Stay Safe in Bali

I've been asked to write about possible ilnesses and accidents in Bali. Of course it is true that in Indonesia and overall in South East Asia there's many kind of ilnesses and possibility of accidents that aren't that usual e.g. in Europe. Still I want to stress that anything can happen anywhere so worrying too much about safety is the worst thing you can to do yourself.

I've been living in Bali now for over three months and nothing really bad hasn't happened  to me. I've hurt my legs for a couple of times but that could've happened in Finland also. Sure, some of our exchange students have had severe injuries or ilnesses that have made them to go a hospital but everything has been fixed. In the end Bali is pretty much safe place (compared to some other areas in South East Asia) as long as you keep your head clear. Still, there's a list of things that you should be prepared for when you come here.

Bali Belly is the first thing that should be mentioned about sicknesses in Bali although it's almost never dangerous to your health. It may take some time before your stomach can stand spicy food and in overall different kind of foods and that may cause some stomach problems. Normally they go away in a couple of days. Symptons may feel quite rough at first but normally rest is enough to make you feel better. If situation doesn't get better, you can get some medics from a pharmacy. A food poisoning is a different thing and possibility for that is of course in Bali as in any other place in the world. Normally people are first too afraid of what they're eating here. Most of the warungs (little food places) and restaurants are completely safe but of course it's good to check that everything that you're eating seems to be fine. That way you'll avoid problems pretty surely. If you get a food poisoning, you may have to go to a hospital.

Tropical diseases. It's easy to prepare for most of the tropical diseases already before coming here. You need vaccination at least for a hepatitis A (and B) but vaccinations also for typhoid and Japanese encephalitis may be a pretty good choice. There hasn't been much of malaria recently in Bali but in other parts of Indonesia it's more common. You can buy medication for malaria also from here (and you can also get vaccinations here if you want to do so). Then there's some diseases like dengue fever for which you can't prepare in any way but they're pretty rare and there's a good treatment for example for dengue.

Animals go a kind of into a same category than tropical diseases so let's discuss about them next. Mostly the animals of Bali are harmless and some of them (like geckos) are really interesting at least in my opinion :D Still it's true that there are a few critters that you may not find in your home country. There's some poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions but they're pretty rare: I've only seen tiny spiders and a couple of dead scorpions. In the sea there may be sea urchins, jellyfish or even sharks (the last are really rare). I've encountered with some small jellyfish while surfing but luckily their stings aren't dangerous, only irritating. Bali and Indonesia in overall have tried to get rid of rabies, there's still probably some dogs, bats or even monkeys that have rabies. Stray dogs are pretty usual here but they're not dangerous even though they might seem and sound like that. As long as you're not getting really close to them, there should be no reason to be afraid. Of course if you're worried about rabies, you gan get a vaccintion for that also. In overall I wouldn't be really worried about local animals. Most of them are interesting and from those that are not, most are only irritating (like flies and ants).

Traffic accidents are probably the most usual cause for accidents among our students even though I've been saying that the Balinese traffic is easier that it may look first. Luckily most of the accidents are pretty minor and they've been cleared without going to a hospital. Unfortunately there has been also some severe accidents which have cause a little bit longer trip to a hospital but students have survived from everything here so far. The most important things are to 1) always wear a helmet, 2) drive safely and 3) never drink and drive. Taxis are here so cheap and easy to get that there should be no explanations for drunk driving.

Alcohol poisonings (or luckily in this case only one poisonin) have been in news headlines during this week. Last week there was one really unfortunate situation where an Australian girl got so sick from her drink that she had to be flewn to Darwin where she got the best treatment and is luckily okay now. The problem in Bali is that there are some bad quality versions of the local liquor Arak (those versions are made home) which may contain methanol which is extremely dangerous. A drink with methanol may kill or make you blind. I don't want to underrate the severity of previous incidents but I still want to remind that there's millions of portions of alcohol served in Bali and almost every one of them are safe. You should be safe as long as you hang out in the big bars and nightclubs which have to keep their standards really high - although anything is unfortunately possible here. I haven't had any kinds of problems but I've also been pretty sure every time about what I'm drinking and I haven't left my drinks out of my sight even for a second. Of course if you want to be 100 percently safe, drink only liquids that are served in a bottle... Or then don't drink alcohol at all :)

Drownings are one thing that many travel guides warn about when coming to Bali. It's true that waves may be here sometimes really big, upstream may become really strong and there's not many life guards at beaches. Still in my opinion it's pretty easy to avoid even the danger of drowning. Always be sure about how much you can swim and always keep the shore in your sight. Same thing applies when you're surfing. There should be no reason for swimming really far away from the shore. So, be sure you can swim back from where you are and avoid strong upstreams. It helps if you're not surfing or swimming alone.

Natural catastrophes like earthquakes and tsunamis are possible in Bali as in almost every part of South East Asia. Still, Bali is in a kind of safe zone, meaning that there hasn't been any really bad disasters for a long time. There's also two active volcanoes in Bali but the possibility of dangerous eruptions is really small. It's almost impossible to be prepared for natural catastrophes and the possibility of them is so tiny that there's no reason to worry about them. If something happens, the most important thing is to follow the governmental instructions.

