Last weekend I went off to Palabuhanratu, a popular surfing spot on the south coast of Java. I've wanted to go there for a while but I wanted to make sure I could pronounce the name of the town before I went there. When talking about my plans with friends at work I would say “Pa(lahahummnruhbubbhalala)ratu.” It was almost funny how I couldn’t learn how to say the name of this town. Eventually I got it and I was on my way.
It was a three hour ride on an ”ekonomi” bus which meant no A/C and they crammed on as many people as they could. It wasn’t uncommon for the aisles to be packed and even people hanging out the doors as we drove along. The driver had an assistant that was responsible for collecting passengers and fares along the way. When he saw people along the side of the road the bus would slow down and the assistant would jump out and try to get more passengers. Then he would shove them on the bus and jump back before it took off again. The bus never really stopped completely, it was all pretty crazy.
Once in Palabuhanratu I took an
ojek to a hotel that Melanie had recommended. The
ojek driver got me right off the bus where I had been dozing so I wasn’t too sharp right then. I’d been warned that they would try to overcharge me, but when he said six (as in 6000 rupiah, or so I thought) I agreed. Seven thousand rupiah equals $1 CAN, so I thought that six was reasonable given my prior experiences with
ojeks. But when he dropped me at the hotel I figured out he meant 60, 000 rupiah. I laughed in his face and said “No way!” He took the 10,000 rupiah I gave him and sheepishly said thanks.
The hotel was a popular place for surfers, mostly Aussies, and a few of the older ones seemed to have been there a while. The older ones didn’t stay at the hotel, but hung out in the bar/restaurant all day as though they owned the place. You could tell they were regulars when they came in and demanded to watch rugby on the TV even though the younger guys were in the middle of a surf movie. If they weren't actually surfing they spent the rest of their time talking about surfing, watching surfing movies and reading surfing magazines. It was a familiar scene to see a slightly drunk old Aussie telling a young surfer about the local waves.
I felt a little shy being around all these deeply-tanned, muscled surfers and felt it was obvious I didn’t know the first thing about surfing. One of the hotel employees even said he could tell I wasn’t a surfer because my skin was too white. One of the bartenders told me she thought I was a doctor because of my glasses, beard and the fact that I read a newspaper in the bar instead of a surfing magazine.
On Saturday I took a surfing lesson with a local surfer. I’ve always wanted to surf and I love watching surfing movies, even Hollywood ones like Point Break, North Shore and Blue Crush; and I figure I’ve learned just as much from those movies as I did from this guy. When we got to the beach he pretty much just strapped the board to my ankle gave me some pointers in broken English and then I was in the surf. He gave me some more advice along the way but mostly he just told me to keep paddling. Although the waves were small my arms were spent just paddling out and by the time I wanted to turn around and paddle even harder to catch a wave my arms were rubber. Most of the day was spent with the teacher yelling to paddle when I knew I had no strength left. Life has been too good to me these last two months in Bogor. Technically, you could say I caught one wave but when I tried to push myself up I went nowhere and ended up just riding the wave on my belly. Real surfers would probably say I was being generous by calling that catching a wave, but it was the closest I came. I still want to surf though and told my teacher I would do tonnes of push-ups in the next few weeks before I go back to try again.
The bus ride was pretty similar on the way back to Bogor on Sunday. We saw the results of two traffic accidents along the way with police and mangled cars on the side of the roads. Before going home I went and got some photos developed so hopefully I’ll have more photos online soon.
I’m back at work today and am feeling that I need to get some work done since I would like to finish at LATIN at the end of the month. The website is coming along, but I just realized the other week that I need to re-do the Indonesian version as well. I just need to change a few things in the main template but it will be slow since I’m not sure which words correspond for the navigation bars and such. I also have a deadline for the oMega on Wednesday that I am sorely unprepared for, so the next couple of days will be writing and re-writing to get that together. I also need to find a computer shop that will scan my photos and put them on a CD so I can get them online to be used with my story. Like all my roles of film there are shots from what seems like a long time ago, as well as some from this past weekend, so there isn’t a lot of continuity.
