0 Sherif Shaaban

You cannot bet someone’s nationality only by his name. I can’t either.

My encounter with Sheriff Shaaban on Facebook made me wonder. I rarely found names like Hasan, Sharif, Omar, etc. join my Facebook Group ‘Krui Surfs 2.’ However, when he asked to join my group, I just approved him. He joined my group after his friend who already a member told him about the group.

One day, I took some pictures at Krui Left and posted some of them on the group. Unintentionally, one of the pictures was his. Since he wasn’t a member of the group yet, he asked to join the group and contacted me soon after he was approved, asking whether I could take some more pics of him the next day at the left. I said OK, and we never talked about the price.

The next day, I shot the right and the left hoping that I would meet him at the beach, or took him surfing in the water. However, I wasn’t sure which one was him. I looked at a big guy in the water and I wished it had been him.

But after nearly two hours of shooting, I still had no clue.

But what a coincidence, after I had packed my gears and ready to hit the road to get back home, someone came approaching me with his bike, together with his other two friends.

What a nick of time, I would have missed him If I had gone a few seconds earlier

“Are you Hasim?” he asked.

Got the password. He is Sherif.

***

Sherif is an Egyptian. And for God’shake, this is the first time I met a surfer from Egypt. Though this is not the first time he came to Krui. I didn’t meet him on his first stay.

Sheriff works as a captain of a cargo ship. He has been traveling all around the world with the cargo.

“Do you the city at every port of call?” I asked.

“Yes if we have time,” he replied.

“At some countries, we stop for three days to six days till the cargo finish unloaded. We have enough time to see the cities. But in Japan, no chance. They finish unloading the cargo in three hours. Japanese are very fast.” 

Making a deal with Sherif was easy. He didn’t fuss about the price much as other guys do.

Nce to meet you Sherif.

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0 Masao Kisaka

I have met quite some people who told me that they had read this blog before they came to Krui, and this Japanese guy is only one of them.

Masao told me that he had got nearly all information about Krui from this blog. And he followed the info to guide him to Krui. He took a bus from Jakarta to Krui following the instructions in this blog. And thanks God, all the info that I wrote was still valid. He took the bus that I mentioned and arrived in Krui without fail. No hassle.

***

Masao has a flair for language. He could speak English and Indonesian just as well. His English was very good because he had stayed in Australia for two years. And his Indonesian was so good because he had come to Indonesia many many times, and besides, he learned Indonesian from some text books that he bought in Japan. Before he came to Krui, he called a hotel in Krui that I mentioned in this blog from Japan speaking Indonesian.

“The surfs in Krui are different from other parts of Indonesia that I have been to,” he said when I asked his opinion about Krui surfs. “I’ve never seen such good beach breaks other than in here. Krui is the best for beach breaks,” he added.

Masao was so friendly with everyone he met in Krui, and I think friendly was just his nature. He seemed to have enjoyed his stay very much. Every time I met him, he looked so happy with his radiant smiles, and he liked talking and talking, and talking.

And as a tourist who stayed in a hotel in town, Masao had to look for his own meals everyday since the hotel where he stayed didn't prepare meals, three times a day. He asked me what the best place to eat and I referred to one restaurant that I usually went to. That was always my answer when someone asked my recommendation for a restaurant. I didn’t know much about restaurants in Krui. 

“Do you know … restaurant?” he asked me, mentioning one name. I had no idea about this restaurant. I never heard.

“It’s very good. I always have my meals at this restaurant now,” he added.

 

“It’s close from here. I’ll show later on our way home.”

Then he took me to a place where the restaurant was located. It was in a local neighborhood, away from the traffic, in almost a hiding place. Nobody would know this restaurant if they never knocked around the town.

Thank you Masao, you came from the other part of the world and you showed me this restaurant in my very hometown.

***

Masao came to Krui with two boards, but he only used one of his boards to surf.

“Only this one is suitable for the surfs in Krui,” he said. So he used the same board whenever he surfed in Krui.

One day he got his board snapped into two pieces and had it repaired by a local ding repairman. But he wasn’t satisfied with the result.

“It repaired like shit,” he said.

“It wasn’t smooth flat. It has angles appear from the breaklines. It’s not comfortable anymore. You know if you have angles on your board, you won’t be easy riding the wave. When I stand up on the board and push the front down with my front leg, it won’t go fast like before.” He added.

“I surfed Way Jambu many times using this board. But if I use it again to surf Way Jambu now, I will be killed,” he concluded.

I am sorry Masao.

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0 Gareth Todd

Gareth is one of the guys who stayed in Krui for more than one month. Gareth, or Gaz as he is usually called, is from England. He came to Krui in the mid-September and only left earlier November 2014. Unlike other surfers who prefer to stay by the beach, Gareth stayed at a hotel in town most of the time for cheap. He only moved to a budget camp by the beach on the last weeks of his stay.

And probably, he is one of the guy who was blessed with so many bad lucks during his stay in Krui. He lost his left booth when he was surfing Krui Left a few days after he arrived in Krui. And a few days later, he got dings on his board when he was surfing LA. LA is the only break in Krui that he found he was very fond of later. But LA wasn’t so friendly for him. He broke his board at his first surf, and many times later.

