Trip Through Your Wire

Traveling in Southeast Asia involves some risks to your personal well being – there’s always the ever present upset stomach from something you recently ate, or the nagging colds and sniffles you readily pick up on crowded public transportation. You also need to be very careful when crossing streets or stepping out of transport, or in any way traversing roadways – checking and cross checking traffic in both directions. Sometimes, you have no choice but to move into the fast moving traffic and slowly pick your way across, trusting in the driving skills of those who buzz by you.

 
But beyond these obvious traveling hazards are others that you need to be aware of. These include things you step into, things you trip over, things that potentially fall from above and things that you never ever should touch. These also include the bewildering array of roaming dogs that are allowed to propagate throughout Southeast Asia – so far they all seem pretty docile and scatter quickly with a sharp clap of the hand, but nonetheless, I’m glad we both have our rabies immunizations.

First off are the things you step into – it’s probably best to walk in the street whenever possible because sidewalks are not meant to be walked on – this is where one parks their motorcycle, or sets up a food stall. I ’m amazed at what you see when you walk around – many potential road hazards for a person to insert their foot into or twist an ankle, or worse be swallowed up by an open sewer (why they don’t put barricades around these is beyond me). By no means are these limited to any one country – we’ve seen these examples in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Laos.

Next are things you trip over. In the pictures you can see varied examples of what I mean – so many pipes, pieces of metal, wire stretched over the ground, and so on. Most streets at night are very poorly lit, so extra precaution needs to be taken when walking around after dark.

 

Next are things that you walk into. These include the many signs that are disturbingly mounted on poles at heights below 5 feet – why I’m not sure. Whenever you come to a sign, you need to walk around it since you can’t walk under it – worse, these signs have sharp metal corners, so if you fail to follow the way around you risk scraping off parts of your body on the sharp edges. Also, in this category are the many Romex wires that dangle overhead that people (obviously not licensed electricians) tie into for their power needs. Also needing special attention are the food stalls and their metal corrugated roofs

that have their edges at westerner eye level. If not careful, when

ordering your bakso, you could open a gash on your forehead if you don’t take precaution. For this, I’m glad we have our tetanus immunizations.

 

For those things you don’t touch, I need to mention the many open circuit breaker boxes and cobbled together Romex wire that you see everywhere. I’m not sure how they sort out the PG&E bills over here, but it seems everybody mooches off of everybody else when it comes to electricity. So many wires overhead and at head level, so many boxes with wires spliced together, so many cheap extension cords and lights  tied in everywhere – I have yet to see any wire nuts in use here –

lots of black tape instead. Needless to say, I give wide berth when passing power poles or anything metal that has electrical wires running to or around it. I really doubt if anything is grounded.

 

Next are things that potentially fall from above. There’s a lot of building going on over here and I’m constantly amazed how these people construct 10 stories of scaffolding out of nothing more than bamboo poles. If you’re walking down the street and see this construction going on, immediately cross to the other side of the road and give it wide berth. Hard hats are not used here and they use buckets and ropes to hoist up material, concrete, lumber and tools. I can’t imagine they have any kind of worker logs for so many days without an injury. I routinely see construction workers 5 stories off the ground pounding away with no safety harnesses of any kind is case they slip and fall.

 

Special mention also needs to go to the broken glass that litters the beautiful beaches. Marge and I routinely would fill up a bag of debris when taking a walk on the beach. Why anyone throws an empty beer bottle on the rocks is beyond me.

 

We’ve both been very fortunate up to now, but it’s worrisome sometimes to see these hazards everywhere you turn. Surely the locals suffer the same consequences as the foreigners ? Enjoy the pictures and don’t trip through your wire….