SOUL SCRIBBLES

My friend and I will be in Bali next week. This will be our first trip to the Indonesian island this year but the seventh in the span of three years. When we told friends that we are heading out to the island yet again, they were surprised. What else is there in Bali that we have not seen? We have visited almost all the tourist attractions on the island, but this has not stopped us from making more trips there.  Our decision to go again is not influenced by the republic’s “Wonderful Indonesia” tourism campaign. I must say that the Indonesian tourism authorities have been aggressive here. I have seen their huge booth at the Food Truck Festival in Putrajaya last February and have also watched and listened to their commercials on the Express Rail Link (ERL) whenever I go to the administrative capital.  And, I believe their investment is paying off. In the first two months of the year alone, 726,625 tourists were in Bali, with Malaysians being the seventh largest group after tou...

Ridesharing services are not new in Malaysia.  I remember way back in 1970s when I was growing up in Johor Baru, they were called kereta sapu or prebet sapu. You share rides with passengers into town in private vehicles. You hail these cars at bus stops (somehow you know how to identify these cars). It will also drop you at the nearest bus stop to your house, not to your doorstep. It did not replace the public transportation services back then. Rather, it complemented them as buses were too few and too far in between. Taxis, too, were scarce.  The services died a natural death when the public transportation sector improved. Some people still used the services to send their children to schools when school bus services were unavailable in their housing areas.  These days, the ridesharing services have taken glamorous names like Uber and GrabCar. You can book these door-to-door services via an application on your mobile phone. Rates are a little bit lower than a metered b...