Pish and waves

Nusa Lembongan is a 4kmx2km island in the Badung straight, just off the coast of Bali and a small dot in the Indonesian archipelago. Palm trees, outrigger boats, coconuts, white sand beaches, coral, Hindu temples, recording studios, playstation parlors, burning plastic, sunshine, telecom antenna, Indiana Jones bridge, Hindu chants, she sells seashells on the seashore, “pish” are all words and sentences that will forever by associated with my almost one month stay on the island.

Now, I could lie to yo and tell you that it is an ugly island, infested with man-eating rats the size of kangaroos, you'd probably see right through that lie.

Jungut Batu village in the foreground at low tide. Mount Agung on Bali in the background.

Mushroom beach and the traditional outrigger boats

Of course there are things to be afraid of in Nusa Lembongan. A coconut could fall off a palm tree and right onto your head with dire consequences. This is no laughing matter, in fact many people meet their end like this every year all over the world. Or you could fall off your surfboard, go “over the falls” and get hacked to bits by the sharp coral reef. This happened to a poor Brazilian chap, who had to return to Bali for treatment. Ouch.

Lembongan is growing, but at a slower pace than Bali. Little bungalows dot the hills and the beaches here and there. Most of them are tasteful, at least they are not 20 story block style hotel buildings. There are few roads, they are paved, but they have moon craters in them. This means that you cannot go fast. Suits me fine. There are no cops, no licence plates, licenses or helmets on the island. There are only few cars, usually old, beat down pick up trucks, that are used by local businesses to shuttle tourists around or to move construction material or algae from one side of the island to the other.

There are several family temples. Everywhere you go there are offerings and Lembonganese dressed in the elegant ceremonial robes. Hindu priests chant here and there. Sometimes chimes and bells ring in the distance and it sounds like Swiss cows trying to play the triangle while dancing the macarena.

I am staying in a basic room at Bungalow no. 7, a local family has built this and several other establishments. The room is clean, decorated with wood carvings and bamboo screens. The shower has no hot water and the bathroom is a bit shabby. Every morning I wake up and check the surf while eating stale toast and drinking a freshly pressed fruit juice. I will miss the juices, I will not miss the stale bread and fluerescent “strawberry” jam.

The view from bungalow no. 7

Main road in Jungut Batu

Local alarm clocks. They go off every morning at 5am. And you cannot snooze them.

If you take a stroll down the beach local boatsmen ask if you want to go snorkeling “snorkeling yes, good price, mangrove point, yes?”. The island is a little paradise for divers, surfers and tourists that just want to get away from it all, it is a welcome escape from the craziness of South Bali.

I have rented a little automatic motorbike with a surfboard rack and I set off to explore the island. There is a large mangrove forest to the north and two temples. In the center you drive past Lembongan village with its tiny Warungs, family temples, a small school and a very basic football (soccer) field. South of the village there is extensive algae agriculture, most of it takes place on the narrow channel between Lembongan and Ceningan, these are then sold to the cosmetics industry. Most tourist activity is centered on the North West in the village of Jungut Batu (after a month living in the very same village I will still not know its name...) and in the sheltered cove of Mushroom beach. The local people seem to be split in two camps when it comes to the tourists, the ones that would probably prefer to have the old subsistence island lifestyle back and the ones that have embraced the arrival of the tourists. The latter does not necessarily do so because they earn their bread thanks to the flocks of tourists, rather they are genuinely welcoming and curious as to know what goes on in the outside world. 

the devil's tear

dream beach, I sat in this little cave and played the ukulele

seaweed drying in the sun. Seaweed does not smell pretty when it is drying in the sun.

One of the Hindu temples. In white the priest, who also happens to be a member of the Lembonganese parking/road transit mafia and forces tourists to stop and pay a "toll fee" to travel Northwards.

The mangrove forest in the North, if you can make it past the road toll mafia...

I have come here to surf and enjoy Balinese culture in a quieter setting than that of South Bali. The surf is rather crowded. There are three spots that break on the sharp coral just off the long beach at Jungut Batu: playgrounds, lacerations and shipwrecks. Playgrounds is so named because it is in the middle of reef pontoons used by day trippers that arrive from Bali on huge modern ships and also because it is a slightly more relaxed surf break with more water over the reef. Lacerations gets its name from the sharp reef that has cut through many a surfer's skin. Shipwrecks is thus named because there used to be the carcass of a ship right close to where the wave breaks. In my time on the island I never muster up the courage to surf lacerations, but surf playgrounds 6-7 times and shipwrecks twice. At playgrounds one day I counted 10 people paddling for the same wave, this can lead to collisions and a rather tense atmosphere in the water. I was therefore glad to discover that I could drive my bike to the center South of Lembongan and cross a rickety bridge to the small island of Ceningan and from there head to the South West to a surf spot that has the promising name of “Secret point”. The first time I got there there were 25 people in the water and I thought to myself “yeah right, secret point....” However that turned out to be an exception to the rule and that most days there were only at most 8-10 people in the water at any given time. A Balinese has built some beach bungalows in front of the wave, this is a beautiful spot with a narrow white sand beach and cliffs framing the coral reef that causes the wave to peel off the point with mechanical precision. It is not a very demanding wave, but it is intimidating when the swell gets bigger. The reef is rather shallow, there can sometime be some nasty currents and the cliffs that surround the spot all lend to its almost mysterious aura. It is a beautiful place. On the cliffs they have built a bar and a two platforms from which many surfers jump with their boards directly into the line up. One of the platforms is 10 meters above the water! The other is “only” about 4 meters above the surface. The water is crystal clear and you can see the colors of the corals and hundreds of tropical fish below you. It reminds me of Fiji. The water sometime feels a bit cold in just boardershorts and a rash vest and I am glad that Anna brought me a Neoprene rash vest. 

