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.