He went up north in one fine morning heading to Jenny’s or Jimmy’s but then he came back to town empty handed. “I didn’t make it,” he said. Then I explained to him the locations and the landmarks he should notice which can lead him to the place, but then he never went back to Jenny’s. He might have found that places too far, I guess. Instead, he commuted to LA every morning which only about seven ks from the town.

Learning that his board absorbed water from the dings and the dings wasn’t just easy to mend, he gave up using it and tried looking for another board to buy.  He bought a used-board for 1 million rupiah. The board looked fine but then he broke it in half when he used it for the first time. “It was too much. It should have been half that price,” he said.

The next day, on his way back from LA he found his rear wheel flat while he was riding his bike, but luckily, he saw a tire patch shop nearby. And the next day when he was riding his bike to Ujung Bocor, he found his bank notes flew in the air behind him after he got bumped into deep potholes on the street. ‘I knew there were potholes, but I couldn’t swerve around abruptly because I could have hit my board with the bike handles if I did. The baggage got loosed because the shock was so big and the bank notes flew away out of it,” he said. “Then I stopped and picked my money on the street while local people watching.”

And that’s not whole.

He had some other bad lucks which I can’t tell you here.

And since his visa was to be expired soon. He needed an extension. He had to go to Bandarlampung, a city about 250 ks from Krui. He talked to a local guy who he can have his visa extended but he found the price was too expensive. “He asked for one million and a half,” he said. Then he talked to some camp managers and he was told that he could go to Kotabumi instead of Bandarlampung for cheap. “In Bali, you only need to pay 300,000,” he said. 

I talked to the manager of the hotel where he was staying whether he can help. The manager then called his friend who worked in the immigration office in Bandarlampung, but, still, the price was expensive. The manager’s friend said that he had to pay 1,250,000 rupiah, not including some overhead.  

Kotabumi is another town in Lampung province, about four hours drive from Krui. To go to Kotabumi, you’ll have to take your way via Liwa, a town about 32 ks north of Krui. I told him to take Krui Putra bus that goes to Bandarlampung via Liwa earlier in the morning, so he can arrive in Kotabumi at about noon and then back to Krui in the afternoon after he got his visa finished. Krui Putra bus that goes to Bandarlampung via Liwa will pass Kotabumi before she gets Bandarlampung. But he took a bus that goes to Bandarlampung via Kotaagung instead.

 “I don’t know. It was earlier in the morning and I didn’t see any Krui Putra bus in the office,” he said. “And then this bus came over me, and I asked, “Kotabumi?” and the bus boy said yes. So I got into the bus but then I found myself in Kotaagung, way too far away from Kotabumi.”

A trip to Kotabumi via Kotaagung is completely a wrong and crazy trip. You’ll have to get to Bandarlampung first because this bus doesn’t pass Kotabumi, and then take another bus to Kotabumi from Bandarlampung, which can take your whole day and drain your energy.

And Gareth found himself stranded in Bandarlampung bus station at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon before he could get another bus to Kotabumi. Although he was already in Bandarlampung, but he decided not to have his visa extended in that city. Kotabumi was his destination once and for all. 

“I was so mad. I gave the bus boy a hard time with everybody in the bus station watching,” he said. “Some people laughing out loud when they learnt what happened to me.”  

But at last he arrived in Kotabumi at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. 

He had to spend a night in a hotel and go to the immigration office in the next morning. Luckily, the immigration office is only a stone throw from the bus station so he could find it all at once as he arrived at the station. But he found Kotabumi a dangerous town. “This town can kill me,” he said to me in a text message.

Finally, he got his visa done and tried to catch a bus back to Krui. “I had to pay the boss at the immigration 600,000 rupiah,” he said.

And again, he failed to get a Krui Putra bus from Krui to Kotabumi and had to go back to Bandarlampung instead. “I was like missing the bus. I saw the bus passing by on the street not very far from me. I cried out loud but nobody heard me,” he said. “I tried to negotiate with a bike taxi man to chase the bus, but they didn’t seem to understand what I said.”

Then he took a bus back to Bandarlampung.

But the bus that he took from Bandarlampung then didn’t go straight to Krui either, but to Liwa only.

He arrived in Liwa from Bandarlampung at about 10 o’clock in the night and found no more bus heading to Krui. 

Instead, he had to get a bike taxi from Krui to Liwa who charged him 150,000. 

And he arrived back in Krui at about midnight. 

He had spent close to 1,500,000 totally for a visa extension, plus a very arduous and emotional journey.

See you next year, Gareth.

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0 Kwok Cheung Choi

There must have been some Hong Kong tourist coming to krui before, but this is the first guy I get contacted with.

His name is Kwok Cheung Choi or Choi Kwok Cheung. I guess the two names are all the same that he uses regularly. Kwok Cheung Choi is the name he uses in his email, while Choi Kwok Cheung is the name he uses in his Facebook account. But I call him Choi, while his friends call him KC.

Choi read my blog and then emailed me inquiring about transport to Krui. He planned to take a bus from Bandarlampung to Krui and that he would arrive in the evening. Since there’s no more bus leave Bandarlampung for Krui in the evening, he would stay overnight at the hotel near the airport.

