Fatlo.af

To say that the drivers in Penang are casual is a slight understatement. Noone really worries about little things like speed limits or road rules they just tend to do what they want. Its quite a fun experience even to be the passenger.

The road’s are quite good in Penang, there’s plenty of little korean made car’s to go around and hardly anything bigger than a 4 cylinder exists. This is because there aren’t exactly highway’s in Penang, its not big enough. There’s lots of hills and cramped mountain passes to keep people entertained.

The road’s themselves are divided into lanes, but are more of a guideline than a recommendation. You only travel in them as a courtesy to others and that doesn’t have to happen all the time. Mostly lanes are there as a reminder that the road does actually support two cars side by side than a road divided by an invisible barrier that travel between can only be granted with the use of such amazing technological feats such as an indicator. In actuality indicators are used as weapon’s, daring other drivers to pass when one has it turned on. Having it on doesn’t mean you are going to move into that lane, rather its a warning that at sometime you may need to move there and that anyone behind you has been warned of this and that they shouldn’t move there.

It is a fairly smooth symmetry on the roads though, people drift around to accomodate one-another and it all goes fairly well. Buses do what they want and bikes dodge death on a minute by minute basis as they travel anywhere where there’s a space for them to fit. All in all a process which requires little on the part of the taxi driver except to maintain speed and not run into anything stationary.

Its all fun stuff really, if I had the ball’s to drive on the street’s here I wouldn’t have a clue where I was going so I’d be more of a menace than the people that live here – and thats saying a lot.