Our small surf adventure in Bali

In summer 2008 I talked to Richard while laying the waters of Scheveningen during one of our surfsessions. He told me he was heading off to Bali. I didn't hasitate for a second to tell him I wanted to come along. And within a minute this was settled. We were going to Bali.
The same week Sanne heard the news and he wanted to come along as well. So on the 2nd of september we were going to Bali! I managed to book a flight toghether with Richard. Sanne got another ticket so he had to cross the distance by himself. But the good thing is that we would land on Den pasar almost the same time so we would meet there. The flight to Bali went quick although it was about a 16 hours flight. We had a transfer in Hong Kong and had a few hours to spend untill the connecting flight. Sanne had his transit in Kuala Lumpur so I was there with Richard.

in flight

Tired and waiting it out in Hong Kong 7:00 AM

"Chong wouw pau ling" which means "No Smoking" of course!

Hong Kong area from the air. Looks like SimCity doesn't it?

Some Hong Kong Mountains surround the airport

Once we got to Kuta we had an hotel booked called Wina Hotel in Kuta. This was really top level with air conditioned rooms, swimming pools, 24 hour food available, cocktails, smoothies, and every service you could think of. So that was a good and comfirtable welcome after a long flight.
Of course there were loads of Dutch people there as well. Not just the regular ones but the ones who actually stayed in the hotel all day relaxing by the swimming pool instead of going to the lovely beach just 300m froms the hotels! Anyway, everyone his own thing but we hit the beach and surroundings as much as we could.

Part of wina Hotel

Sanne and me chillin in front of the hotel room

Richard kickin' it at the pool after 18:00

So we started it off in Kuta (That's about the same as Llorret de Mar in Spain) but loads of fun.
Same European prices and very Western atmosphere. Disco's, fancy restaurants, top class hotels. We almost stayed there for a week before planning to head of to a place called Medewi to check out the surf there. But before we left off to Medwei we took a bicycling tour through the heart of Bali. We started off with some Pisang Goreng (Baked banana with honey) and we would get lunch later that day. The tour started at a plantation where we got to see how Bali coffee was made and how and where local fruits grow. And one of my favorite fruit was Snake Fruit. It tastes like apple but mixed with a little taste of fresh lemon and a funky sweet taste to it. We had out first taste of some Bali coffee and of course got some time to buy some stuff from the locals there. Our bicycling tour started at the side of the Batur Volcano and went 40km downhill through villages, temples, rice fields, jungle and other beautiful scenery. It was awesome! We were accompanied by a guide who was really nice and had loads to tell during our trip. The trip took the whole day and we all had a great day. I'll let some pictures do the talking!

Batur and vulcanos all around

Richard going surf's up!

Old man passing us tourist

Temple gaurdian

Local kids always in for a picture

Chained monkey killing a dog. Nah don't worry, they were just playing.

Small temples in every corner of Bali for the daily offerings

Sanne going touristic with a fabulous look

Local beauty

Me going touristic and sticking a local beauty behind my ear

or course the bikes were far from perfect and chains were coming off every hour or so

Rice fields everywhere

Camera, helmet, mountainbike. Yes a real tourist.

Sculpture figure from the Mahabarat (The main history book of the Veda's)

Plowing the fields

Sanne and me in front of an important temple

The Supreme Personality of Godhead

Back to Kuta to check out the waves and some other surfspots. We contacted a guy called Ketut who was recommended by our friends who had been in Bali bedore. He would drive us around and show us some cool spots of Bali. So we did. Ketut was a nice guy but not really informant and very quiet to our taste. We went to Turtle beach, did some snorkling, went to some surfspots, and visited one of the more important temples in Bali. Turtle beach was a real rip off because it was just a turtle farm and had nothing to do with free turtles. But we had some close encounters with some cool animals though!

Local fisherman with helmet. You never know when a whale will hit you right?

Reptiles

Richard holding the stoned guy from Nemo

Local fisherman in traditional boat

My first snake encounter (Python)

Sanne flirting up an Indonesian Seahawk

Me holding a huge bat!

Here are some snorkling picture, surfspots and the things we saw and did that day. I didn't snorkle because I was injured. More about that after these pictures.

Richard goes blup blup

Fishies

Deep sea diving by Sanne

Temple at the coast

Locals living around the temple

Local hitting it up with Sanne in a sarong

Dreamland - surfspot

Ketut en me checking out the waves

Sundown at Padang Padang surfspot

Back in Kuta we only had two or three days with good surf. It's not the place for a ovice surfer. The waves are pounding and very quick which means you have to drop in quickly, have a very fast ride and get the hell out of it before you get crunched by the wave. At lthe beginning at high tide and at high tide it's the best to go surfing. During my struggle with the waves and my longboard I got one of the fins of my board in my leg and had to get stitched by a local doctor. Only 5 stitches but the main problem was is that he told me I wasn't allowed to surf before it was healed. That means my holiday would practically be over. So yes, I didn't listen. I just taped it over and got back in the water and on my board. Richard rented a longboard and he broke it! His geuss he cracked another the day before because we didn't see that board on the beach again. So some serious cracking waves if you don't watch out :)

Stitches!

