Day 04 / Exploring

Our first view of the island...

Brendan, Andrew and Nick with the locals..

Soccer is everywhere, even in the middle of an island 100 miles off the coast of Indonesia

Typical village living

I'm sure most of these people are somewhat familiar with digital technology, but they still liked looking at the pictures we took of them.

All over the beach were weird patterns (that looked like crop circles) formed by crabs or ants..

This guy carved an entire canoe from a tree by hand

During the afternoon, we all went out and had a session at Burgerworlds. I managed a few waves on my new 6'8 that Brian Wynn shaped for me. It worked great out there because there was so much wave face to ride on and the wave itself was pretty powerful for being such a mellow wave. Everyone hopped out after about an hour and headed back to the boat. Carrick told us Bear was going to head home to spend the night with his family who lived on an island nearby.
Everyone loaded up with cameras, sun screen, and hats. We were the definition of surf tourists. After a 10 minute boat ride Bear dropped us off on the beach of his island. He took the boat back out, anchored it in the bay and swam in to meet us. The first thing we noticed (besides how beautiful the island is) is how friendly the people are. As soon as the young kids who were playing in the lagoon saw us they started waving and all came to say hello. Nobody once asked us for a handout, but there were alot of smiles and giggles and we did hear them call us "tourist".
The village has about 3,000 people living in it. There were a few shops where they can buy clothes and supplies for everyday life. The main road is paved with concrete and we did notice the sign that Surf Aid had been there to help out at one point. We were told that everyone had a job to do in the village. We even saw a man carving a canoe from a hardwood tree using only a small stone. He was very kind about all of us standing above him as he was working and obliged for a few photos.
Once we got to Bear's house, they invited us inside. It was vey scarcely decorated - just some of his sisters drawings and a few wooden swords on the wall along with a picture of Jesus (most of that village is Christian). It was really hot walking up the trail to the house, and it felt really good to sit in the shade. Their houses are all custom made from hard woods taken from the jungle. The wood is all planned by hand and some of the houses even had marble tile floors.
We headed back out and noticed there were a lot of sports going on. The local kids have a soccer field set up and we walked past a house where two guys were playing ping pong on a wooden table with paddles they made themselves. Really cool..

Day 04 Surfing

Brendan is about to pay the price for not riding a bigger board

Nick pulls into the inside section and came out

Randy casually leans into another perfect one at Slabatha

Andrew charging one of the bigger waves of the day

Randy on a near perfect one at Slabatha

Burgerworld looking pretty good from the boat

By Day four we were starting to have things figured out. When we heard the anchor I didn't get right up out of bed cause it usually meant we had at least an hour before we were anchored again and surfing. When we did anchor for the day, Carrick anchored us right near a wave called Burgerworlds. It is called that because it's usually a slopey wave that gets worse the larger the swell. But when the swell is dropping or is in a transition period, Burgerworlds is a fun rippable wave. The photo above is what we awoke to the first morning we were there. It was still a little big for it to break properly, and Randy and Carrick mentioned a slab type wave on the back side of this island. Frank, Nick, Randy, Andrew, myself and Bear all loaded up and drove around to have a look. From afar, it doens't look like there should be a wave in there - or at least one you'd like to ride. But, they've been doing this for a long time and Bear knew right where to go to have a look. He drove the speedboat right up to break in the reef and we all watched in awe as three waves peeled past.
Brendan and Andrew got right on it, paddled right over into the lineup and proceded to start catching waves. Randy was close behind and before long Frank and Nick were out as well. Andrew was going for just about any wave he could catch. He took off on a few bigger ones and was the first one to get caught inside. Bear and I watched closely as he was drug across the inside reef. He eventually made his way back out to the boat to catch his breath and told us it really wasn't as bad as he expected.
After about an hour or so Frank, Randy and Andrew had made their way over to the boat. Nick and Andrew were left out there for us to yell at and harrass if they weren't going on the biggest waves that came through. Nick took off on a medium size one, but stuck with it through the inside and pulled into what looked like a giant tube from the back. (See photo above) Brendan missed the first wave of a set that had started to come through. He was determined to get at least one wave so he paddled over the second and started stroking as hard as he could to get the third wave. It turns out he could have used a little bigger board as he had a hard time making it into the wave and got a pretty good beat down for his effort. (See photo above) He came up smiling...
Everyone had had enough of Slabatha (as Andrew called it) for the day.
We went back to the boat and had a nice breakfast. We sat and watched waves break at Burgers but nobody was very anxious to have a go. I thought it would be a good idea to paddle over to the island from the boat. I figured we'd probably surf Slabatha again the next morning and it might be better if I shot it from the beach because of the light. As soon as I hopped off the boat and got about half way across I started to feel like sharkbait. The water was really deep looking and I was all by myself. I was excited to step my feet into the sand and found a stop where they could drive the boat right up to the beach without hitting the reef. I walked around on the beach a little bit and noticed a few canoes parked in the bushes. I didn't realize people lived on that small island and wasn't sure how they'd receive me so I paddled back.

