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.