Richard's broken board

Some of the Kuta waves can be good for starters and learning but when you want better swell/surf you better go to surfspots Dreamland and places in the south of Bali. But we wanted to check out a cool wave in Medewi so we went there. We were told that it was good for longboarders like us. So we went. We stayed in a very hot bamboo kinda building with no air conditioning, so the nights were almost unsleepable for some of us. A good thing is that I go KO in the heat and generaly don't wake up before people around me start waking up. For Richard it was a whole other thing, who slept on the ground and didn't sleep for three days. The first and second day we had quite good waves. A very steep srop in which accelerated you to about 80 km/h and then you had the longest wave ride you can imagine. Sounds kinda cool huh? Well it is, I had my longest ride ever!

First house on the left was ours

Local Medewi Surfer

Crab art. Funny little creatures and artists for sure!

Turbo drop in by one of the surfers

Sanne writing his daily diary for not forgetting the moments

In Medewi everything was really cheap. We paid 80000 rupia (About 6 Euro's) for the three of us for each night in the bamboo house with a cold shower. Food was great. There were 3 places to eat with loads of nice vegetarian dishes! So we all ate like anything. Big breakfasts, big lunches and big dinners. It was cheap as hell! Prices were like 1 to 2 Euro's every time. Including drinks! We lived like kings and millionares! We all had a few million rupia on us so we were actually millionaires :) In Medewi we met some local pro surfers who wanted to take us to G-land. G-land is a place on Java with some of the best surfspots in the world. We couldn't say no to that! So after a few days we went to Java to see the surf there. They arranged the transport, food and the whole works for 4 night at G-Land. We met some people from Germany, Australia and New Zealand who went along with us to G-land. We were a nice bunch together ready for some adventure! The trip to G-land was about a 6-7 hours drive through Bali, cross over to Java by ferry and a few hours to G-land. The last hour was through the jungle at a slow pace.

Sanne and I rocking out on some Emo crap in the back of the car

Sunset at the ferry departure time 06:00AM

Hank, Sue, Sanne and I on the boat during the crossing to Java

We got to a camp in the middle of the jungle with monkeys everywhere! There were some constructed cottages there which we rented, just 100 meter from the beach. Our own private beach...It was beautiful! We were going to stay there 4 nights and there were 4 spots to surf which were called Tiger Tracks one and two, Twenty Twenty and G-Spot. The first days we checked out Twenty Twenty then Tiger Tracks and the last day we went to G-Spot. The surf was good for us on all the spots but G-spot. It was a huge wave breaking on a riff. If you didn't get out in time you probably end up with some serious injuries so we skipped this spot. Every day there are broken boards, broken legs, arms and other injuries I don't want to think about. We decided to skip just to be safe then sorry. We also visited a cave which is a scared Hindu place of pelgrimage. Here just some random stuff from those amazing few days.

Our laidback welcoming commitee

no comment

Our own private beach with literarly noone around

Yes we were really happy

our little cottage

A freaking cobra!

A huge Python! yes, this story is for another time to tell...

A nice shot 'in the air monkey' by Richard
me dropping it in at just the right moment

Some beachbabes showed up out of nowhere?!

we had some really nice jungle walks

G-spot, the wave we rather skipped

To get to the surfspots we hired (all included in the price we paid for the trip) a driver with an old jeep who was certified to drive through the jungle. It was a really cool pre-war jeep who carried all 11 us including the boards, lunches and drinks. Here is picture of the whole crew who was present. From left to right:

Muklis (Pro surfer), Richard, Sven (Germany), Ben (New Zealand), Sue (Australia), our cook (local), Me, Sanne, Benji (local), hank (Australia) and our driver skipped the picture.

After G-land we went back to Kuta and got some time to do some shopping, bargening and small town adventures. But I don't have the time to write more about that. If you want to know or see more just drop on by in Amsterdam and I'll tell you lots more.

To end of this little fairytail holiday here are some random pictures of the holiday. I left out so many details and there is so much to tell. We have about 2000 pictures all together so a blog like this would be overloaded. But I hope this gives you a small impressions of what we've seen and done.
I recommend everyone to go to Bali if there's just a little interest in Indonesia. I had a great time and wouldn't hesitate to go again. The rest of Indonesia is yet to be discover but these 3 weeks were great and again fell in love with another place in the world. Thanks to Sanne and Richard for being such good company and loads of fun. Thanks to all the new people we met and helped us out in anyway they could and making our stay in Bali a wonderful experience.

Sammy

Java - evening beachwalk

PS. After seeing all these pictures I'm going to get a new haircut right away! ;)