Day 03

Andrew @ Bankvaults

Brendan @ Bankvaults

The backdrop at Nipussies would have made for great photos, but the waves were never really that great..

But Andew managed to catch a few...

The captain decided we'd stay up in the Playgrounds region for a few days and sample the waves there. The night before we checked a spot called Bankvaults. It is notorious for big drops and tubes that don't let you out - hence the name. The wind was a little off for there, so Bear drove us around another island to a small reef near a rivermouth. When we pulled up there was a crew of surfers from a nearby land camp on the known wave, but farther down we found another spot to surf. There were two local kids out surfing that quickly got out of the water once we pulled up. I didn't bring a board as I was expecting to shoot photos of Bankvaults so Randy was kind enough to let me use his board while he sat in the boat. The waves at the rivermouth were only about head high with a few waves that were bigger. Andrew, Brendan, Nick and myself traded short little lefts until it got dark. We anchored near the rivermouth break and we awoke to the sound of the chain being pulled up on day three (and every day for that matter).
Brendan, Andrew and our cook Harley got ready right away and charged out at Bankvaults. The wave broke a little farther from the channel than I expected and should have brought the longer lens with me. That morning it was breaking near perfect with a few waves coming in that were nearly double overhead range. Brendan got caught on one and banged his foot against the reef.
Later that day, everyone else decided to surf Nipussies. It too is a right but much more tamer than Bankvaults and only a 1/2 mile up the reef. It provided some great photos because the wave breaks on a corner of the reef where the island sticks out and I was able to get some cool backgrounds in the images. I shot again from the channel, but this time the wave was much closer and Bear drove the boat right up next to the reef. There was even a few times I thought for sure we were going to get hit with a wave, but they would just go right under us without breaking. I quickly learned to trust Bear as my boat driver.
We were pretty surfed out that night and the swell was dropping so Carrick decided to steam over to a spot called Burgerworlds for the night. We'd anchor there and surf it in the morning.

Indonesia Day1/2

Mountains around Padang

The people in Padang loved to have their picture taken no matter what they were doing.

Randy with our first catch of the trip - a nice little tuna that made for some good sashami later that day

This was the first surf spot we sailed to. Not a bad warm up wave.

So I'm not really sure where I am with this blog thing. The photos above are from the first two days we were in Indonesia. The first day wasn't very much fun. As noted in the previous post, we flew to Padang from KL. It's only about an hour and was a smooth flight. We landed and they were right there to pick us up and take us to a hotel lounge while they prepared the boat for our arrival. It turns out there was a little more maintence that needed to be done and we didn't get on the boat for 12 hours. That gave us plenty of time to walk around the neighborhood to shoot a few photos. We also met the Aussies that would be staying with us and the captain came by at one point to check on us. We passed the rest of the time by trying to access the internet, drinking Bintangs, and getting to know Nick and John.
By the time we finally got the cab to the boat, everyone was tired from traveling and ready to get onboard. Carrick gave us a little speech about the boat once we loaded up. You pee off the deck and are free to have whatever is in the fridge. We steamed out to sea that night and when we all woke up we were still heading out. Randy set the fishing rods out while we were trolling and caught a small tuna that they served as sashami later.
We finally got to our first surf break around noon and everyone was anxious to get in the water. Carrick anchored the boat inbetween a few small islands which both had surf breaks on them. I opted to surf a break called 4 Bobs because there there weren't too many people surfing there compared to the other break that's not really even named.

