Gili Islands

After leaving Nusa Lembongan, my buddy Sam and I headed to Lombok Island, which is just west of Bali. Lombok is a lot less touristy and is part of the muslim area of Indonesia. After passing through Sigiggi, we then headed directly to the Gili Islands. Ended up spending some time at the Legend Bar on Gili Air and then moved to Gili Trawahan. Gili Air is a super chill spot with these awesome little hut thingys all along the beach. We pretty much lived like Kings there for 3 days. The fish there was awesome. One night our menu consisted of four fish sitting on the table and we just got to point to which one we wanted for dinner that night (had a pretty cool pic of it but lost it). We got a pretty good laugh out of it.

We hooked up with a cool Cdn/US couple named Trav and Jessie, and also a big group of locals from the Lazy Bar. That allowed us to get some of the local prices too which was nice. Once night we paid $2 which basically paid for all of us (7) to have a huge seafood feed. Not a bad deal.

The locals here absolutely love the guitar. Everytime I haul it out, they all crowd around and try to sing along to the main songs that they've heard. I was sitting in a small terminal building waiting for a ferry the other day and I played a song that one of the security guards had a CD of. I didn't realize it at first, but Sam noticed that when I stopped playing, he could still here them all singing in the background. They eventually flocked over and tried to talk me into playing over the PA system! Ha. How funny is that. The greatest part is, is that Guns N' Roses are HUGE here. As most of you know, I grew up on that stuff and can play pretty much every track. Good way to make friends. I had a cool video of me playing on the roof of a ferry with a bunch of locals on the way over to Nusa Lembongan. Was one of my favorite videos but unfortunately, I think that it may have been lost to that damn virus.

I love watching the local bands here.....some of them are awesome. The greatest part is that they don't have a clue what any of the lyrics are, but they still belt out the songs at full tilt. It is pretty funny to watch. I requested a Nirvana track and it was hilarious listening to what this guy thought the words were. Truthfully though, I probably couldn't tell you either.

After leaving the Gilis, we headed back to the southern part of Lombok island, to Kuta Lombok. Found some stellar surf here. The coolest part too, was how we got to the surf. We had to rent scooters, drive through some stellar scenery and some little villages, and then hire one of the local guys to take us out to the reef on their boat. Most of the guys would just sit in the boat and wait for us to finish but some of the younger ones would jump in and surf with us too.

One of the days there, we decided to take the bikes and head down the coast to see what else we could find. The drive basically consisted of cruising through these mountains and looking out over the coast. Everytime we saw a beach that looked nice, we would take the dirt track in to the village and see what it was like. Everyone of them were spectacular, and all were pretty secluded from tourists. You could tell because the locals were so stoked about seeing us. We had one giant group of school kids come running over at one point, but they were all interested only in our friend Jessie. I guess they aren't that used to seeing white girls.

When we left one of the villages, Jessie had realized that she lost the key to her bike somewhere along the way. Her boyfriend Trav and I decided to go back and take a look for it. As soon as people saw two white guys wondering around looking for something, the whole village came out to see what was going on. After we realized that we weren't going to find it, we decided to offer all the kids a cash reward if they found the 'cunchee' (the key). That got their attention pretty quickly. The parents also seemed to get pretty interested by it as well. I'll tell you, if those people didn't find it, then the key wasn't meant to be found. Unfortunately I had to head back to Kuta, so I don't know if they ever did find it.

Anyway, after leaving Lombok. I headed back to Bali and then flew to Jakarta. That was definitely a contrast to the peacefulness of Lombok. Almost 10 million people. The island of Java has about $130 million people on it and is considered to be the most densely populated island in the world. After a couple of days there, I caught a flight to Bangkok, Thailand, which is where I am now.

Unfortunately I have been sick in bed for the past 5 days, but hoping to be better soon. Will come up with a new plan once I start feeling better. Anyway, as I said before, Sam's camera got a virus, so the 350 pics that we took may be gone which really sucks. I guess that you'll have to use your imaginations!

Bye for now.

Island Hopping in Indo

Life is tough I tell you. As the title suggests, I have just spent the better part of a month hopping from island to island here in Indo, chasing down good surf spots. Indo has proven to be one of my favorite countries so far on this trip. Scenery is spectacular and exotic, beaches are awesome, everything is cheap as hell, and the surfing is crazy.

Makes for a good vacation.

One thing this place doesn't have though, is decent internet connections. The last place I got on, was actually going through the local fellow's cell phone somehow. Also, I am sad to say that the computer had a virsus and it corrupted our camera and so I wasn't able to upload any pics. Hopefully my buddy Sam (from Calgary, part of my crew from Byron Bay) will be able to sort things out when he gets to NZ so that I can get the pics later.

Indo is made up of over 17,500 islands and it is the 4th most populated country in the world, with over 220 million people. Most of the country is muslim, except for the main tourist area of Bali. This country could be one of the poorest ones that I have been to, which unfortunately is reflected in that the local people do everything they can to tourment tourists. The economy in a lot of these areas is based off extracting every dollar they can from the few tourists that are around. Travelling Indo is definitely not for the light at heart, and being a 6'5" white guy with a backpack doesn't help me much. I actually fell for my first big scam here, with a shady little fellow named Danny Boy who sold us an 'open ended return ticket'. I guess by 'open ended', he meant that you couldn't actually return with it. When we came back to get our money back, his fluent english had somehow evaporated into the sinlge phrase, "Not posseeble". Oooo Danny, you so smart. Thankfully we are technically millionaires here (1 Cdn$ worth about 8,000 Rps, so you actually take out $1.5M each time you hit the cash machines), so the scam only puts you out about 15 bucks. I just wish the money could have went to someone who needed more than him.

After leaving Dreamland (I love that name), we headed to another island in Bali, just to the east of the main island, to a spot called Nusa Lembongan. Two dollars and 50 cents will get you a primo hotel on the beach here. The coolest part here was that the surfing here was all reef breaks that you actually had to take a boat out to. The hotel owners father would drop us off out in the middle of the water, and we would tell him when we wanted him to come back and pick us up. On day one, we got to paddle into some of the biggest waves that I have ever seen. Picture laying on the floor and looking up at 12 feet of water getting ready to crash down on your head. Twas a pretty awesome display of Mother Nature at it's finest. We sat in the sidelines for a few, then finally tried our luck. I wouldn't exactly say that I got to ride many waves, as most of them rode me. When you crash in these things, they throw you in every direction and pull you under for a while. Nothing like that near drowning sensation to get the heart pumping. Sam still gets a good laugh from the image of me coming up from one, with my big long arm coming straight up out of the water and dramatically grasping for the board. Took in a little water on that one and had to pull off to the side to throw up some of that tastey Indian Ocean seawater. Mmmm. Don't know if I'm getting any better at surfing, but definitely getting better at crashing.

Have been eating like a king these days. The evenings usually consist of a big awesome meal and a couple of Bintangs (the local brew of choice......actually, the only brew). One of our 'menus' consisted of four different kinds of fish laying on the table and you get to choose which one you want. Allllright! Made for an awesome pic, but unfortunately, its been lost.

Anyway, that's all for now. Like I said, I'm pretty depressed about not having all those pics. If you want to see this place, you'll have to go to Google and do an 'image' search on Nusa Lembongan.

Talk to you soon.