I was travelling into the center of nowhere in the province of Riau in Indonesia's island of Sumatra.
But I'm not going to write about the purpose of travel just yet, instead I'm gonna write about the journey itself and the experience and feeling I've got along the trip.
I was travelling there around the Ramadhan, the biggest festive for Moslem around the world, and Indonesia off course as the biggest population of Moslem.
In Indonesia we have a tradition of homecoming to our city of origin during the big festive religious seasons, Christmas for the Christians, and Ramadhan for the Moslems, no matter how rich or how poor you are, it was just a custom for everyone.
Usually during this period, all the tranportation mode will be fully booked, and pepole will manage their way to go out of big cities as Jakarta, with any means of transport.
Being one of the weakest country in public transportation in the world, you can imagine how hectic to manage the traffic during this festives, while tens of million of people is going to one point to another, especially in the island of Java, with more than 100 million of inhabitants.
One of the strucking facts that I saw myself was that , million of people travelling hundreds of kilometres by motorcycle, and most of the time it was overloaded with more than two riders, plus bags, box, and whatever they bring with them.
During this periods they actually risking their lives by riding many many hours, competing with cars, vans, big busses, and even some trucks to make their way back to their cities. What an unfair situation where you have to risk your life for this trips, where actually they do it for the respects to their parents or elders, but yet again, they could loose their life doing so.
Every year hundreds of people killed
during this two weeks period, by road accidents, which logically will happen with this kind of poor arrangement
The minister of industries may be proud with the whatever millionth production of motorcycle, but for me, this is a living proof of government failure to provide mass transportation for their people, both for interstate and for daily commuting.
nothinboutme 