So Long Indonesia

I’m picking up for U’I to close out our time in Bali. After our road trip, we headed back to the Bukit Peninsula. When we had left our Galih Homestay a week prior, there were people camping out waiting for our rooms, so we had little faith that we would be able to return. After driving around and checking out half a dozen different places (all too elite and expensive or too crappy for the money), we decided to stop in at Galih and see if she had any inside tracks to rooms operated by the extended Mamo family. Low and behold two rooms had just opened up at Galih, including the room that U’I and I had stayed in during our duration in Bali. We felt as though we had returned “home” after a one week vacation. The Galih family was thrilled to have us back, and we quickly fell into the habit of talking story and finding out what dramas had occurred during our departure. Several of the friends we had made at Galih trickled in during the next hour. We learned about Jota’s solo scooter experience across Lombok (terrifying and bloody), and of Roman’s trip to the Gili Islands and Desert Point.

Over the next three days we got our fill of surfing in. Scored some magical moments at Quarries (sea weed farm) – grinding rights with true indo power. The water was so clear you could see the reef fish swimming below your ankles and the explosions of color from the living reef. We also scored some fun last sessions at Impossibles and Uluwatu. Our first evening back however, led us down to the beach at Balangan. The tide was pushing off a low-low and the inside reef was still exposed. It was a soft takeoff way outside, transferring into a steep wall and a long hollow tube in less than a foot of water as it met the inside reef. Getting out looked like a challenge. The last section closed out in a shorebreak-like explosion, except over coral instead of sand. Jason and I made our way across the rock without booties (more of a crawl) and waited for the sets to subside. Then a quick scramble through the impact zone and we were free to scratch to the outside. After fussing around on the outside peak without much success at snagging one on our shortboards, we moved in to the start of the hollow section. Little more than a kick and a forward lean was required to transition from floating over the back to falling down the face. It was a grab-rail-and-hold-on from the start experience, with the consistency of a wave machine. The only challenge was pushing through the back of the barrel before you hit the dry reef closeout at the end. It’s much harder to do this backside (with your back to the wave), especially when you have most of the ocean behind you to punch through. We closed out our memorable session with one last meal at our favorite restaurant, the Chinese Seafood shop. Eight family style dishes, beers and drinks, desert, and $15 later all four of us were stuffed beyond belief, with organic, home cooking bursting our seams.

The last three days in Bali absolutely flew by. With 24 hours to go before we departed Indo, Jason managed to get a buckle fixed on his surfboard (ala Quarries), and have a custom board bag made in Kuta and delivered to the Bukit. I packed up a small box of things to ship back to Hawaii to reduce our load and was flabbergasted by the costs. I loaded a couple of light articles of clothing, some bali maps, a magazine, a couple shells, and some surf fins that I wouldn’t be using. I drove down the hill to the Post Office and he quoted me $160 USD. In the end, we ended up leaving some clothes with our Indo family, threw some other stuff out, and only sent home some of the most important fragile gifts. It was still $40 USD, including the cheapest option of maritime shipping, with the boat arriving in Honolulu approximately 3 months later. It was my first experience of expense in Indo.

On our final day in Bali, our flight left at 2:50pm, with our airport taxi (the guy who rented us his car previously) due at Galih at noon. U’I and I were up with the sun and scooted down to Greenballs early. The wind was dead, and the swell small. Greenballs is a swell magnet however, and we knew we would have waves. When we pulled up to the cliff edge, we were greeted by perfectly groomed, head high corduroy lines. We raced down the steps and jumped in the water. U’I paddled out to the right, while I paddled across the narrow channel to the left, which was empty. The left has a narrow window of rideable waves, about an hour on either side of the tide change. Otherwise the currents from the channel go right through the lineup and tear the wave apart (not to mention send you to Australia). We had a blast. Lay back barrels on the left, fast drops on the right. We stayed as long as we could and ran back up the stairs to our scooter. After saying goodbye to the Indian Ocean, we headed home to finish packing. We got to the airport around 1pm, and sailed through customs and immigration. The JetStar checkout lady reminded us to head to the transfer desk in Singapore so that our bags would make it to New Zealand (same crap that happened on our way over).

The flight to Singapore was a quick one, a little under 2 hours (albeit in the wrong direction). A major rainstorm prevented us from landing on time. We were held in a holding pattern with at least four other planes doing donuts in the sky over the city. I was surprised how playful the pilot was with our aircraft, the rest of our party got nauseous from the stunt plane turns. We touched down half an hour late, reducing our layover from 2hours to 1.5 hours. We landed in the complete opposite side of the airport from where the transfer desk was, so we shuffled with all of our carryon baggage for 15 min to the other end. After waiting in line for another 10 minutes, we were informed that our bags had been deplaned and were waiting in Baggage claim. To collect them we would need to clear immigration, get a visa for Singapore, clear Customs, head to the baggage claim, grab the bags and race to the ticket counter, check-in all over again and then re-clear immigration and customs, and race back to the other end of the airport to our gate. We now had little over an hour and the look of terror on our faces was quite clear. If you have ever seen a tacky movie where the entire party is tearing through the airport at full speed, bags taking out old ladies and knocking over random house plants – that was us. In the prim-and-proper Singapore airport, where you risk deportation for chewing gum, we were quite a sight. Immigration held U’I and I up as we hadn’t filled out the arrivals information card on the plane like Hil and J did (why ever would we have needed it??). By the time we had ours done, several planes worth of people had managed to get ahead of us in line. I watched the seconds tick by with sweat pouring from our foreheads. We wove through the formalities of international travel with only the minimum regard for rules and complacent smiles necessary to keep us out of jail. Grabbing our bags (5 surfboards, a bodyboard, four duffels in addition to our 5 carryons and two Ukuleles), we manhandled our way through customs and to the front of the line at the ticket counter, much to the annoyance of a group of businessmen clad in their power suits, man purses and Ipads. The ticket guy was pretty nice. We were the last of a small group of people who had managed to navigate the tangle from the Bali flight to the New Zealand flight, and he handled our elevated stress levels quite pleasantly. We raced back through immigration and customs to our gate and boarded somehow with a few minutes to spare. I conked out almost immediately and woke up 9 hours later on final approach into Auckland. Deplaning, we felt the cold dry air penetrate our cotton linens. Selemat Jalan Indonesia, Kia Ora New Zealand!