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Re: Thinking?
By:Freethinker
Date: Monday, 1 November 2004, 4:32 pm
In Response To: Thinking? (EBW)

When I was in Singapore, everything was tidy and the streets were orderly. In fact society was so ordered that the best description I have ever heard of Singapore is: "Disneyland with a lobotomy".
When I was in Indonesia, there were many traffic incidences. Two that stand out was seeing whole families on one moped. It was not uncommon to see three or four sometimes even five!
The other was the bus system there. We got on one once and needless to say with three small kids I was frightened. There was an elderly lady and the bus didn't completely stop when someone needed to get off. It would just slow down a bit and people would jump off. One elderly lady was pushed off. But they had mercy on us foreigners and actually stopped so I could get off with the kids. Phew. The way the bus driver knew that it was time to stop was someone hanging on to a driver side door would hit the top of the bus a few times with a rock. At times of the day when it was "rush hour", You could see buses with the windows down and around each window frame someone hooked their arm around to catch a ride on the outside of the full bus. To add to that, it was not uncommon at these times of day to see one or two people hanging on to the person hanging on to the person hanging on to the frame on the outside of the bus.
There were no lanes, no stop signs and the streets were confused with budgi's, rickshaws, taxi's mopeds, private cars. It was chaotic to say the least.
Once i had to take the kids to a hospital. Djakarta's hospital was without walls and cats wandered in and about the facility. Phew! That was some trip. The scariest trip was a boat ride, but that is another story.

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