Indonesian Stoke

So its been a long time, ok, ok, I know I'm being crap but we are travelling at 100mph and internet hasn't been good in Indonesia, but here's my lengthy blog.

A lot has changed since the last entry; one of us has achieved all we came to achieve on this year of discovery and adventure so from here, Singapore, we part company as one of us returns home.

Once outside the airport in Bali, it felt that I had returned to a second home - everything was how I remembered. The mopeds buzzing around the roads like flies, the happy smiling faces if the Balinese and that familiar smell of the Island of the Gods hit me immediately. The smell is one that fades in your memory but it is engrained in the back of your mind to be retrieved at the next whiff of it. An emotional sensory stimulant.

We got into a cab and headed to a hotel called Segara Agung - a place that Rick & Katy stayed in 2005 and which was a nice place to kick back and prepare for the hard slog.

The first night we just sat outside drinking Bintang, 70p for a wine bottle sized drink (there's no Bint without the tang). We sat out on the veranda and chatted, taking everything in and reflecting on our magnificent time in Australia - what would the next leg bring? Danger? Hate? Terrorists? No - none of that but you will hear more on that later.

The following day we walked down the beach - down memory lane for me - I knew it wouldn't be pleasant for me but it did give me a feeling of happiness inside that I'd at least had the pleasure of spending a short but beautiful time with Emily.

The walk took us past the 'New Banjar' beach bar that we'd sat with our close friends with on our first day in Bali in 2005 and were introduced to Bintang and played catch-up with their world travels - oh how I have so much to tell everyone when I return. The New Banjar had been replaced by a hotel chain and it had lost its charm but the memories remain of the 4 special friends on that special stretch of beach.

The walk continued down the beach past the Hyatt where we stayed and spent a fantastic night with Rick and Katy the night before the wedding - one of the best nights in memory. We continued past the hardest bit for me the Villa Gardens where the ceremony took place - I just stood for a few moments to think things through and could see us there.

But that was it - I was here to come back with some more memories and stories and felt like it had been good to return to perhaps bury the demons.

A quote I read while reading one of the guide books says 'to find yourself, you must first get lost'. We did just that. We were wandering around the residential streets for 4 hours, experiencing things that three years ago I didn't get the chance to experience. The best part of that mini adventure for both of us I think was that an elderly Indonesian man invited us into his house to show us his paintings - like most people are in Bali, he wasn't on the sell, but was proud of the paintings that he had done. He showed them to us and he couldn't speak a word of English. It was our first experience of an Indonesian home. His bed was some thin card on the living room floor! This was moving to see how simple their culture can be.

Once we got to the hotel we had some beers and swam in the pool for a while, introducing Asia to a craze that is sweeping Australia and soon to be the world - The Marlin. The video clip is a classic and Roscoe, Matt and Ryan, the pioneers of the Marlin would have been proud of our effort.

We ended the night in a restaurant where I'd been before but again it had been renovated. The food was fantastic tho' and the investment, although changing Sanur is sad for the memories, its great for Bali, as the place is busy and had a vibe about it with many new restaurants and bars.

It was in this restaurant were we got talking to the waitress Agung which finished with an invite to her family temple later in the week to see the religious celebrations of the Balinese Christmas - of which they have 2. Agung said she'd dress us in traditional Balinese costume and take us to her family temple and the mother temple Basikh.

That first day alone was a mammoth one for me. The emotional memory rollercoaster and the taste of and promise of getting deeper into the Balinese culture.

The following say we just relaxed by the pool but decided to head down to a local bar on the beach that evening. When we got there the bar was only inhabited by locals. Within 2 minutes I'd been invited to play pool on the dodgiest pool table ever - I'm rubbish at pool and when I found myself almost 8 balling one of the local sharks on this shocking table I thought to myself that maybe I should throw the game, I didn't - instead I potted the black and promptly was drinking some local rice spirit with the guys while Rob beat the other guys at pool.

The guys worked for the local surf agency taking surfers out onto the Hyatt reef. They asked if we surfed, but we didn't fancy a reef break because of the dangers - did I say I wouldn't surf a reef break - watch this space.

They took us to a local bar where we had some more drinks and chatted to them some more before they dropped us off at our hotel - such great guys - we're really getting amongst the locals and they were superb.

We both awoke with slight hangovers and again just chilled by the pool and repeated the routine of eating out and having a few extra drinks after. We walked up the main road and ended up in a nice restaurant which was busy with couples and the menu looked good so we ate there. We ate and had a few more drinks. Before we knew it music was the pumping out and the couples had gone and the place was just full of Indo girls checking us out - mega. Due to the night before we were tired so took the girls checking us out as a compliment and made a mental note of the place and left - we later found out that the place called 'Zoo' turned into a whore house at 11pm - so I’d say a lucky escape, although I'm sure a few of the guys reading this think we should have capitalised on this opportunity.

We decided that we'd spent enough time chilling out and our feet were getting itchy to move on so we booked white water rafting, a 3 day surf school and a trip to the Gilli Islands - the guide book says that it’s easy to play Robinson Crusoe here - and it is. We'd also agreed to meet Agung to firm up arrangements for the temple visit so we ate at the restaurant again - by the time we'd finished our food and were carrying on drinking, there was only ourselves and 3 ladies sat behind us - we struck up conversation about the band that were playing and ended up joining them for drinks. The triplet was made up of an ex-pat German called Seigried and two Taiwanese girls, Serena a student and Sheryl an English teacher.

