Bike rental Bali
750.000 rp per month for automatic 110cc bike
SIM C license at Poltabes police station, Denpasar
Yellow premium fuel for 8.000 rp/L
Cheap & easy
Renting a scooter/bike in Bali seems pretty easy. Expecially for me, since the office arranged my rental bike! Last Monday the bike was delivered to the office, a Honda Scoopy 110cc automatic bike. For 750.000 rp per month I can go wherever I feel like going!
SIM C license - Poltabes police station
You can rent a bike without a driving license, the rental companies don’t care if you are allowed to ride a bike or not. However, without a valid license you take the risk of a fine. I have been told that the police regulary stops western people, assuming they are tourists, to check for their driving license. For this reason I arranged a Indonesian bike driving license (SIM C). Also here the office helped me out a lot. They made an appointment with a police officer in the police station Poltabes ( Jl. Gunung Sanghyang No.110 Denpasar).
Poltabes is an enormous police station with several buildings where the police officers barely speak English. With a few words and hand movements I was able to make clear that I needed my driving license, and they were able to point me in the right direction. In case you are curious where you have to go for the driving license: When you enter the street on the left side of the police station, go all the way to the end, take the right and there you will find 70m further on the left side the gate to the building. There is a sign that has written SIM C on it.
I paid 700.000 rp for my licence, which is a lot more than the official price. However, I doubt it if I would have been able to arrange the license without paying the bribe. Since the officers speak verry limited English, and the written test is in Bahasa. For 700.000 rp I just had to walk in the office, go straight to the photo room, my picture was taken without any waiting time. Right after this I had to hand in my paperwork downstairs at the printing office. Not even 2 minutes later my name was called and I had my driving license handed over. I felt kinda bad about it since there were lots and lots of people waiting for their license to be printed, and I could skip the line because I paid a relatively huge amount of money.
Yellow and blue ‘bensin’
You can find fuel basically on every corner of the street in the Denpasar area. You can either buy fuel at a fuel station, or bottled at little shops along the streets. Whatever you call it: fuel/gasoline/petrol, in Indonesia they call it Bensin. At first I was a bit confused at the Pertamax fuel station, I could chose between a blue and a yellow fuel. Apperently the blue one (10.000 rp/L) has a higher octan level and thus higher quality. The yellow one is cheaper (8.000 rp/L) since it is subsidised by the Indonesian government. I noticed that people use in general the yellow subsidised bensin. Instead of filling up the tank and see how much you have to pay (as we do in the Netherlands), you have to tell the assistant for how much rupiah you want to buy bensin. My colleagues told me that you can fill your tank nicely for 20.000 rp.