DAY 1:

It’s crazy to think that eight months ago, my buddy Noah Sadler called me on my phone asking if I wanted to go on a surf trip to Indonesia. We chit chatted for a bit, and I finally decided to say yes. After our conversation, I put the idea of a surf trip behind me and continued to carry out life. Time went by….

Now it is January 4, 2019 and I am sitting in a common room at the Pecatu Guest Hostel near Uluwatu, Bali. Noah and I left for Bali from San Francisco as soon as the ball dropped for the new year. We boarded our plane and enjoyed our 14 hour plane ride to Taipei, Taiwan. Once we landed in Taipei, we stayed in the airport for six hours before hopping on to our last flight to Denpasar, Bali. After 30 hours of traveling, Noah and I had officially arrived to Indonesia. Man did that feel good.

Unlike many airports in the United States, the airport at Denpasar was chaotic. After going through customs, Noah and I got swarmed by taxi men yelling “good price boss, I give you great price boss”. Unaware of the culture, Noah and I got into the first taxi we saw which cost us $400,000 K (around $28.00 USD) to go from Denpasar to Kuta. Once we arrived at out hostel in Kuta, we unpacked our bags and went out to get a bite to eat. Noah and I decided it would be fun to voyage away from the tourist areas and get lost in the heart of the city. After walking for around an hour, we settled down for dinner at a hole in the wall joint. We spent around $2.00 USD which was enough for two Bintang Beers and a meal. Following dinner, Noah and I decided to call it a night.

Waking up the next day we enjoyed complimentary breakfast provided by the hostel which consisted of white bread and peanut butter. After breakfast, we walked down to Kuta Beach and jumped into the water. The water was so warm which was nice to feel after freezing in California. Noah and I swam for a couple of hours, and then decided to explore more of downtown Kuta. We decided to get lost once again and headed due east from the beach into the slums of the city. At this point in the day, the temperature reached around 86º F with 90 percent humidity. No matter how much water I drank, it consistently looked like I jumped out of a shower. Nonetheless, Noah and I strolled by several temples and even saw a group of children playing in the street. That was truly amazing.

After spending two nights in Kuta, we decided to travel to Petjatu which is the closet town near prime surf breaks such as Uluwatu, Padang Padang and Impossibles. As soon as we arrived at our hostel, Noah and I immediately rented motor bikes with attached surf racks on the side. I have operated a motor bike in the U.S. without any problem, but not going to lie I was absolutely terrified to drive one here in Bali. One, people drive on the left side of the road which is completely foreign to me. Second, if there is a two-lane road it somehow becomes a five-lane road. It seems like there are no rules here. People romp down the sidewalk and fly through intersections. Not to mention, there are hundreds of people on the road at any given time. But, in the end Noah and I loaded up our boards and sent it to Padang Padang.

Once we arrived to Padang Padang, we unloaded our motor bikes and trekked down to the beach. The path to the beach was super beautiful. Monkeys were playing in the trees and we had to climb through a cave to get to the ocean. The beach at Padang Padang seemed like the place to hang. People were tossing frisbees around and bathing in the sun. Unfortunately, there weren’t any waves upon arrival, so we decided to drive to Uluwatu instead. Once we entered the water at Uluwatu, Noah and I started paddling out to the reef break. The paddle was seemingly long, and it took us over 10 minutes to get out. Yet, the waves were absolutely perfect. They were left peelers, that were completely hollow. The only downside were the 50 surfers fighting for each wave. However, we were able to surf Uluwatu for the first time and that will never be forgotten. 

DAY 2:

The past two days have been completely unexpected. Yesterday, we decided to load up our motor bikes and surf Uluwatu once again. With the same routine; we walked down to the beach, strapped on our boards and paddled out to the backline. We surfed for over an hour on the perfect lefts before I decided to call “last wave”.

There I was, looking over my shoulder paddling into my final wave for the day. I popped up, and took my initial carve down the face of the left peeler. Everything seemed fine until I saw myself falling upside down on the face of the wave. Before I knew it, blood was everywhere. When I emerged from the water, I realized that the rail of my board broke my nose on impact. With blood gushing everywhere, I franticly paddled back to shore. 

