Balinese Traditional DanceSo this is from the Ubud Writers Festival street party. It was pretty small, but lots of fun for a short time. Some dancing and some reggae and some people doing monologues from their books they've written. This was after a photo exhibition in some flash resort, which was pretty impressive, especially one artist who had seemed to be a pretty conservative muslim girl, but had gone into a maternity ward in the Phillippines and photographed women having children. Needless to say the photos were rather dramatic.
But before this, I had rented a motorbike and drove up some volcano to see the volcano within that volcano which also had a lake beside the inner volcano. On the way there I happened to come across a rather informal police stop. After a very thorough check of everything the police could think of we came to the international drivers license. Of course I don't have one, so was informed that I would get a two million rupiah fine. But the friendly police man then says, 'well if you help me, then I help you'. *WINK* *....ie, asking for a bribe....*. Hmm I was really unsure what to do here. Police corruption is a terrible thing and obviously paying a bribe is only supporting this further. But on the flip side this is Indonesia where such cases as the Schappelle Corby drug smuggling case got here a life sentence. So the police man then says, maybe two hundred thousand rupiah should cover it. I'm like 'no..'. He then points out the two millions rupiah fine again, and so I reluctantly, mainly because I couldn't think of an alternative quick enough, said 'one hundred thousand' and flicked him the cash (in the most un-secretive I'm giving a police officer cash for no good reason way).
He was only too friendly on the way back, waving me right through the stop and tipping his hat to me...
Man bribes are bogus.
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