Malaysia

Indonesia Hotel Dog

Malaysia street photography

Malaysia street photography

This lady made the sweetest smoothies

And this guy tried to sell us fish that looked like it was four weeks old, but did have some good chicken

We traveled this morning after staying up late last night. The flight from KL left at 7:30 and only took an hour. The captain had the crew pick us up and take us to a hotel lounge to hang out while they're preparing the boat for our arrival. The wave forecasts look great and everyone is really excited.

Padang is really something special. As I'm writing this, we're sitting outside on the patio overlooking the harbor. Indonesia is a mainly Muslim country and it's now noon. They're playing the prayer music really, really loud, but most of the people we approached today have been really genuine gracious people. No more blogging for another 12 days....

Malaysia Day 2

Our hotel, the Concorde at night...

The Petronas Towers

There's even McDonalds here and they deliver via moped.

Iguana at the top of the Batu Caves stairs.

Statue at the Batu Caves

More status at the caves

They let me hold a giant yellow albino ball python after we walked up 287 stairs to the top of the Batu Caves

Monkeys were everywhere and friendly too..

The main statue at the Batu Caves

High speed moped run that put the NASCAR skills to use.

Pretty tired from a long day walking around the city and seeing the sights, so the commentery is pretty short tonight. I'll try to update sometime again before we leave.

That's all for tonight...

Indonesisa

The day has finally come! For years a good friend of mine has been asking me to come with him on a surf trip to Indonesia. I agreed a year ago and started saving money the past year. Now the day had finally come for us to get on the plane with Virginia Beach’s Brendan Petticrew and Andrew Meyer as well as a friend of theirs who has been living in costa rica for the past few years. We all made it to the airport on time and I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the people at Malaysia treated us. The surfboards flew for free and I walked on board the plane with three pieces of carry on luggage without so much as a sneer from the crew. The first leg of flight left from Newark, NJ and flew for 7.5 hours to Stockholm, Sweeden. Luckily the flight left at 10:30 at night so it was pretty easy to fall asleep most of that trip. There was a crazy Sweedish woman who sat beside me. I was the only obstacle for her between the window and the aisle. When I boarded the plane I kindly explained to her I would move if she needed to get up, but sometime around 4:30 in the morning I found her straddled over top of me trying to get to the bathroom. After that minor fiasco we landed and had to go through a minor customs gate where they inspected our carry on luggage and then sent us back to the terminal so we could get back on the same plane. We did get to see about 100 yards of the airport and it looked exactly like the Ikea store in South Philadelphia – complete with Sweedish meatballs. By this time it was about noon in Sweeden, sometime in the middle of night still for us on East Coast time. We then boarded the plane again, and I fell right to sleep and missed lunch. This flight lasts about 11.5 hours and took us to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I was lucky enough to be in and out of sleep for most of the trip and it didn’t really seem THAT long. It kinda messes with your clock though because we saw the sun go down on the way to the airport. Then three hours after we took off the sun was rising. Then about three hours after we took off from Sweden it went down again only to rise again as we were approaching Kuala Lumpur.

Once we landed we were greeted by tons of really helpful people who all spoke English. Randy got the cabs lined up and we were off to the Concorde Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, but the airport is about an hour away from the major city area. My first thought was it reminded me of Las Vegas crossed with New York City crossed with Honolulu except there is no trash anywhere, ever. We made it to our hotel which is right across from the Petronas Towers (see photo below) and right in the heart of what I can image being Malaysia’s version of Manhattan – except it’s way cheaper! We went out to get lunch at a few local vendors behind the hotel and scored a chicken platter with rice and veggies and a smoothie for under $3. Not bad so far. The rest of the day has been hanging out by the pool trying to get acclimated to the time difference. I think tomorrow may be a photo mission day – I’m going to try to see as much of KL (as the call it here) as I can. Maybe climb the Petronas towers and walk around this crazy but beautiful city. More photos to follow!

This is the view looking out of our 8th story hotel room..