I really hope that all of our students can avoid violent situations like fights in the middle of a night but yeah, they're the last thing that I also want to notify. From my own experience I can say that some of the tourists may become really aggressive when they're drunk so it's really clever to avoid the groups of drunken people who you don't know and who seem to be in an aggressive mood. I hope that it goes without saying that you shouldn't try to pick a fight with the local people. Violent robberies are really rare here, instead of that there's unfortunately really many pickpockets who are intrested in your belongings.

So yeah, even though there's many different categories, I still want to remind you that in my opinion Bali is a really safe when thinking about possibility of ilnesses or accidents. It's been even surprising for me how normal the life is here. No big problems or anything that should be really afraid of :) But yeah, it's good to know about the possibilities. I hope they stay only as possibilities also in the future.

Traffic in Bali, Part 2

Alright, this is the post that I've been planning to write for a long time but all the other subjects have been more urgent so far. Finally, now I have time to go deep into the fascinating world of Balinese traffic. Before I try to describe the situation by words, I want to remind you about this great video which is made by Aleksi and which I've already once posted to this blog in the beginning of this semester:


The Kerobokan Getaway Bali 2013 from Aleksi Laitinen on Vimeo.

Although the video is awesome it may give even a little bit too easy impression about the Balinese traffic. The picture tells more than thousand words and the video does at least the same trick but it's still almost impossible to capture every part of the completely chaotic traffic in one video. And I of course would have chosen some hardcore punk or heavy metal for the video because those kinds of songs describe the local traffic much better ;) Of course it's good to remember that the traffic even here isn't chaotic 24/7. Especially in the northern Bali it's actually quite fluent and easy. Also one really important point is that Balinese people respect each other in traffic and try to avoid all kinds of accidents. Same kind of solidarity couldn't be found for example in Sumatra.

Still in my opinion every future exchange students should be prepared for a culture shock that's provided by the crazy traffic here. First it may seem completely insane but you adjust to it pretty quickly if you just want to do that - and you probably will because driving a scooter is by far the easiest and many times the only way to get from a place A to place B here. And because of that I tried to create some kind of list about the most important things to know about Balinese traffic.

1) The traffic is left-handed. This is the most basic fact you have to know about Balinese traffic before you can think about anything else. Luckily it's pretty easy to remember because the traffic is left-handed in the most parts of Asia and because it's hard to drive in the wrong side of the road when there's other vehicles driving in the right side all the time and you probably don't want to crash with them. Still sometimes there's short moments when I forget to think about the traffic as a contrary version to Finnish traffic. So yeah, try to remember all the time that you're driving in the left side of the road and so is everyone else (at most of the time at least).

2) The rules about giving the way (and who can drive first) are pretty unclear to say at least. Firstly, there's no "give way" or "yield" signs in any junctions to indicate the correct order of giving the way... Or yeah, actually I've seen one "give way" sign! Unfortunately no one cared about that. Secondly, the same "nobody cares" situation applies to STOP signs even though you may see them sometimes at the junctions (not too often, though). Nobody stops at STOP sings. So yeah, thirdly (partly because of the first too points) it's often completely mystery who has the right to drive first. Normally someone just makes the first move and then everybody follows the best way they can. That's why I advice you to be very observant at the junctions and make your move when you feel safe to do that. Normally you'll notice the right moment pretty easily. I haven't had any big problems at the crossroads so driving safely is the key to the success. Sometimes the police is at the crossroad trying to guide the traffic but usually they're only able to make things worse.

3) The traffic signs seem to be mostly just recommendations. As I already mentioned about STOP signs, nobody cares about them and the same situation applies to almost any other traffic signs - especially to speed limit signs. There might some 60 km/h signs on the sides of the bigger roads but almost everyone is driving there at least 80 km/h. I have no clue what's the normal speed limit at the city area and I bet that neither do most of the local drivers. The easiest advice about speed limits is to drive with that kind of speed that you feel comfortable to drive. The common sense is the best guideline here to any situation in the traffic.

4) The obeying of traffic lights depends on the situation. There's a lot of traffic lights in Bali and pretty often they are also obeyed... At least some way. It's pretty usual that everyone runs a red light at least during the first five seconds after the lights have turned to red. That of course lead to the situation where you can't start driving immediately after the lights have turned to green because there's still vehicles driving in front of you. The other pretty common custom here is that if the driver is turning to left, he will continue driving even though the lights are red. Especially taxi drivers run a red light at the night time and sometimes also in the middle of the day. That all being said I remind that you that you should never run a red light here because it's really bad violation of the traffic rules and you may be fined very hardly if you get caught. Of course the even more important reason not to run a red light is the fact that you may easily get into a bad accident by doing that.