I finally arrived to the shore, and a super nice Australian dude gave me instructions on how to reset my nose. After chilling out for a little bit, Noah and I decided to head back to the hostel and relax for a couple of hours. 

 Later that afternoon, we thought that it would be fun to go on a hike somewhere. We pulled out our maps and decided to go checkout the southside of the Bukit Peninsula. We drove along meandering back roads until we arrived at a parking lot on top of a 400-foot cliff. After descending down the cliff, we ended up settling at a beach called Pantai Nunggalan. The beach ended up being pretty neat. It had a washed-up shipwreck that was covered in graffiti and the beach was very local and isolated.  We ended up hanging around for a couple of hours before heading back to the hostel. 

The next day I woke up feeling great other than having a broken nose. I decided it would be a smart idea to take the day out of the water to let my nose heal. Noah and I once again loaded up our motor bikes and drove to Dreamland beach. I posted up onshore to take photos of Noah while he surfed the rights along the sand break. Around an hour into the surf, the weather changed dramatically from sunny to a monsoon downpour. We ended up leaving Dreamland early and staying the rest of the afternoon in our hostel.

To end the day, Noah and I decided to head to Singlefin bar to get some drinks. We pre-gamed at our hostel and ended up meeting some rad people. We met a French guy named Luca, a man from Java named Wawan and a Russian couple. Together we all sent it to the bar and celebrated our last night at the Pecatu Guest Hostel.

 A lot has happened since my last blog post. After Uluwatu, Noah and I took a bus to Canggu which is another surf town on the east coast of Bali. We checked into our hostel named Lay Day, and it ended up being a complete party. The majority of the guests were piss drunk Brits who did nothing but take kamikaze shots and blackout before dinner. Although we like to party from time to time, Noah and I didn’t routinely participate in the celebrations. 

After we dropped off our bags at the hostel, we rented scooters and headed down to Berawa Beach. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the beach the surf was flat—but we still ended up walking up and down the beach anyway. On our walk, we stumbled upon a washed-up cow with its feet tied up. It was pretty sad to see, yet Bali is a crazy country— so I guess it was not too out of the norm. Once our walk ended, we headed back to our hostel and joined the Brits in some party shenanigans.

The next day, Noah and I woke up around 6:00 am and took our motorbikes down to Echo Beach for some high tide surfing. The break spit out gnarly left-peelers, but it was a sand break so that made it a little less intimidating. We ended up surfing for several hours before heading back to Lay Day. When we arrived at the hostel once again, Noah and I met up with two deaf Filipinos. We ended up talking to them over text messages for over an hour and found out that they were also traveling Indonesia on a surf trip. Man can I tell you it was strange having a silent conversation, but it was eye-opening nonetheless. Later that day, Noah and I enjoyed a few cold Bintang beers and called it an early night. 

We woke up early the next morning and decided to take a day trip to Ubud to check out the Monkey Forest and rice terraces. We filled up our scooters and sent it on the hour-long drive through inner Bali. As I mentioned earlier, driving on the island is completely nuts. We often found ourselves running red lights with the locals and it seemed to be just the norm. Around 45-minutes into our drive, my scooter suddenly decided to break down. Noah was leading the drive at this point, and he kept on moving along without noticing that I had broken down on the side of the road. After around 10-minutes or so, Noah ended up coming back to find me sweating my pants off on the side of the road. A local Balinese man pulled over shortly after and escorted us to a nearby mechanic. It turns out that the belt inside my engine lost a couple of teeth and that was causing the problem. The mechanic fixed the problem within 30-minutes, and we continued our journey to Ubud. 

When we arrived at the Monkey Forest, our expectations suddenly dropped. The forest itself was a complete tourist trap. The forest was a glorified zoo with hundreds of monkeys roaming the area. It was neat to take photos of the monkeys, but soon after 30-minutes we became extremely bored. We ended up leaving the forest and sent it to a rice terrace 20-minutes away. Arriving at the rice terrace, we noticed that there was a fee to check it out. Being broke backpackers, Noah and I decided to grab a beer instead at a lookout point and take photos from there. We stayed at the bar for around 15-minutes before driving back to Canggu. 

