Batam delivers thrills (and a spill), and an adventure of a lifetime
Ahmad Razlan Alias slipped on his helmet and fired up his 110cc Honda Beat.
“You guys stay here. I’m going to go get Iman,” he said.
“Haris, hang tolong bawak Aqif (Haris, please bring Aqif).”
As Razlan, better known as Lan, peeled off into the direction of the first exit of the Bundaran Simpang Barelang roundabout in Kibing, Batu Aji, in Batam City on the island of Riau in Indonesia, a million questions were swirling in my head.
Was Lan’s eldest, Amirul Iman, 19, okay? Was he hurt? If he was, how bad? The biggest question was, could Lan find him, amid a sea of motorists, on a moonless night, with no idea where he was? This was like looking for a very, very small needle in a very, very huge haystack.
Earlier, the five of us on four bikes were on our way back to our hotel in downtown Batam when we lost visual of one another taking this mother of all roundabouts. Two bikes had gone one way, while the other two went another. In the ensuing confusion, we received word that Iman had taken a spill.
“How did he get the message out?” I asked Aqif Firdaus, 15, Lan’s youngest.
“He messaged the family group. He says he’s okay, just hurt a little bit.”
I heaved a cautious sigh of relief. ‘Hurt a little bit’ sounds optimistic. The fact that he got the message out means that he is conscious, lucid, and most likely, ambulatory. In the absence of other positive indicators, this was great news.
About 30 minutes later, a call came in from Lan. Iman was a little banged up from the fall, but was otherwise unhurt. “We’re on our way back to the hotel. Hang bawak Aqif, Haris.”
I rogered in the affirmative and climbed on the bike. Aqif was the backseater and navigator on this hop. I handed my phone over to him to work out our route back to the hotel.
In my three years of riding, I had only carried a pillion twice. This would be my third. The first two times were in broad daylight, and in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, which, while daunting enough, was relatively easy. However, nothing can prepare you for riding in Batam, at peak hour, and at night.
The thought of being responsible for someone else’s life other than your own, is sobering. You can no longer twist the throttle with carefree abandon. You can’t flick the bike around and change directions like a housefly. You had to make small, steady, controlled inputs, no sudden moves. Everything had to be deliberate, carefully thought out. Jerk the throttle or the handlebar around like a hoon, and the weight in the back could suddenly shift, upsetting the delicate balance, and send us headlong into a multi-axes tumble. Kacang, lah.
So, off we went, into the dark of night. The hotel was still roughly 10km away and we were in the heart of the main artery in Batam. At peak hour. The first leg of the journey to the end of Batam – ‘Kilometre Zero’ in Nongsa Turi – had been a constant battle between unyielding trucks, cars, and motorcycles, and potholes that popped out of nowhere. But that had been during the day.
Now, at night, the dangers are compounded. Under ‘ideal’ conditions, I struggle even to lane-split. This was far from ‘ideal’.
Hazards were coming at us left, right, front, and back, constantly. You had to have your head on a swivel. A second’s lapse in concentration, a moment’s hesitation, could be disastrous.
Progress along the main drag was slow. I was being super cautious. But the minute we turned into one of the secondary roads, traffic eased off considerably and I could open up the throttle just a tad.
The second I dropped the sidestand down in front of our hotel, I heaved an audible sigh of relief. Still no sign of Lan, Iman, and Pravin Menon, but our last comms indicated that the chicks were on their way home.
First to arrive was Pravin, followed by Lan and Iman a few minutes after.
Pravin said the traffic was so heavy at the roundabout that he found himself being boxed in and could not follow us to the second exit.
“I have never seen anything like this bro,” he whispered, exhaustion heavy in his voice.
“Nothing can prepare you for this,” Lan chimed in. For context, collectively, Lan and Pravin have 53 years of riding experience between them.
That night, we sat around over a bountiful dinner of biryani and murtabak, and laughed and joked about our little adventure in Batam, and ribbed Iman for ‘popping his motorcycle cherry’. No one said it out loud, but everyone was thankful that he was okay, and had been the beneficiary of some warm and helpful Batamians.
Batam had been a whirlwind of sights, sounds, and experiences, a welcome sideshow to Singapore a few days earlier. Tomorrow, we’ll be making our long trek home. But tonight, we’re just thankful to be alive.
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