I told him that beside the bus he also can take a van taxi. And I also told him that a van taxi would take him right to the accommodation he would like to stay in Krui.

He was interested and agreed to take a van taxi. 

I gave him my number and the number of the person he could contact for the van, and he made a deal himself.

About a week later he called me from his camp telling me he already stayed in Krui for two days.

***

Choi is typical Hong Kong man; tough and strong with an Asian average body and face like Krui locals, most like Indonesian people.

When mixing with Indonesian people, you can hardly say that he is from Hong Kong.

And as most HK people may, he speaks good English.

***

Day 1 and day 2, he spent all is day surfing Krui Left. And since he stayed in a camp in front of the surf, he didn’t need to take a motor vehicle.

And unlike western surfers, he couldn’t ride a bike. He never ridden a bike in his whole life in HK, so he must have had someone ridden the bike for him when he went out of town.

***

One day he told me that he had a HK guy just come to Krui and staying at the same losmen with him. He was like surprised the first time he met the guy. He thought he is from Japan or something, but the guy said that he was from HK.

So he got a friend, and he felt like being at home to find someone to speak with his own language, Cantonese.

Howard is a HK student studying biology. He came to Indonesia to join an animal conservation program, together with other students from other countries.

He came to Krui after finishing his ten day-stay at Way Kambas, an elephant nurture center in Lampung, south Sumatra. 

However, he had only two days to spend in Krui before he left Indonesia.

***

Choi and Howard were going to Pulau Pisang for fishing, swimming and snorkeling.

I asked Choi if I could come with them and he said yes.   

It was a beautiful morning when we started at about 8 o’clock, and the surf was rather small with only a few people out.

The fishing boat we took was quite big, more than just enough space to take us three people, not including the captain. Moreover, Choi didn’t take his surfboard, only snorkeling and fishing gears, so we enjoyed sitting in the boat free.

It was a plain sailing and we had just been told that we need to start earlier if we wanted to spot schools of dolphins in between Krui and Pulau Pisang, so we were like disappointed and tried to forget about the dolphins.

However, at about two-third of our way to the island, we got a surprise.

“Dolphins!,” cried Howard, and we turned our head to follow his finger point.

What amazing. There we saw schools of dolphins next to our boat, about ten to fifteen meters, swimming and jumping, overriding out boat.

“Wow….,” I was overwhelmed, and so was Choi and Howard.

The dolphins kept on swimming with their back appeared from the water and jumping, and I kept my eyes focus on the dolphins with my camera when suddenly I heard, “bump….”

“Choi…!” I cried.

Choi jumped into the water, swimming, approaching the dolphins, hoping he could play around with them in the water. Damn. What a challenge. It takes gut to swim in the middle of the sea like that.

But the dolphins gone, afraid of someone stranger.

“Sorry,” he said.

***

The trip to Pulau Pisang was nothing but wonderful. The surfs at the island were working quite big when we were sailing around. Choi kept on cheering the swells that coming in front of us one by one.

And the snorkeling, and fishing around the island was nevertheless cool and made everybody happy though there’s no such a thing like fish we could catch

After paying a visit to the villages in the island, we went back home empty handed but happy.

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0 Meet Michel Copetta Winkelmann

Beside Spanish people and Portuguese people of Europe that I already accustom to meet recently, non-native English people that I am now becoming familiar to are Brazilian people and Chilean people. Now that I am not only used to names like Chris, Paul, Peter, or Brian, but also Carlos, Romeu, Pedro, and Gabriel. And I found so far that Brazilian people and Chilean people are better in speaking English.

And when I met this guy the other day, I found there is no communication gap between us. With his enough English and mine we can communicate each other well.

Michel is a professional body boarder from Chili. He likes to make videos of himself surfing and publishes them in Vimeo. I’ve checked some of his videos and I was stunned by how well he surfs. He is very good at knee drops.

Michel came to Krui with his group of friend and stayed in one of the surf camp by the beach in town. It was his first time in Krui and they stayed for one week.

The morning was beautiful and the surf was big when I met this guy at The Peak. Five or six people were surfing The Peak and some others were at the beach watching and waiting. It’s like a real coincidence when I started talking to this guy. He was like waiting for someone to come out of nowhere and I was like coming at the right time. “You are like an angel for us,” he said. He was looking for someone to operate his camera to take some videos, and I came with my camera to take some pictures. Then he asked me to take some videos of them surfing with his camera. I agreed. His camera is better than mine. “All of us want to go into the water. Nobody wants to operate the camera,” he said.

And it was a long-long surfing session. The Peak was like pumping all day long without a pause. I started taking videos of him and his friends at about 9 in the morning, and they only finished surfing about a quarter before 1. It was almost four hours and the people in the water had turned over many times but this Chilean guys. And I only stopped taking videos when the memory was overloaded. And when we checked the videos on a computer in the camp, I had made more than 300 video files. It was full memory.

And thanks God, the videos I made were not bad. Michel and his friends were satisfied for what I made. “It’s only you take too much videos about somebody else, not us,” he said. But anyway, the videos were OK.

