20 miles is a long way when travelling in.
Indonesia…
After making it through the Soekana International Airport in Jakarta, and finding my son, or rather , he finding me.. I thought good oh.. only 20 miles to his house….. that won’t take long……..Wrong!!!!!!!
We will just wait here and the driver will come and get us said John…. I looked at the masses of cars and wondered however John would know which car was his… They all looked the same to me, all 4 wheel drives and silver or black in colour.. Don’t worry he told me , the driver will find us… I was starting to sweat again, but not from the heat….it was the sweat of fear…
Here he is…… quick get in… in we got, now it won’t be long I thought foolishly… The breakneck speed and sheer volume of traffic had me gasping for air…How long will it take to get home I asked.. Oh it will be a little while said John.. The driver smiled into the rear view mirror, he must have been thinking I was a bit naïve.. I was barely able to look outside the window.. if we weren’t going breakneck speed amongst millions of other vehicles, we were stuck in a traffic knot, there didn’t seem to be any traffic lights, or police traffic controllers. It was just first there first through, buses going up on footpaths, scooters with whole families on board, hurtling towards us, beggars running madly in between the traffic, little children , no more than three years old, running throught the traffic… I watched in horror at all this…We will be lucky to get there in one piece I thought to myself. The scooters , incidently, have the right of way and can chose which side of the road to go on, there is hell to pay if anyone knocks a scooter.. Amazingly none of the cars seemed to have any dents on them. Damn good drivers is all I can say…
After about 2 hours, I asked how much further it was, about halfway John said and added that it was lucky it wasn’t not peak hour… Hmmm..I was glad I didn’t have to have a toilet stop as this would have been impossible . There was no way to get out of the throng of traffic. May as well get the kindle out and have a read I thought… Finally after 5 hours, we pulled into the driveway, oh what joy.. the family all waiting and smiling, it was worth the hassle. I would have a month to get used to this new way of travelling before going back through it all in reverse….