That night, we ended up staying at Lay Day and hanging out with the deaf Filipinos once again. Nothing exciting happened. We ended up having a couple of beers before bed knowing that the next day we would be venturing to Nusa Penida—a nearby island.

Nusa Penida is the third island off of the east coast of Bali. Before Penida is Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Ceningan. Noah and I took a taxi from Canggu to Sanur which is the harbor town closest to Penida. We purchased our tickets for a round trip fast boat to the island and then hit the sea. When we arrived to Penida after a 30-minute boat ride, locals immediately started cat calling us for scooter rentals and lodging. The temperature at Penida after getting off the boat was around 90ºF and we were not having it with the locals. They were really crawling under our skin. Yet, once we received all of our belongings from the boat, we ended up renting scooters and finding a place to stay just up the road from the port. 

We unloaded our bags at our homestay and decided it would be fun to drive up to Crystal Bay to do a little bit of snorkeling. We ended up seeing three sea turtles and plenty of tropical fish on our first unguided snorkel. That was super neat. 

When we arrived back out to our homestay, we noticed that the power was out, and the AC hadn’t been working for several hours. It sucked because our room was well over 100ºF and we had no way of cooling down in the tropical air. To make matters worse, Noah and I must have had some unsettling food earlier in the day which triggered our first episode of “Bali Belly”. I ended up having the runs all night while Noah was constantly vomiting. To say the least, it was a miserable night. 

The next day, we decided to take a day trip to Kelinking Beach. The drive from our homestay was only around 45 minutes, so we decided to pack up our day packs and head to the beach. Kelinking turned out to be the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The water was vibrantly blue, and the island was the shape of a T-rex. After sightseeing, we decided to take the path down to the beach. Noah and I called the path “the path to heaven, but the climb from hell”. I say this because the path was a complete struggle. The climb itself was like a stage 5 rock climb aided by sketchy ropes and bamboo. Once we descended down the sketch climb, we set up our hammocks and chilled under a magnolia tree for several hours. At one point, we were just relaxing when a monkey came out of nowhere and stole Noah’s sunglasses. He instantly got up and threw his shoe at it which startled the monkey and it dropped the glasses. We continued to hammock for a little while before we decided it was time to leave heaven and take the climb from hell.

We were only a third up the hike before we started sweating like nonother. I swear it was the hottest I have been in my entire life. It was too sketchy to climb in flip flops, so I decided to send it barefoot. That was a huge bummer, because the ground was also scorching hot, so my feet started burning. Noah felt like he was about to get heat stroke, so we hustled to the top where we instantly drenched ourselves with the remaining water we had. To say the least, I will never forget that hike.

Later that afternoon, Noah and I drove to Broken Beach and saw giant manta rays swimming from the cliffs below. It was beautiful to see the 10-foot wingspan those creatures had. We ended up watching the mantas for a while before heading back to the homestay and calling it a night. When we woke up the next day, we packed up our bags and voyaged off to Nusa Lembongan. 

We ended up staying in Nusa Lembongan for five days total. Our homestay that we stayed at was called Nyuh Gading which means the “yellow coconut”. The homestay itself was pretty rad because it was in close proximity to three breaks: Shipwrecks, Lacerations and Playgrounds. During our first afternoon there, we took our motor bikes over a yellow bridge to surf the island of Ceningan. The break that we chose to surf was called Mahana Point. The break itself was a shallow reef break that spit out left peelers. The surfers there were definitely local—yet it was the break where I had caught the best wave so far into the trip. 

For the remainder of our time spent in Lembongan, we ended up surfing Mahana Point often followed by some afternoons at Playgrounds. We spent the rest of our days just hanging at the homestay reading books or eating Indonesian food. Once our five days came to an end, we packed up our bags and checked into our flight to Sri Lanka.