And it was a long-long day like I said when the surfing sessions continued until evening. We came back to The Peak at about 4 p.m., me with the camera and Michel and his crew with their boards.

The Peak seemed to have been working all day long. When we arrived back at the surf at 4 in the evening, it was still pumping with many people out. The angles where I took the videos from were very beautiful. And when the clock just struck 4, the lights were pretty much enhanced the view, and the Chilean guys in the water just surfed right. What spectacular videos I made. However, as the evening getting later and later the light was then getting dimmer and dimmer. And turned out, many videos I took were lack of light as this guys stayed in the water until dark.

One thing to remember about this guys is that they were like blessed with some good lucks during their holiday in Krui. Michel and his friends never planned to get out of Krui by an airplane before they saw some flights took place right over their head, at The Peak. They asked whether they could fly from Krui to Bandarlampung. I said yes. And they were very happy when I told them that the flight schedules were on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday, because they would leave on Saturday.

The flight was like a blessing for this guys. As their flight from Bandarlampung to Jakarta would start at 2 p.m., they must start leaving Krui by a car earlier in the morning, as it takes about 6 hours drive from Krui to Bandarlampung, and it means they must forget about the surf for the day.

However, as they would leave Krui by an airplane, they wouldn’t have to start leaving Krui that early. They had much time to surf in the morning. So they planned to surf up north at Jenny’s, Honey Smack, or Jimmy’s in the morning before the flight.

There actually no flight for this guys because they hadn’t booked yet, and because there was only one flight a day from Krui to Bandarlampung, and the only flight for the day was fully booked. However, it was kind of another blessing, the flight for the other day had been cancelled, and it was rescheduled for Saturday, so there were two flights on Saturday. And what a good luck, this guys could take the second flight.

Earlier at 04:30 in the morning, we left the camp by a car for the surfs up north. We arrived at the surf at about 05:55. And after checking all the surf spots, they decided to surf Honey Smack. Among all the three spots, Honey Smack was the biggest earlier that morning. And for the better of it, there was no other people but them three. So they enjoyed the surf just for themselves for more than one hour.  It was a lot of fun. And it was just another luck for them because the surf didn’t work that big the day before.

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1 Meet Leigh

This is another nice guy for me to talk to. His name is Leigh. He is from Melbourne. I met him when I was taking some pictures at The Peak this morning. The Peak was working so hectic, and there was five people surfing, and I was busy taking some pictures when this man came out of his camp, walking with his monopod, approaching me.

“Hello,” he said. (Or I did say first, I am not so sure). He smiled.

“Are you a professional? Working for a media?” I asked. He got a nice lens with a 600D Canon. It was a high tech lens professional photographers usually use.

“No. It’s just a hobby. What about you? Are you working for a media?” he asked me back.

“Not really. I take pictures for my blog.”

“A blog? Internet?”

I nodded.

“You got a nice lens. It must be expensive; more expensive than the camera,” I said.

“Yes, it’s twice more expensive,” he replied.

“What’s your mode when you’re taking surf pictures?”

I am always curious about other photographers setting when they are taking surf pictures. I wonder how those pictures become so stunning as they come out on the surf magazines.  

“I usually put it on ‘sport’.”

I eyed his mode dial. It was on ‘sport.’

Mine was on ‘auto.’

We kept on talking and gave it a pause every time the surf was on and somebody was riding the wave. He said that his pictures do not go anywhere but into his computer memories. Only sometimes his friends come and ask to print some, he said.

For Leigh, it was his first time in Krui. He surfed other parts of Sumatera the other years but this is the first time he surf the mainland.  

And as I like talking to an English native speaker very much, and he is kind of man easy to talk to, I enjoyed talking with him very much. And when I asked him how he describe the surf that particular morning, he said it was ‘glassy,’ a word that I never heard before to describe the surf.

And when the small rain came at about 10:00, we parted. He moved back to his camp, and I rode my bike home.

Thank you for the word, Leigh.

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0 Meet Mike Miller, the Pearl Hunter

This is the first time I met someone from a touring boat. I’ve seen several boats anchoring in Krui bay actually but this is the first time I met the crew in person. 

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The surfs in Krui was small and there was no surfer in the water but some local tourists swimming. A beautiful boat was anchoring about three hundred meters from the shore. I could see the crew walking on the deck, making the lifeboat, and doing something, I could see them even more clear with my long lens camera. I took some photos, hoping that I could meet someone from that boat when he got ashore.

And not long after that, I saw a guy coming down the boat, paddling ashore with a surfboard. I waited for him in the sand, hoping that I could ask him a few questions. And once he got ashore I fired some questions. He was like taken aback by what he heard. “Good English,” he said. And I was taken aback by his surfboard. I never seen such a big-big surfboard before. “It’s eleven feet. I usually surf this board with a paddle,” he said.

His name is Mike Miller. He is the crew of that boat, named Pearl Hunter. He has been sailing with the boat for six years. He has been sailing half of the world so far. He was coming to Krui from Bengkulu with another three guys. One was his partner, and the other two were travelers who happened to take a sailing with them. “They are going to Jakarta overland from here,” he said.

