Back in 2004 my wife and I went to Bali on our honeymoon. My wife is fascinated with volcanoes, so we went to visit the massive Mount Batur, an active volcano in the middle of Bali, that last erupted in 1973.  All around the caldera there are various restaurants overlooking the inside of the volcano.

The volcano is so large that the far side of the caldera looks like a distant mountain range and there is a large lake in the middle.

Since volcanic soil is so fertile, the inside of a volcano is densely populated and heavily cultivated.

The Balinese are Hindus, and as such are quite fatalistic and feel that their fate is in the hands of the gods and as such they give scant regard to the danger of living in such a place.

Back in 1974, when I was 17 and visiting Bali for the first time, I met up with some guys that I had first met in ( what was then ) Portuguese Timor. We were all renting motorcycles to travel around the island. The road rules in Indonesia are more of a suggestion rather than law and the people renting us motorcycles didn’t care if we knew how to ride the bikes or not.  No licence was necessary, no helmet was supplied, and if needed, one would receive about two minutes of instruction in the empty lot next door.

Later on that day when I returned my motorcycle I saw a few of the guys that I’d bumped into in the morning and they told me about an accident one of their party had been in, that day. Apparently their friend had been making a turn and didn’t realise that when you are riding a motorcycle that you should lean into the turn and he smashed his bike into an agricultural ditch by the side of the road, breaking his neck.  As soon as the others had seen what had happened to their friend they stopped their bikes and ran to his assistance.  He was unconscious, so they tried to flag down some passing motorists, but nobody would stop.  So they blocked the road and asked the driver of the first car they forced to stop if he could help them by taking their friend to hospital.  The driver said that it was the god’s will, and it was their friend’s fate that he should die that day, and he refused to help them.  They pleaded with the driver but he refused saying that he did not want to interfere with the will of the gods. Left with no other option, the guys grabbed hold of the driver and threatened him with a beating if the he didn’t take their friend in the car.

All the way to the hospital the driver complianed that it was bad luck to help injured people.

When they got the hospital they were told that there was nothing that could be done for their friend as there was no one there with the training to deal with such an injury. The parents of the injured man were called in Adelaide, Australia and told of their son’s plight. Their parents immediately rang Qantas to find out about flying their son home, and they were told that they would have to buy tickets for five first-class seats to put a stretcher across and hire nurse to fly with him.

I didn’t see those guys again after that day so I don’t know what happened to the injured man. Back in those days, I thought I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof, and I never used to give any thought to my safety or the consequences of some of the stupid things that I did. 

These days, I travel with travel insurance