Our flight from Denpasar to Colombo, Sri Lanka, was split up by an 11-hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As backpackers, we decided to travel throughout Kuala Lumpur for the day and do some sightseeing. We ended up taking a speed train from the airport to the city center station. From there, we walked to the Petaling Street Market which was similar to a mini china town. We didn’t end up buying any souvenirs, but we did end up eating some spicy sweet and sour chicken at an Asian restaurant. 

From the restaurant, Noah and I took another train to Batu Caves. Outside of the cave (history of batu caves) After leaving the caves, we took the train back to the airport where we ended up going to a premium lounge off of Noah’s travel card. At the lounge we drank several beers before hopping on our plane to Sri Lanka.

We arrived at the airport in Negombo, Sri Lanka, a little after midnight. Upon arrival, Noah and I grabbed a taxi for another hour drive to our hostel in Colombo. The hostel that we checked into was an absolute shithole. There were people sleeping all over the place and a construction company was demolishing a building outside in the middle of the night. Even being extremely exhausted from our travels, I barely slept a wink that night. 

The next morning, Noah and I headed over to the train station where we ended up buying tickets to Hikkaduwa. The train ride to Hikkaduwa was a little under three hours long, and wow it was a crazy experience. To put things into perspective, Noah and I both have 50-pound packs and a giant surfboard bag with two boards to carry. We ended up loading the train in the third-class section which was hectic. The third-class section of the trains here are essentially a giant sardine can. With all of our equipment, it was nearly impossible to fit into that section. We ended up hopping off the train and running to the second-class section at last minute. 

 It was really neat riding in second class. The train doors stayed open which allowed us to hang off the outside of the train and sightsee. We ended up taking a few photos of the land before we arrived to Hikkaduwa. Once we arrived, we checked into our homestay and relaxed for a couple of hours.

Hikkaduwa is a well-known surf town along the southern coast of Sri Lanka. During the on season (November-April), the swell picks up and offers a lot of good surf for surfers. In the early morning on our first day, Noah and I set up our boards and went out to a break called Main Reef. The wave at Main Reef is a steep aggressive wave that has a powerful punch. The wave itself breaks over around 3-feet of reef which makes it really frightening. I definitely had a few diggers when attempting this wave, which in the end put me into the zone for reef breaks. After getting slammed a few times into the reef, my commitment rose dramatically. At the end of our first day surfing Main Reef, Noah and I successfully landed about 40 percent of our waves—that was good for us. 

Noah and I stayed in Hikkaduwa for two days in total— strictly surfing Main Reef. Although the wave was very fun, the crowds at Main Reef were a little bit obnoxious. We decided that two days was enough time in Hikkaduwa. We packed our bags, hit the train and voyaged off to the southern town of Midigama. 

Arriving to Midigama, we checked into our guest house called Hot Tuna. The guest house sits right across the street from a nice break called “Lazy Lefts”. The break is called Lazy Lefts because when the swell hits the reef below it forms a perfect left peeler that runs for meters. Of course, Noah and I grabbed our boards as soon as arriving and jumped straight into the water. We ended up surfing the lefts up until dusk.

When we came back to our room from the great afternoon surf, we said hello to our next-door neighbors. Our neighbors turned out to be a young British couple from Polzeath and Cornwall. Their names were Lily and Jago. The young couple decided to do a large travel trip before they headed off to Uni back in the UK. They decided to go to Sri Lanka for a while before heading to Thailand and Bali. Before their trip to Sri Lanka, Jago told me that they have traveled together to Oman, the Maldives and Portugal. Shoot, Jago has even snowboarded in Breckenridge, CO. Crazy! 

We bonded hard with Jago and Lily that night while we drank Lion Stouts and listened to the Stones over our portable speaker. The next guy that came into the picture—his name was Joe. Joe was a cool cat from Jersey, England. He was a thirty-one-year-old carpenter who did an annual trip to Midigama to surf. As a somewhat local to the area, he informed us about many other breaks to surf. That was super neat of him.