“I am going to Internet café. Do you know where?” he asked, neglecting his big board in the sand, under a coconut tree.

“Is it OK to leave the board here?”

I shrugged.

“OK. I’ll tell the police if someone steal it.”

“Get on my bike. I’ll show you the Internet,” I said. Then he jumped into my bike. I doubled him to the nearest Internet café from the beach.

Mike is from California, but he started sailing his boat from Oahu, Hawaii. And since then he has been to Micronesia, Tahiti, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Australia, etc, and of course Indonesia. In Indonesia alone he has been to most parts of the country. Before he came to Krui, he had been to Java, Bali, Sulawesi, Borneo, Mentawai, etc. “This is the second time I come to Krui. We came here two years ago, on September, 2010,” he said.

Mike’s boat is made of steel. And they have to take well care so the she’s not  getting rusty. “We docked her in Thailand for a whole year for repairing,” he said.

“Have you ever happened to sail in a wild sea during the journey?” I asked.

“Yes, pretty often.” He named a place somewhere down the sea where he and his partner had ventured a rough sailing. “It’s not a big deal. We are used to it,” he said.  

During the journey Mike and his partner always spend the night in the boat. They only got landed when they finished some supply. “Now I can’t stand this noises,” he said, pointing to someone operating a machine which produce a very loud noise. “It’s very quiet in the sea.”***

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0 Meet Cheech

Most English surfers I’ve met in Krui were from Cornwall, and so was this guy. Though his name is a bit strange, though it doesn’t sound like a common English name, but his very origin is English. The first time I heard him say his name I was taken aback. It sound like 'cheat' to me. I asked how he spells his name and he wrote it in the sand.  “It’s a South American name. I was born when my father was on duty in South America. He was in a navy service and he sent the name by phone to my mother,” he said.

I met Cheech the first time last week. He was surfing The Peak with his friend. It was the first time he came to Krui, but the third for his friend. And when I met him again this morning, he wasn’t surfing. He was taking pictures of his friend in the water instead. He was taking videos and still pictures alternately. He got two cameras in his hand.

It was a beautiful morning at The Peak. And in front of us, there were two body boarders surfing. The surf was beautiful although it’s small. And the two body boarders in the water seemed to be having a lot of fun. We sat together in the sand, both of us busy with our own gadget, shooting the people riding the waves on their boards.

Cheech turned to his still picture camera when his video camera was out of battery. “I forgot to recharge it last night,” he said, rummaging his bag for his compact camera. He told me that he studied photography in college, but he never takes a job in photography. “I wish I could get a job in photography, but now I am doing photography as a hobby,” he said.  

"I'm planning to buy a Canon 7D, the most advanced one" he said, taking a peep through the view finder of his video cam.

"Isn't Canon 5D more advanced?" I asked. I read it many times that Canon 5D is much more advanced than a 7D. 

"Oh, yes. You're right. I mix 5D with 7D," he replied.

We then busy ourselves taking more and more pictures. Cheech move here and there for a better a angle. He stepped back under a tree and stood by the bush. "Look," he said. "The surf looks better with the trees in the foreground."   

Meanwhile, earlier in the morning before I met this guy, I heard that the local police was holding a traffic ticket operation on the street. Surfers who hit the road to the surf everyday by their bike must have met some of them somewhere down the street. And I wondered whether this guy met one of them the other day. “Yes, we met some police operation on the street the other day, but we just ignored them and sped away,” he said.

See you next year Cheech. 

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3 Meet Philippe

If you ask me which French guy I know much, the answer is Philippe. I met Pihilippe first five years ago. He came to Krui early July 2007. He rented a car from someone in Bandarlampung and rode her all the way from Bandarlampung to Krui.

It was the first time he came to Krui and he hadn’t had any idea about the surf spots around Krui yet. He asked me to come with him to show him the surf spots in the north. I agreed and I took the front  seat by him and we hit the road up north the next day. I showed him Jenny’s and Jimmy’s. luckily, Jenny was working quite big and there were only two other surfers in the water. He surfed Jenny’s and I waited for him in the car.

The next day he asked me to come with him to explore the area up north, looking for some other hidden surfs, if any. He was so curious whether there is some surf spots hidden out there after the points. We drove way and way further from Jimmy’s until we got lost deep into the jungle, but we failed to see any new unrevealed surfs. We drove back then after driving hundred of miles where we didn’t see any spot of seas any more.     

The next day, he found his fond of the surfs down south. He droved to Karang Nyimbur almost every day. And when the surfs down south were not good, he turned to Krui Left instead. And after staying in Krui for about a month, he left the town for Bandarlampung.

However, he left the town behind with a sore memory. Prior to the day when he left, he hit the reef in Krui Left and he got a big cuts in his head. The cut looked so nasty and he got his head bandaged almost half way. Luckily he was physically OK and still able to drive the car back to Bandarlampung by himself the next day.

Five years over and I never heard about this guy any more. The email that I sent to him got no reply. I totally lost contact with him since the day he left until all of a sudden I saw him walking out of a restaurant in town in the middle of July, 2012. “Hi, are you Philippe?” I said. “Yes,” he said, smiling and giving me a handshake. He was sorry that he didn’t reply my email. He said he had a serious problem that made him so depressed and felt so unhappy with his life. But now he is OK and finds his life back.

