So, we meet again after my ‘short’ hiatus (if you call more than 1 month is short LOL). To be honest, I lost my inspiration for what information to write about and I have not enough motivation to translate another folktale, though there are some I have my eyes on already.
Anyway, this time I am writing about the transportation and its general system and law in Indonesia. This topic came up because I just extended my driving license and I feel like this is quite an interesting topic to talk about. Also because I just binge watched old T*p Ge*r clips and laughed my ass off because of them.
As there are quite a lot I’m planning to cover, I’ll divide this topic into a few posts. For this first post, I’ll tell you the names of transportation and vehicles commonly used in Indonesia. I will not, however, cover about the heavy machinery, because I don’t have adequate knowledge on that specific detail. I will also focus more on the land transportation modes, especially regarding their types and laws, as I am in no way familiar with how to learn to drive water and air transports or even how to get their license.
While I was watching T*p Ge*r, the one thing I notice is how versatile the range of vehicles those three can drive. I honestly do not know where can one learn to drive vehicles other than cars and motorcycles (and bicycles) and how can one receive their driving license in Indonesia, except by going into a pilot school or the military. I’ve always wanted to fly at least a helicopter ever since I watched one particular D*tective C*nan Movie….
Anyway, let us start!
As with anywhere in this earth, the transportation modes in Indonesia can be divided into three big categories: land, air, and water. Our water transportation modes are especially various, as Indonesia is an archipelago and has a large water body. Each region, or even each tribe, might have a slightly different ship model in accordance to their tradition and needs.
I’ll start with the names of the air ones, as my knowledge of it is the smallest. The only ones popping into my head right now are airplane and helicopter, to be honest ( ͡❛ ₃ ͡❛). For helicopter, it only has a small alteration as the Bahasa Indonesia word for it is helikopter; almost the same spelling and the difference in pronunciation because of our accent.
For airplane, or aeroplane, we call it pesawat terbang or simply pesawat. Some might also say kapal terbang or pesawat udara, though the former is not commonly used and the latter is mostly used during the flight by the cabin crews. Just for your information, by itself terbang means ‘flying’, udara means ‘air’, and kapal means ‘ship’.
Next, we have the water transportation modes. The most basic are kapal, which means ‘ship’, and perahu, which means ‘boat’. As with their English words, kapal is generally bigger than perahu. And as I’ve said before, each region in Indonesia has their own unique ships and boats, such as Kapal Pinisi or Kapal Golekan Lete or Kapal Tongkang. Along with these traditional ships, we, of course, possess more advanced ships, such as submarines, war ships, ferry ships and cruise ships. In Bahasa Indonesia, a submarine is called kapal selam; literally a diving ship (selam means ‘diving’). Whereas a ferry is called kapal feri (not much difference there) and a cruise ship is called kapal pesiar.
We also have other water transportation modes, such as sekoci, or sampan, or rakit. According to the energy used to power the ships, other than the usual machine that uses diesel or gas and motor, we also have kapal dayung (using human power via oars), kapal uap (literally ‘steam ship’, which uses steam power), and kapal layar (literally ‘sail ship’, which uses wind power via its sails).
Right, on to the last mode of transportation: land. This is the topic I am most knowledgeable of, though by no means it is a complete or even a lot of knowledge. Well, anyway, according to the driving licenses obtainable, the land transportation modes in Indonesia are divided into three big categories: cars (which needs an A driving license), heavy and big vehicles (which needs a B driving license), and motorcycles (which needs a C driving license). There also exists a D driving license for vehicles designed for people with disabilities. Currently, other than driving license C and D, the A and B driving licenses are further divided into two: the private one (perorangan) and the public one (umum). Whilst the C and D driving license only has a private one. Also, I’m pretty sure things like military tanks or the likes need their own licenses which are limited to those in the military.
Anyway, I’ll explain more on the next post about these driving licenses. For now, let us see the names of these land vehicles.
I’ll start with some heavy machinery. Admittedly, we don’t really have special words for those and mostly use a variation of that word in another language. For example, a truck is translated as truk and a tractor is translated as traktor and a bulldozer is translated as buldoser. One of the machines that is called unlike its word in English is the crane, which we call derek or mesin derek. Though nowadays, we sometimes use their English word or brand as is because we don’t know whether they have an official name in Bahasa Indonesia or not (or simply because the Bahasa Indonesia word is longer); for example, we call forklifts as a forklift, and not as mesin pengangkat barang (which is so much longer).
Shifting to the smaller ones, a car is called mobil; a motorcycle is called sepeda motor or simply motor; a bicycle is called sepeda. For the public transportation, we have bus (read more like ‘bis’ and means, well, a bus), taksi (a taxi), ojek (like a taxi but with motorcycles and usually have a fixed rate), angkot (an abbreviation of angkutan kota which means ‘city transport’, usually has a yellow body with green underside and commonly uses a modified Mitsubishi Colt), bemo and bajaj (which are three-wheeled vehicles, though bajaj tends to be smaller), and becak (a rickshaw) or the modification of it, which is bentor (literally an abbreviation of becak ‘n motor) to name a few.
For inter-city transportation, aside from cars and buses, there are also kereta api (trains). Some trains do run locally inside a city, but we don’t use them that much. In Jakarta, and Palembang I think, we also have MRT, LRT, and KRL, which is like a metro or subway system, just not underground. I don’t know much as I have never been to Palembang and the last time I went to Jakarta they didn’t yet have these, so there’s not much I can tell you about these.
Beside those, we also have some land transportation modes that uses animals, horses mostly. Though in the city, they are more commonly used for amusement purpose rather than for transportation. The one that can be found most easily, especially around tourist attractions in Jogjakarta, is dokar. A dokar has only two wheels and is pulled by one horse only. On the other hand, another one called andong has almost the same appearance but it has four wheels instead of two and can be pulled by either one or two horses. Another word that can be applied to these two is delman, which some said to be the original term used to refer to any cart pulled by horse(s).
These traditional land transportation modes don’t require any special driving license, I think, as they do not use any machines. Well, clearly, I only know much about cars and motorcycles in Indonesia, though car more so than motorcycles as my mother never allows me to drive a motorcycle by myself (teenage trauma perhaps).
Anyway, that’s it for today’s post. Here’s a conclusion:
Airplane/aeroplane = Pesawat terbang or simply pesawat
Ship = Kapal
Car = Mobil
Motorcycle = Sepeda motor or simply motor
Bus = Bus
Train = Kereta api
Taxi = Taksi
Rickshaw = Becak
For the next post, I’ll tell more about cars and motorcycles in Indonesia, especially regarding the laws surrounding it (and maybe about the traffic law too if it’s not too long).
Fingers crossed I have enough motivation to do that ᕙ(^▿^ᕙ)
Until then~
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