Fueling up in rural Indonesia
A warung is a small, usually family-owned, shop in Indonesia. These warungs line the streets of Bali. Some are like convenience stores, some offer laundry services, some are like restaurants, some sell art, and we even saw one that was an art supply shop. Most often warungs are very simple, but sometimes they can be a little fancier.
And quite a few of them sell 1-liter bottles of petrol from little wooden racks on the side of the road.
There are relatively few petrol stations, at least as we’re used to seeing them, in the Ubud area. These are usually only in larger city centers where they sell petrol for around 6,000 rupiah a liter (about $0.49 a tthe time of our visit, which worked out to about $1.87 U.S. a gallon).
But there are none of these stations once you get away from the town centers, so many of the roadside warungs sell petrol in bottles from these little handmade stands. Sometimes these shops are mechanics or motorbike repair shops, but most often we saw these racks set up just outside the door of a warung that also sold water or soda or snacks.
When we visited, the warungs sold the bottles for 7,000 rupiah, and they hold somewhat less than a liter of petrol — so we were told by one of our drivers.
But my favorite aspect of these petrol warungs is the high incidence of Absolut (vodka) bottles re-purposed as fuel delivery devices.
Although some vendors will use just about any old bottle they can find.
None of our drivers in Bali ever needed to fuel up from a petrol warung while they were on the clock. But in Cambodia, well that’s another story.
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Header Image: A petrol warung in Bali. All images from the author’s collection.