This time he drove his own car, a Toyota land cruiser that he bought in Bali three years ago, two years after he came to Krui. He told me he built a house in Bali three years ago and he went to the island whenever he had holiday. He got this car transported by a lorry from Denpasar to Jakarta, and then he drove him all the way from Jakarta to Krui. It was a tough jeep that looks like a war tank. And he is a tough driver. He took only eleven hours to drive the car from Jakarta to Krui, which is much faster compared to what buses might take.

During this second stay, he regularly surfed Karang Nyimbur. He never surfed up north but one. He commuted to Karang Nyimbur from his hotel in town every time when the surf was on. I came with him when I had time. He droved like crazy. A ride on his car was like a ride on a horse back when the road is bumpy.

However, he was a bit luckier in this second trip to Krui. He never had a major accident but some minor ones. About one week after he arrived, he hit the reef in Karang Nyimbur and had some scratches on his back. But it didn’t hamper him from surfing. He kept on surfing with those scratches after he put some antibiotics.

When he was surfing Jenny’s, he had another minor one. “I had my board smacked my left face,” he said. “It was so hurt and I think I got my left cheek swollen.” I took a look at his left cheek, yes I saw it was abit swollen.

And on the next other day, he told me a different unlucky story when he surfed Karang Nyimbur. “I was being washed ashore by this swell,” he said. “And I got stranded on the reef. It was strange that the reef where I was ended was very dry. The water was all sucked back by the waves. And what surprised me so much is that there was a swell that came all of a sudden and broke on me. I was struck and leveled on the reef. My board got away a few meters from me. It was very strange. The waves didn’t use to break at that reef. It is too close to the shore. I felt so hurt and cranky and I thought I was gonna die. It was amazing that I am still alive and I got no injury.” He said seriously.

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0 Meet Jet

Beside surfing destination, Krui is also a transit town for cyclist who venture all the way along Sumatera. I have often met cyclist who stayed in Krui for a few days before they continue the journey. Those cyclist came down to Krui from Bintuhan, a small town about 150 km up north. Bintuhan is just the last transit town before they come to Krui. Although there are some small towns in between, cyclists are used to go straight to Krui.

And so did Jet Agelink of Venlo, Holland who I met in Krui the other day. If you meet Jet for the first time, you may think that she’s just like the girl next door, you’ll never know that she has been able to ride a bike, along with her bunch of stuff to carry, as far as 100 km a day. Jet, 24, arrived in Krui from Bintuhan on June 17, 2012. He spent two days in Krui and left the town for Kota Jawa, a small town about 120 km south of Krui, early in the morning on June 20, 2012.

Jet started her bike journey in Vientiane, Laos, Januari 3, 2012. She first rode the bike all the way, as far as 800 km, from Laos to Phuket, Thailand. It took her ten days to finally get to Phuket from Vientiane. Then from Thailand, she continued riding her bike to Cambodia, then to Melaka, Malaysia. 

From Melaka, she took a ferry over to Dumai, Sumatera, Indonesia. And it is from this town that she started her long way journey ventured all the way from north down to the south of the island. He started from Dumai on May 25, 2012, to Duri. From Duri, then she continued to Pekanbaru, then to Bangkinang, then to Tanjung Pati, before she finally got to Bukittinggi, a tourist destination town in the West Sumatera. Judging from this route that she took from Dumai to Bukittinggi, I can tell that Jet is a tough cyclist. A former cyclist that I met in town before in January, didn’t dare enough to venture this route. He took a bus instead.

Then from Bukittinggi, she went down to Pariaman-Bungus-Painan-Tapan-Muko-Muko-Ipuh-Talang Baru-Bengkulu-Maros-Bintuhan, before she finally got to Krui.

She rode her bike all day long from early in the morning to the evening and stopped every time the night falls. She spent the night mostly in a hotel in every town where she ended up. And if she ended up in the middle of nowhere, she would either hitch a ride on a truck to a nearest town, or stayed in a tent.

During her journey in Sumatera, she had spent two days off in Bukittinggi, two days in Pekanbaru, one day in Ipuh, one day in Maninjau, and two days in Krui.

Jet wrote some notes about her adventurous journey in her blog. www.crazyonabike.com/cycledipity. In one of her note she wrote, …    Cycling on I soon learn I am quickly running out of water. Trying to buy some with my dollars prove difficult, nobody has any change or there is a lot of miscommunication. On and on I go, in the hope to find somebody with enough change. 5km before I reach Sisophon I try to buy water one last time, when it hits me that I have a thermos flask full in my panniers. I filled that up the other day after hearing there would be little on my route to Aranyaprathet but never used it. Cursing myself for not thinking of this earlier I drink the whole flask in one go. I am feeling a little better, but I might still be a bit dehydrated....

Goodbye Jet, may you fare well, and have good lucks.

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1 Meet Brett de Laporte

I met this guy, Brett de Laporte, early this May.

‘I have Italian extraction. My mother is from Italy, but I was born and grew up in South Africa. But now I live in Australia. I have Italian passport, but I cannot speak Italian,” he explained himself when I asked about his unique last name.

