I AM THE DANGER! IMPRESSION OF A MOPED TRIP ON BALI

Max is a RISER AMBASSADOR and shares his motorcycle experiences on the RISER blog with you. Follow him on RISER APP, check his routes and stay up to date on the latest recommendations! The other day Max was on his way to Bali…

“It’s dangerous you say? … I AM THE DANGER!” But the understanding laugh does not come and also my girlfriend does not find me funny. “Excuse me. I am tedesco.” No, I can’t save anything with that either, I’d better shut up. To ride a moped in Bali you don’t need a driving license and obviously no humour.

Living at the limit in Lombok

I now have 125 cc between my legs, allegedly, maybe more. The device is homemade and I now really am the danger and full of it.
The roads are sometimes built between, sometimes directly over, sometimes under potholes – that is, the asphalt is missing. Lombok is still in its infancy in terms of tourism and infrastructure. There is hardly any public transport network.

That’s why everyone from the age of eight has a moped here. To read that – and even more so to see it as a pedestrian – appears negative only at first glance. Actually, the opposite is true: it’s a dream come true. As soon as I step on the gas, I am part of this very un-European traffic flow and it’s awesome. It’s as easy to understand as a smartphone for a small child – it’s totally intuitive. Driving is left, overtaking right, honking is discreet to draw attention to itself when overtaking, four mopeds, two cars, a bus or truck, side by side, with 50 km/h, fit to the width of a normal road in the city.

Bali – the travelling roller coaster

On Lombok the roads are small, whereas later on Bali, however, the whole south is almost a city and that becomes quite exhausting when it comes to driving. But on Lombok, this is much better, because it’s fortunately Bali’s less well-known sister, and moped riding with my Indonesian devil is wonderful. There are few intense, but always short sections, which run nestled to the coast, sometimes through the hinterland, sometimes wind over a hill. And because of the scenic differences, every three to five kilometres a completely different scenery opens up, and sometimes even a beach like in the South Seas travel catalogue awaits you. A deserted place.

Lombok is for connoisseurs, a unique constant overland driving, a deep, long breath. Slow food for the eyes and for the moped.
Bali, on the other hand, is an attempt to jump on a moving roller coaster. The danger is right, left, “oh God, where does he want to go now”, better not to turn around because they come from everywhere, “we have to turn there”, “ouch, my shoulders”, “no, you just squeeze the blood out of my flesh”…

Better, so we’re out of Ubud now, and I’m switching on RISER next – and then I have to think of some way to put it into words. “Look, the first rice field and back there the volcano is already looking out of the landscape towards us.”
Driving a moped in southern and northern Bali is as different as day and night – and Lombok is a dream.