5) You can't trust the police. As I've already mentioned in this blog, the police is really different here than in most of the western countries. Many of the policemen are corrupted and that's why you can't trust them same way you can trust them in your home country. Every time I'm driving here I just hope that I won't see any policemen because there's no certainty about what they want from you. Some of them are really nice and just want to keep the traffic safe but some of them are corrupted and want to get money from you even though you wouldn't have done anything wrong. If that happens, the easiest way is just to give money to them. But don't give them that amount they're asking first. Normally they may want even 500,000 RP (~30 euros, ~50 dollars) which is way too much if you haven't done anything wrong. Normally the amount of 50,000 RP (~3 euros, ~5 dollars) is enough and policemen are satisfied with that. Still, I want to remind you that being caught by a policeman won't happen to you every day if you drive normally. I've been driving her for two months and policemen have stopped me twice. First time they just wanted too see my driving license and they were really surprised and happy when they noticed that I can speak a little bit Indonesian. The other time wasn't that successful but I didn't have to pay more than 50,000 RP.

6) You can drive almost everywhere with your scooter. Most of the Balinese roads aren't designed to hold so much traffic that they have to nowadays. That's why there's pretty bad traffic jams on the roads almost all the time. Some talk about special rush hours (during mornings and afternoons) but from my experience I would say that the traffic jam may hit at any time of the day (most probably not at the night). The good news for a scooter driver is that with a scooter you can survive from almost any imaginable traffic jam. In Bali scooter drivers almost never stop at the traffic jams or drive with as much as space as cars (from example in Finland the rule says that even with a scooter you have to have as much space as a car has). So with scooter you can drive between cards or pass by the car from either side you want. You can also drive on a pedestrian way if you can't get forward any other way. Even while waiting at the traffic lights scooter drivers try to manage their way as front as possible by passing by all the cars that can't move anywhere.

 

7) Many road are in a very poor condition. Indonesia is still pretty poor country and that is easy to notice from the infrastructure. There's not much money to make the condition of the road better so there's a lot of cracks, holes and rocks on the roads. During rainy season the water can sometimes pour on the roads. Because of the money issues there's not any ramps even on the biggest road of the southern Bali (called Sunset Road) so if you want to go to the store that's on the other side of the Sunset Road, you have to make U-turn at the nearest possible place. The traffic signs show you the recommended U-turn points but of course you have to be prepared for the fact that those are not the only places where drivers may do a sudden U-turn.

8) The local driving school lasts one week. I asked this from the taxi driver during my first weeks here and he gave me this answer. First I didn't want to believe him but apparently that's the truth. The situation doesn't get any better by the fact that most of the Indonesian people don't even go to that driving school. They instead just start driving and learn that way. The official age required to drive a vehicle here is 17 years but I've seen many 10-year-old kids driving a scooter.

9) Besides all of this I've told you, I enjoy driving here in Bali. It's still the easiest and, as I already said, many times the only way to get from the place A to the place B. And even though the traffic may sound really rough, dangerous and scary, there's really few traffic accidents amongst our students. I've fallen down once but it was just a stupid mistake that could have happened anywhere. Nothing happened neither to me nor my scooter. As long as you keep your common sense with you, look around all the times and drive safely (and don't drive any faster than you feel comfortable), you should be safe. And yeah, I have to say this: driving here is so much more fun than in Finland. You can drive scooter 365 days per year (in Finland only during summers) and it feels great every time to hop on my scooter.

Traffic in Bali

I guess I've already mentioned the crazy Balinese traffic in a some side note in my first two blog posts. In the future I'll be writing a long story about the craziness of the local traffic but now I'll just tell few basic facts:

1) The Balinese traffic is left-hand.

2) The Balinese traffic seems to have no rules - but it still does! Or that's what my intern colleague Jana has told me even though there's just a very little logic that I've been able to notice. But I believe her and actually the traffic seems to have more and more logic every day. So maybe in few weeks I'll be able to write an article about the traffic so that the future exchange students know more about the Balinese traffic than just the craziness of it.

But anyway, the main point is that everyone must adjust to local traffic because everyone has to be part of it - in most cases they also have to be driving themselves. That's because the public transport here is really weak: no trains and very few buses. So the only good options are either taking a taxi or driving some vehicle by yourself. Almost every time the vehicle is a scooter because it's the easiest one to handle. I would never drive a car here. So there's really many scooters on the road and that causes problems sometimes.

But I'll write a longer text than this in the future. The main reason I wrote this post is because yesterday I got a Facebook message from Aleksi, who's a current exchange student here in Bali via Asia Exchange. He had already made an excellent video about the local traffic! As usual, the picture (or in this case the video) tells more than thousand words, so I don't have to write more about the traffic now, because this great video tells everything that's necessary to know at least now.

The Kerobokan Getaway Bali 2013 from Aleksi Laitinen on Vimeo.

So, really big thanks to Aleksi! This is also a great moment to remind all of you current exchange students that you can send me some pictures or videos (e.g. from your weekend trips from Bali, Gili islands or anywhere else) if you want them to be published in my blog. And you other readers: if you want to know something specific, tell me! You can contact me in Facebook (Juuso AE) or with e-mail (juuso[at]asiaexchange.org).