Motorbikes and ferries (and buses and trams)

Seeing as I've had to turn up unwillingly for work today instead of being halfway to Larantuka by now (I'm joking of course...) I thought I'd post a few more photos of yesterday's harbour activity (there ain't a lot else to take photos of in Maumere except a huge black pig that snuffles through the rubbish but I never seem to have my camera with me when I see it).

Everybody (well, almost everybody) here has a motorbike. Private cars are very much a rarity and most four wheel vehicles are either government owned (easily identifiable as they have red number plates), public transport of one form or another, or commercial vehicles. A traffic jam consists of motorbikes, not cars. In Maumere I can think of at least five places where I could go to buy a new motorbike where a brand new version of my Honda MegaPro 160cc would set me back about Rp19.000.000 or just under €1400 but I can't for the life of me think of one place where I would buy be able to buy a car.

Yesterday at the harbour, there was a shipment of new motorbikes being unloaded, one by one, and being driven off to their new owners.

 

 Meanwhile, elsewhere in the harbour, this ferry was arriving from one of the outlying islands ready to load up and depart again.

And, at another pier, these ferries were completing loading and were about to depart. Note the passenger with the cockerel in his left hand near the back of the boat in the first photo - he leapt aboard just seconds after I took this.

Finally, this one is not from Maumere ! While not wishing in any way to detract from the seriousness of the recent Dublin Bus & Luas accident in Dublin city centre, I was amused to see the advertisement on the side of the bus involved in the accident. (Click on the photo if you want to enlarge it.)

Thanks to Grahame N for pointing this one out to me !

   

On the road !

On Wednesday afternoon, I received an SMS from the VSO office in Bali (this is how most communications take place in Indonesia) to tell me that my motorbike had left Bajawa (another town on Flores) that morning strapped to the back of a bus and that it would be with me on Friday of this week. I was therefore rather surprised to get a phone call that same night to tell me that a motorbike had been delivered to the UGD (A&E Department) in the hospital - just eight hours after leaving Bajawa ! I went up to claim it and eventually got it started (it's some time since it has been used).
Yesterday, I took it to a local bengkel (motorbike repair place) with a pre-translated list and had the following jobs carried out :

• Tyres pumped
• Rear brake pads replaced
• Electric starter switch replaced
• Battery topped up
• Clutch adjusted
• Horn fixed
• Oil changed

Total time involved : about an hour and a half - total cost (including parts and labour) Rp72,500 (less than €5). On the way home I purchased two new rear view mirrors for a total of Rp40,000 for the pair.

I am used to the idea of labour being cheap but it is hard to understand how a pair of rear view mirrors can be made, packaged, shipped, wholesaled and retailed for less than €3 and still allow a margin to be made at each stage ! How much would they cost at home, anybody ?