We could learn a lot from that.
More to come.
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