I live in Balikpapan, Indonesia, and I ride to work most of the time, except on heavy rain. Working place is about 12 km away, and I can reach it in 30-35 minutes time in the morning.
Going home is longer, I ride at night, it is uphill, and to avoid long turn around, I need to cross a main road on pedestrian crossing, so I get off the bike. Obviously I put lights on my bikes, often in flashing mode and I will reach home after 35-40 minutes.
I have two options for the bike, one is a 700C road bike and the other is 16" folder. I rarely use my folder for commuting, but it comes out handy in the rainy season, it happend few times my wife drives me to the office with my folder on my car trunk, and I ride the folder later to go home.
I can chose the route to commute, and I tend to avoid steep climb.
No bike lanes here, so cyclist mixed up with everything else, cars, motorcycles, carts and rickshaw etc. Like everywhere, traffics are dense and crowded in the peak hours, and roads are not nice. I have to aware of potholes, motorcycles, sudden stop and go taxis, parked cars, street vendors,...etc.
We have British style traffic, so cyclist suppose to ride on the left most side of the road space. But riding on the most left side we have to be aware of motorcycles, especially in the double lane roads with separator in the middle, a lot of moto riders were ridding against the traffic to avoid U-turn !!!!,...sure it is illegal, but you will not win unless policemen are around,.....