I was taking pictures and he was surfing. The surf was OK but this guy was the only surfer in the water that morning. He was surfing the right flank of The Peak. You know this surf is rarely taken. Though it’s just a paddle away from The Peak, but not many people take it. This is probably the first time I saw someone surf this spot. I don’t know why he surfed The Flank, and left The Peak empty.

Later some other surfers came out, and they took The Peak, but this guy kept on surfing The Flank. He ruled The Flank and enjoyed it for himself until he got enough. He was a good surfer.

Then he came out of the water and went straight to the house by the surf where he was staying. No wonder I didn’t see his bike parked by the beach like other surfers' bike. Staying in a house by the surf, you don’t need to ride a bike though, unless you are going to surf away.

As I see that he was staying at the house, and I myself have often hung out there, and I know the man who owns the house, and the attendants, I then decided to come to see him.

“Hey mister. I’ve taken some pictures of you,” I said.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Can I see them?” he looked enthusiastic.

“OK.”

Then I turned my camera on and showed him the pictures in the screen one by one. I had taken a lot of pictures of him, and he was interested in some of them.

“We may surf Mandiri before we left,” he said. “I wonder if you can take my pictures at Mandiri, maybe on Friday, or Saturday. “I’ll give you some money,” he said.

“OK. My pleasure,” I said.

The next day when I took pictures at The Leftover, I saw two surfers surfing the right flank (The Leftover is the left flank of The Peak, so you can see one another).

And when I moved to the right flank, I found that it was this guy and his friend surfing. I took his pictures again, and this time together with his friend’s. And when they had finished surfing, I saw them the pictures, again, just like the day before, but this time they copied the pictures to their laptop. And after finished copying, Brett gave me Rp.6.000.

I bet he knew that I needed one more liter of gas to go on with my bike. 

.

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0 Meet the Film Maker

I guess most of the film about Krui Surfs that you’ve seen on YouTube or any other sites are candid camera making, that is to say, there is nothing directed in the making of the film. If you see the videos that appear amateur with unprofessional camera operating and editing, you will know what I mean. And if you search ‘Krui Surf’ on YouTube, you’ll see a lot of this. But anyway, thanks to those amateur film makers, Krui Surfs is better known today.

However, some videos are professionally made, especially those videos for advertisement. Like these Spanish guys that I met at one of Krui Surf location the other day. I don’t know they were making advertisement or not, but they looked professional.

I met those guys by the beach. They were hanging out in the compound of one of the local people’s property, surrounded by wood fence, by the surf. They were sitting and talking under the cozy situation of shady trees. The day was clear and the air was fresh. However, no one went surfing. I presumed they were waiting for the surfers in the water to finish. There were surfers in the water and they seemed not to like joining in. One of the guys was holding a professional camera, taking some shots of anything around.   

The next day I met them again at the same place. Two of them were busy making ready the camera and the tripod. They have a bunch of camera stuffs to do with. They made a tripod with a plane on top for the camera to slide in. I guess they were going to film some surfing scenes, but I was wrong. Instead of filming someone surfing, they made a walking scene. The guy with the camera directed his friend for a scene. He asked his friend to get wet and holding his body-board and walked down the beach as though he had just been finished surfing. They made some takes and retakes for some better results.  

“Will you publish the film on YouTube?” I asked the director.

“Yes, I will publish it, but not on YouTube,” he said. He mentioned a site name which I forget. He then showed me some amazing surfing scenes on his camera that he must have taken close range from the water the other days. I bet he gonna mix the surfing scenes with the last seen that he has just made. Can’t wait to see his film on the net.

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0 Meet Joseph

I met this guy at Mandiri Beach, this early April. He was taking photographs of his friends surfing the beach break. His name is Joseph and he is a Canadian.

Joseph speaks good Indonesian. Although I spoke to him English, he answered me in Indonesian whatever he could say, but he said it in English when it came to a more complex ideas as I kept speaking English to him.

Joseph is an old hander. This is the second time he is in Krui. He was in Krui four years ago and stayed there for a long time. “I stayed with local people at Jimmy’s for two months,” he said. And he stayed at the Karang Nyimbur for even longer time.

He kept on taking photographs of his friends in the water, and so did I. His friends were busy handling the swells that came over them one by one. The swells were about three feet or four, but they missed most of them though. We sat in the shade in the bush. We halted talking every now and then as we are pointing the lens of our camera to the people in the water.

“I want to have a girlfriend here,” he said.

“Sure you do, but it’s not just easy, Man,” I said. “You cannot have a local girlfriend here just for fun. You’ve got to be serious. You have to buy a piece of land and build a house first so as to show how serious you are. The parents will not allow you to marry their daughter if you are not serious and settled.”

“Those white people’s girlfriends are not locals,” I said.

 “I had one though when I stayed at Jimmy’s four years ago,” he said.

“Oh, really? It wasn’t a real girlfriend, was it?”

“Yes. It was. We had affection. We loved each other. We kissed. But when I tried to hug her to say goodbye, she refused, she pushed me away,” he said. She was ashamed because there were many people watching.”

