Huh? VLOTG, MOTT?

[vifferman]

(Very Little Of The Gear, Most Of The Time)
Yeah, just got back from Singapore/Bintan (Indonesia)/Singapore, and the motorcycling there was an eye-opener. Loved the popularity of bikes in Singapore - saw a huge range of bikes; everything from a Hayabusa and Blackbird through to all kinds of scroters and communtering bikes. Very common are mid-sized bikes such as the CBR400.
Most memorable sights were a guy riding a very nice pearl white Ducati 848 in shorts and jandals, and a guy riding a nice step-through kitted out with aftermarket wheels, expansion chamber, chromed swingarm, etc. While everyone has to wear a helmet, there are no other concessions to safety (unless you count wearing a back-to-front jacket or long-sleeved shirt to keep the wind off).

Indonesia? Total Pharking Mayhem.
Mostly small bikes, many/most people wear helmets, but no other gear. They suffer for it though - had a bike alongside our car with a pillion badly gravel-rashed on her right arm and leg, covered in iodine and very uncomfortable-looking and weeping scabs. Saw people 2, 3 and even 4-up, carrying huge loads, etc etc.

Saw women pillioning side-saddle, and saw very many illegally modified bikes. The common mods are noisy zorst, no number plate, no mirrors, but I saw a few bikes stripped down to minimalism, with no plastics, no airfilter, no flywheel cover, etc etc.
The other popular mods were cosmetic, like the guy I photographed with matching paint colours/graphics on his bike and helmet, and the deluxe Garfield seatcover.

I had to close my eyes a few times, and I was so glad we had a driver in Tanjung Pinang, as there were cars, trucks and bikes going in all directions. The road rules seem to consist of "don't crash into anyone else", as there were only lots of hair-raising near-misses.


Most memorable moment was this underage biker on an illegal bike with his twin brothers (?) on the back, who was overtaking everyone and everything at about 90 km/h or so. No numberplate, illegal exhaust, no helmet for the mokeys on the back. I was sure I was going to see the three of them plastered on the front of a bus or summat...


Oh - we had a very good time.

[phill-k]

Did u do any riding yourself? a blog would be good

[baptist]

scary place to ride, thought it was Queen Street in rush hour for a moment...

Must have beed a very interesting trip though, and a blog or more info would be cool too

[Swoop]

Pic #3. Nice sidesaddle riding position!

Good to see ya back Viff. Sounds like a fun trip.

[vifferman]

No, I didn't do any riding myself, unlike when I went to Rarotonga the other week. Quite frankly, I wouldn't have wanted to. The resort did have four-wheelers and carts to drive, but it was very hot and humid, so I did a spot of archery instead. I was quite pleased - had only done it a couple of times before, and was inebriated both times. This time I got almost all the arrows (many of which were missing bits or bent) on the target, one in the bull, four around it, and 14 in the next ring out.
The elephant riding was scary at first, but OK once I relaxed. Probably hotter than the quads would've been, I guess.

Most of the trip was just relaxing in the pool, by the pool, shopping, eating, drinking, that sort of strenuous activity. The best day in some ways was the day we went around Bintang Island, which is where/when I took those photos. The driver (Jhon) was from Sumatra, and gave us a very good ad lib commentary as he drove, and stopped in interesting places to show us things, like a rubber tree plantation, where the owner was laying the foundations of his house; a fishing village, where one of the fisherman was drying anchovies on grass mats. (He offered us some, but the fishy smell and flies on them put me off). We did stop at another village for a very refreshing coconut (7000 rupiyah, or about a dollar). We were millionaires for a while, with our 1.3meeelleeeons, but the wife spent a cool 0.755 mill on some material in a shop where no-one spoke English and we had only a few words of Bahasa (terimah kasih means "Thank you"), so we communicated by sign language. Judging from the giggles and the conversation we weren't party to, they may have ripped us off, as I found it hard to keep track of the number of metres and number of noughts, but it was still significantly cheaper than a lesser amount of material we bought in Arab Street in Singapore. whatever - the people probably needed the money more than us, which is why we slipped our driver a couple of hundred thousand rupiah...

We had a traditional Indonesian lunch, with spicy crab and vegetable soup, rice, and Gonggongs, which are sea snails. It was a bit surreal, as we were the only people apart from the waitress in a large banquet hall that seated several hundred.

Most of the houses were very shack-like, but there were some mansions that would've put those in our neighbourhood to shame. Most of these were owned by government officials, or wealthy Asian merchants. One of them made me laugh - it was a huge two-storey house, with beautiful ceramic tiles on the outside, including a section depicting Spiderman. WTF?

Here's some randomly selected pix to make this less boring. Singapore Festival of Lights:


Hindu temple:


Slumming it by the pool in Bintan (thing with a roof is one of the cocktail bars):


Sampans (also called "pokopoks" because of the noise the engine makes) and kelongs (floating shacks-cum-fishing rafts):


Meet some of the locals...