Crossing the road in Nusa Dua
Nusa Dua, Bali, Saturday 2 June 2012
Crossing the road here in Nusa Dua is an art form. When speed limits seem to be a foreign concept and a pavement is a luxury, a pedestrian crossing is unheard-of. This place is not designed for crackpots like me who enjoy walking places. It’s hardly surprising then, that getting from one side of the street to other requires a healthy dose of patience, an ability to judge speed and distance that would rival Mark Webber, a certain degree of agility, and nerves of steel.
Every second car here in Nusa Dua is a sky blue ‘Taksi’, but the majority of vehicles are scooters. The scooters wing along at a cracking pace, often riding three abreast, tooting their horns, and taking no prisoners. The cabs, on the other hand, cruise when they’re looking for business but zip along if they have passengers. They’re not so courteous as to use the time-honoured method of illuminating their light when they’re free, so it’s down to you to judge their speed. Then there are the trucks and vans, the hotel minibuses, and the (very) occasional private car. As a consequence, you have to negotiate two lanes of traffic, but multiple on-coming vehicles, moving at irregular speeds. It feels as if it’s a real-life version of a 1980s video game that we used to play. I’m also pretty certain that if you misjudged the speed of the taxi in the lane closest to you or the scooter trio on the far lane, they wouldn’t attempt to stop or slow down. Tourists don’t win enough points here.
Oh, and don’t forget that whilst you’re doing this, you’re probably standing on a verge that offers you a few centimetres of foothold or you’re jumping down twelve inches of kerb, the cruising taxis are asking you if you want to ride, and horns are sounding everywhere so that you’ve no idea if they’re bibbing each other, you, or both. All of this is to get to path that’s marginally better than the uneven, potholed one, punctuated by steep drops whenever it crosses a cross-street, that you’ve been attempting to walk until it ran out. That’s if there were a path at all.
And no, I don’t want a taxi.