“Yes, they are not just used to it,” I said.

“And besides, if you want to marry a local girl, then you have to convert to Islam. And you’ll have to be serious with the religion,” I said.

“Yes. It’s complicated,” he replied.

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0 Meet Osmo

Well, I’ve told you stories about surfers a hell of a lot. This time I want to tell something different. Something other than waves and boards. Something that doesn’t have anything to do with the sea and the breaks.

Most of the tourists who come to Krui are surfers, of course, whether they are able surfers or beginners, whether they use long board or just a body board, they are all surfers, aren’t they? And truly, Krui now is better known for its surf tours than other tours. But, for you to know, backpacking tours started way before surf tours though, decades ago.

And besides backpacking tour, there is cycling tour. Cycling tourists are those who tour the whole countryside by bicycle, of course. Bicycling tourists rarely come to Krui, not as frequent as surfers or backpackers. Bicycle tourists usually come to Krui from north Sumatera. They arrive in Krui and stay for one day or two for a rest. It takes them weeks to get to Krui from north of Sumatera region, like this cyclist that I met in town the other day.

His name is Osmo Pohja, he is a Finnish. He lives and runs his business in Finland with his wife and his daughter. Besides working in his home country, Osmo had worked in several European countries before.

Osmo arrived in Krui on 21^st of January 2012, from Bintuhan, a small town in Bengkulu province, north of Krui. It took him the whole day to get to Krui from that town, which normally takes about 3 hours by car. “Bicycling is for times later than traveling by car,” he said.

Osmo bought the bike in Thailand before he came to Sumatera from Pahang, Malaysia, by sea. He landed in Dumai. Then he took a bus from Dumai to Bukittinggi, which takes a day long journey. “I didn’t ride my bike from Dumai to Bukittinggi because it was too hot,” he said. “I took my bike by bus, instead.”

Then he rode the bicycle, from Bukittinggi all the way down to Krui. “It’s nice,” he said. “All the way down from Bukittinggi to Krui is cool. Most of the roads take by the sea. I can feel the breeze from the sea all my way long,” he said. The way from Dumai to Bukittinggi takes across the interior part of Sumatera, maybe that’s why it’s hot.

“Do you always wear the umbrella?” I asked

“No. I only use it when it is too hot and I didn’t put enough sunscreen,” he replied.

Then from Bukittinggi, he rode down to Pariaman, pass the Maninjau lake. He spent one night there. After spending one night in the town, he cycled to Painan. There he took a rest and stayed overnight. The next day, he continue cycling to Muko-muko, Bengkulu province. And then he continued cycling down to Ipoh—Bengkul City (not to confuse with Bengkulu province)—Manna—Bintuhan—until he arrived in Krui on January 21. He rode all the way and stopped in each town and stay one day or two.  

All the way that connect those towns above goes through the coastline. The ways are relatively flat and cool with only few mountains. He cycled only in the day time, and he took the bike by bus where he came to high and long mountains.

It took him two cool weeks to get to Krui from Bukittinggi. When he arrived in Krui, he stayed in the town for two days.

“How about the bike?” I asked. The bike looks cranky to me. It doesn’t look like tough mountain bikes like the ones I often see with tourists. It only has one gear that makes it unable to climb up mountains.

“It’s OK. But I’ve changed about 45% of the spokes. I take the spokes with me. I have the tools. I can cut the spokes and put them on by myself,’ he said. What an effort.

Osmo found it’s relatively safe all the way down from Bukittinggi to Krui. He met no heavy locals bothering his journey. “It’s just a nice ride. Everybody I met in the street said ‘hello’ to me,” he said. “I found no trouble with people, but I lost some of my stuffs in my bag in the bus. And in my journey from Dumai to Bukittinggi, we got a band of men stood on our way. There was a group of local people stopped the bus. They made a fire on the street so the bus stopped. Then some of them came into the bus checking the passengers with a torch. I hid in my seat and they didn’t see me. They probably looked for some foreigners because they didn’t do anything to local passengers,” he added. However, apart from this, he found no troubles at all. 

Osmo looked like enjoying his journey with the bike. He planned to ride the bike to the very end of south Sumatera, the Bakauheni pier, which connects Sumatera to Java by ferry, or at least to Bandarlampung, where he then can take an airplane to Jakarta. However, when he got to Krui, he found it not easy to make a decision. There are two ways to go to Bandarlampung from Krui, down south via Kotaagung, or up north via Liwa. Liwa is only 32 km from Krui, but it look way further because the road is climbing up mountains with many abrupt turns all the way long. It takes at least one hour to go this town by motorbike.

Down south way takes by the coastline and is relatively flat for the first one hundred km or more, before it comes to a jungle with a  long and high mountain. If he took the south way he would end up at the jungle in the evening, and he would find no place to stay. If he took the north way, he would go all the way through the jungle and mountains. There is no flat road but the first five km. He needs at least four hours to get to Liwa by his bike unless he took it by bus. But when he arrives in Liwa, he can get a nice place to stay.

Osmo left Krui on January 23. Nobody knows which way he took because nobody saw him leave. I asked the room boy of the hotel the other day, but they didn’t see him leaving either.

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