Serena and Sheryl took us to a local late bar, Double Dutch, which played live music and we had more drinks and had a good time with the girls meeting their Indonesian friend - Indonesian girls are simply smokin'. She was the hottest girl I've seen while travelling. She had perfect English and unusual for an Indonesian of that age she had a brand new car. She gave us all a lift back to our hotels and we arranged to go for dinner with the girls the following day to a Mexican that played live music - they love live music in Bali.

The following day we got up early with hangovers to do our rafting trip which was tame but good fun as there were only 2 of us in the raft and it meant that we could hit the rapids a little harder as we rode higher in the water. The river guide knew we were a little crazy and were experienced by the way we were shifting our way around the raft and didn't enjoy portaging the rapids, so for the last large rapid he let us sit up to take it full on - the other groups all had to sit inside their rafts to take the drop.

We got back to the hotel and crashed out until it was time to meet Serena and Sheryl. We called them to find out their hotel and met them a little late as we had to pay for our surf school and Gilli trips. Again we had a good night and met some more of the girl’s friends, more ex-pats.

Again we awoke with hangovers and were met by Agung, who introduced us to her brother, Agung.?

First they dressed us in the traditional Balinese dress before taking us to their family temple - I think the family name is Agung and we went to the Agung temple. When we arrived there were hundreds of people there all bearing offerings to the Gods - it’s very hard to explain but the whole thing was amazing. We were the only westerners there and we were getting some looks but this experience wasn't daunting, it was good to experience what been in the minority was like.

After a while and after some traditional Balinese dances which told historical stories, we got let into the temple for the service. I watched this service with intrigue as to the format - again we were experiencing something very few people get to do - if you are not following the religion you are not meant to go into the main temple, but I think that because we were making the effort with the dress they knew we wanted to experience the culture and not just be tourists to get snaps for the album.

I must admit that I felt like Bruce Parry and thought how amazing his adventures must be - seeing first hand culture like this does something inside you that opens you up to the world’s experiences that you may normally shy away from.

Then we went to the mother temple Basikh to do the same service, before heading back to Agung's parent’s house to eat the traditional celebration food. They lived in the grounds of a school on the mountain side and we sat in one of the class rooms to eat. The school was one room with 6 desks in it with plastic chairs. Fantastic.

Two days later and after a 12 hour trip (we'd been told it was 6) we found ourselves on the Gilli's. These were simply amazing. Three islands off the North West coast off Lombok. There was no fresh water - cold salt water showers, no electricity - diesel generators and no motorised transport. On our way over on the little wooden boat while being tossed by the waves I couldn't help but think of Charlie Sheen in Platoon.

The accommodation was very basic - just wooden huts and the island was quiet - only 200 - 300 inhabitants! On our first day we walked around the circumference of the whole Island in just over an hour before getting the boat to Gilli Trawangan the party island, to party - little did we know that that night was the night off - so we had a quiet night before heading back to Gilli Meno for our final night.

On that last night we managed to negioate a good rate for a better room - about 5 quid. When we got to our room we could see a gaggle of locals sat around a TV so we went to investigate - they were watching local football so we sat with them until the satellite moved out of range and headed out to find a restaurant on the beach. On the way back we bumped into some more locals who invited us to sit with them. They were just doing their regular nightly thing hanging out together drinking a fruit juice that wasn't alcoholic but gave a natural high.
They were drinking liters of the stuff and eating a local delicacy cow skin in chili peppers! Needless to say they invited us to try their food and drink and then we really did start to feel like Bruce Parry might. Sampling tribal food!

I will never forget that night and I regret not having my camera to take a photo of us and out new friends all sat crossed legged on the ground passing the juice around like a peace pipe! Mega.

When we got back from the Gilli's - another 12 hours we headed straight to Kuta - the busy noisy alternative to Sanur - for our surf lessons the following 3 days.

The surfing was great fun and it was good to be taught the correct technique and we both caught some good clean waves. The following day the lesson taught us more theory and technique but the waves were not as good and although we caught some good waves we struggled to have as much fun as the first day.

The group had started off with 10 and on the final day there were only two of us - myself and a cool Canadian guy called Derek. Kuta was flat so they decided that we had advanced enough to take a surf trip to the Nusa Dua reef break to surf the more consistent waves there where the wind conditions were correct.

Nusa Dua is an 800m paddle out to the reef and it was hard work but my swimming stamina has improved and before long I was catching my first reef break. Oh the stoke. It was hard paddling against the current trying to take us into the rocks and back out to the lineup so I only got chance to try catch about a dozen waves in 2 hours but the success rate of actually riding the waves was about 80-90% - It was the shit.

After Kuta we headed into Java - Billed a scary place that we shouldn't travel to.

I know we didn't stay there long but the main difficulty was the language barrier which was quite large and the reason for leaving early was due to serious floods and landslides in west Java.

We felt no threat what so ever and the people seemed as friendly as the Balinese. It’s sad that people see the Muslim faith as been universally bad - it’s a minority of fanatics that put a fantastic place like Java off limits to many travelers and this is wrong.

While there we endured some very long bus journeys and some rest days. We also climbed Gunung Bromo an active volcano that only erupted in 2004 - It was a hard day as we had to be up at 2.30am to see the sunrise over the Tengger massif.

The following day we decided to head for Singapore where Rob would get an onward flight home and I would head into Nepal to carry out some world class rafting, Kayaking and maybe trek the Annapurna Circuit.

It’s going to be hard going solo, but I’m going to give it my best shot for all the people I want to be sharing this experience with who cannot be here.

'do it for ya friends, see it through 'till the end'