Picking the girls up from school

Jan 12, 2011 – Riah's entry

I'm driving from the village of Sayan on the western outskirts of Ubud, Bali, to the village of Sibang Kaja to pick Chloe and Ava up from school. I am not writing and driving, though, because I have drifted in to the Lifestyle of The Rich and Famous and our family has hired Wayan, a personal driver with a car.It was pretty clear after our first drive in Bali that, in spite of having international driver's licenses, Alex and I have no desire to use them. The whole situation on the roads seems like something that would take a lifetime to to understand. First, they use a right hand drive which is confusing in itself, although not a deal breaker. Ultimately it's the rules of the road that are baffling. Cars, motor bikes, bicycles, street vendors wheeling their trolleys, pedestrians and an assortment of farell dogs, chickens and children playing share a road that in Canada would be considered one single lane.

The road to the school takes us down bumpy gravel roads, onto a more flat road (my typing just improved immensely) past rice paddies, through deep jungle ravines, past several markets, and often past a ceremonial procession. It's the courtesy that is so striking. Wayan waits patiently for a truck to make a three point turn, almost anticipating that the driver will need extra space. He slows on a single lane which is hardly wide enough for his car (a Toyota Avanza – seven seat car reserved by Toyota for the Asian markets and only slightly larger than a Pontiac Vibe) and the two men on a motor bike coming from the opposite direction direct him to pass safely. The motor bikes swarm past and he slows to make sure they don't come to harm in the maneuver. And people politely tap oin the horn of the cars as if to say gently “I'm here”

The roads seem to be analogous with the scale of everything here which is smaller than we're used to. The people are short stature (the men are about my height) and the physique tends to be trim and strong. I have seen only a few overweight Balinese and, sadly, mostly these have been young girls. The smallness seems to extend beyond the people to low buildings, narrow roads, small dogs and cast, the smallest full-grown chickens I've seen and small cars. I suppose that it also extends to Bali itself which is 60 by 90 miles and has approximately three million people. So maybe that explains why we in North America tend to be much bigger. Bigger people, bigger cars, bigger houses, even bigger dogs and cats all fit into that massive, relatively uninhabited land mass, particularly in northern Canada where you drive for hours without seeing anyone .

I can imagine when our 6' 4" friend and his 6' 2" teenage son visit they may feel like Gulliver visiting the Lilliputians. The entire scale is just so different. 

Now I'm arriving at Green School to pick up Chloe and Ava and will post these entries when I arrive. We'll let them play for a while and then head home to our house on the side of the river valley and listen to the cacophonous sounds of the wilderness punctuated with motor bikes and even, if we're lucky, a gamelan practice.  Definitely a different world...