Ojek to paradise

It's very peaceful inside the house, in the Kampung, away from the road and freeways. I spend my first morning soaking up the sounds and glimpses of sights, my senses overwhelmed by the prospect of the sprawling city beyond. But I would feel stupid sheltering inside all day and in the late morning I head out the door, along the gang to find Adet at the corner with the road.

Last night Jo arranged for him to take me to Menteng for a massage with her fabled masseuse. Adet saw me before i saw him - i must look conspicious! He springs to his feet and approaches. We hop onto his bike and edge out into the traffic along the congested potholed lane. Adet weaves in and out between the cars and bajajs. We use either side of the road but his movements are calculated and cautious. Soon i start to feel familiar with the traffic and can anticipate our moves. A month of weaving my push bike through Yogyakarta traffic has helped me understand the unwritten rules of Indonesian traffic.

Soon we are on the major roads and freeways, but we never go above sixty. Alongside us cruise young guys riding pillion and chatting incessantly, young veiled woman with office shoes, cool dudes on slick Japanese bikes with pretty girls clutching them tightly and old men with baseball caps on beat up bikes. As the freeway opens up people zoom by us. A family of four - man, woman, child and baby - zip by at eighty. When the traffic congests the motorbikes swarm through the empty spaces like an incoming ocean tide along a rockshelf. The narrow strip between the left lane of traffic and the kerb become a thoroughfare for the bikes and when it congests they take to the footpaths weaving through the warungs and pedestrians. They ride up, over and down the pedestrian bridges that span the freeway - it seems there a few places off limits to the ubiquitous motorbike.

Like other riders, Adet doesn't like standing still for long and often we are moving across rather than along the road. And all the while as we move through the city people are out everywhere. Young women selling fruit at roadside stalls, goups of men drinking tea at warungs, young longhaired dudes with guitars ducking through the traffic to solicit coins, old men with old bicycles loaded to bursting points with sacks of who knows what, groups sitting under tarpulan shelters on the freeway median strip making music. Through my tinted lenses i see them and dig them all.

to be continued...