Ok. I arrived in Bali today after a mini road trip from Jakarta.
If you’ve been here or in the region you’d be familiar with the number of motorcycles and scooters on the roads.
Anyway, there are tons of bule (foreigners) here. Many ride scooters and motorcycles. Helmets are ‘optional’. Many riders are not wearing helmets but are wearing Covid masks (not masks to block out pollution). When I ride I generally use a helmet. It’s much safer.
Why would one be more afraid of Covid than having an accident on the motorcycle? Helmet or mask? Helmet for me.
Nice place to be. I used to live in Jakarta for a few years about 15 to 20 years back.
Even then I started wearing a pollution mask while riding, because the soot that those old crappy trucks and buses put out is unreal. I rode a motorcycle from Jakarta to Jogja via Bandung and back, and of course motorcycles aren't allowed on the toll road, so it was back shitty roads with all the trucks, and my face was black from the pollution.
Anyway, first choice there is wear a helmet. And a good helmet if you can find one.
More importantly though, make sure your little brother is wearing his rubber helmet -- there is incurable antibiotic resistant strains of gonorrhea and chlamydia that goes around those parts -- nevermind the herpes and hiv. All of which would worry me more than covid.
I haven’t been to the night spots in Jakarta for a couple of years now. But man were they fun! And it’s Ramadan so they would be quiet if open. But the rubber helmet point is spot on! This was all highlighted as far back as the 70s in the song Surrender by Cheap Trick.