Safety

“Aren’t you worried about being safe?”

This must be the most common question I have been asked when I told my family and friends that I will be riding my bicycle across Indonesia. I don’t want to lie and say I always feel completely safe, but if I use common sense and good judgment I feel extremely safe. In fact, so far I have felt safer here than in some places I have lived in the USA.

The most dangerous thing about riding a bicycle are the cars that drive next to you. This is dangerous at home, in the United States, as well as in Indonesia. I can’t control what other drivers do, but I can only do my best to react and try to avoid a collision. This is something that I just accept and don’t think about.

But, usually people are not thinking about bicycle safety when they ask me this question. They will mention in a somewhat mysterious way, "Indonesia is a Muslim country." Then they always remind me that there was a terrorist attack in Bali that killed hundreds of people in the past. This is true. In 2002, there was a suicide bombing and car bombing in Bali that killed 202 people near popular nightclubs in Kuta, an area of Bali that is very popular for westerners. A violent Islamic group was responsible for this terrible tragedy. I don’t have a perfect answer for this question.

Usually, I respond by saying I don’t want to live in fear. If we live in fear then I believe our life becomes a shell of what is possible. If we live in fear we would never visit New York City after September 11^th, we would avoid Charleston, South Carolina because of the recent church shooting, we would not travel to Boston because of the Boston Marathon bombing, or we wouldn’t dare go to Paris, France because of the Charlie Hedbo shootings.  I could list a thousand more examples, but I hope you can see what I mean. Most of us think of course we will go to New York, Paris, and Boston and not think much about it. I have this same view here in Indonesia. However, this is just my opinion and view. I have chosen to see and experience the world. I have chosen to live my life without fear, while at the same time being smart about it and using common sense. The world is huge and I want to see it all. So I am.

So far I have only met good people, with big hearts, who are just as curious about Western and American culture as I am about their Indonesian and local island culture and life. Are there bad people here? I'm sure there are, just as there are everywhere around the world. However, most people I have met so far think very similarly as we do in the USA. They are worried about their work or education, they want to earn more money for their families, they want their children to have a better life than they do, and they are just trying to find happiness with their life.

We might speak a different language, have a different religion, but once you get past these obvious differences, I believe people in the world are very similar.