Ceninganese football field on the canal with view of Lembongan 50 meters away.

The "Indiana Jones" bridge. Picture taken from Ceningan with Lembongan on the other side.

The Secret Point bar guarded by two Hindu daemons

a ten meter jump into the surf

the beach and bungalows at secret point

the four meter jump point, directly into the wave

temple at Seabreeze Warung overlooking the channel between the two islands

Secret point wave at sunset

My wheels and my board.

I meet Ketut (or was it Made?), who runs a small guesthouse (homestay) called the Well house. He invites me for dinner, he is a great host and cooks up a fantastic fish meal.

I meet Juli and Whatshisname from Germany, Tom and Leona from England, Morgana from New Zealand, Daryn from Scotland/Australia, Audrey from France, Bonny+James from Australia and Whatshername from Zimbabwe/England. Everyone just comes for a maximum 1 week stay and the most I ever share with anyone is a meal, a good conversation and exchange facebook/email data without actually ever staying in touch. I struggle to recall the names already. I have met too many people in too short a period, often the conversation is the same, where have you been, what do you do back home, where are you going next, compare cultural differences of current guest country with home country, ect. It is like eating Nasi Goreng day after day, it becomes routine and almost stale. I can predict what they are going to say. It is a shame that no one is staying longer because I am sure that we could strike up life lasting friendships, instead they leave impressions of a conversation in my brain, the joy of traveler companionship for a couple of hours or days, a shared meal, a shared surf session. Most locals I meet move at island pace, slow and lazy, their English is often only good enough to sustain the most basic of conversations and my Bahasa Indonesia is virtually non existant. What a shame, I would like to find out more about life on the island. Most young kids are interested in Rock music and Bob Marley, stuck in a different decade. They are “imprisoned” by a 4x2km land mass and they are subdued by the slow pace of life. It is interesting to see how they blend the new and the old. There are two, TWO, 2 recording studios on the island!!! Lots of local kids have started their own bands to escape the “forced imprisonment”. They often play hard rock or punk music, they write their own songs in Bahasa Indonesia. There are several playstation parlors, these are relatively common in developing countries from what I could see in Peru, Mexico and here: someone buys a playstation and a television, sells unhealthy snacks and fizzy cold drinks and children pay to play videogames. This is a win win arrangement, the children get hours of enjoyment at a fraction of the price of buying their own tv and game console and the owner of this small business makes a decent profit by selling fluorescent sweets and renting hours of videotainment.

My days go by lazily, I wake up early check the surf, if good I immediately rush back to the room, cake myself with sunblock and go out surfing, if not I just carry on sleeping in the sticky sweaty mattress with the fan whirring at a slow and repetitve speed. Then I have my stale toast (sometimes I surf too long and miss breakfast time) have lunch, go surfing if I haven't already been. Have dinner. Read a book. Drink a fruit juice. Ply ukulele. Yes, island pace is catching up with me real fast. I have the surfing to keep me sane and healthy. Some days I manage to snap out of the routine. Force myself to go and meet new people, go snorkeling, try to strike up a conversation with a local.

I go snorkeling with manta rays off the coast of near-by mysterious Nusa Penida, this island is much larger than Lembongan and Ceningan, but there appears to be hardly any tourist accommodation on the island, despite the fact that all the best dive sites are off its coast and the landscapes look very beautiful. I am told that the islands chiefs are now thinking of developing high end Eco-tourism resorts. Sounds like a better move than the South Balinese “let us see how much cement we can pour on the coastline and how many tourists we can cram and scam in this krushevian monstrosity we have built”. I hope it works out for Penida.

The black spot is a Manta Ray, graceful creatures

Crystal bay, beautiful and pristine bay on Nusa Penida. I hope that future development doesn't ruin it.

Fun fact I forgot to mention about the Indonesian people, or at least the Balinese, they cannot pronounce the letter “f” which can create some funny misunderstandings. For example I go to a restaurant and get offered “pish”. Blank look in my face she repeats “pish”. “?!”. “pish”, annoyed she zooms off to the kitchen where she fetches a big fat FISH. Ahhhh.

Different restaurant. Order lunch... Ketut (female waitress from Lembongan in this instance, not annoying male taxi driver from Bali) asks me “do you want pan?”. Hmh, interesting I get the pan with that food I ordered. I ponder this over... Pan, do I want the pan. Ketut gets a bit impatient and points at the fan just above my head... ahhh, do I want you to turn on the FAN? Ahhh. No thank you Ketut. Ketut also served me the spiciest meal I have ever had, I'm sure it burned a hole in my guts.

My time on the island is over, I take the speedboat back to Bali. I spend my last five days in Balangan, not too far -or so thought I- from the beach that I really liked during out stay in Bali. stay at a nice homestay, with air conditioning, mosquito nets and warm water. Sheer luxury. And they don't serve stale toast for breakfast. In fact they even have a little Warung on the beach, where one can eat banana pancakes (of course I only discover this on my last day...). On the first evening I decide to take a leisurely walk to the beach. It turns out that the beach is probably at least 1 hour away by foot. Fortunately some young Javanese tourists give me a lift to the beach. I contemplate the waves for a while, watch the sun set and then have to make my way back to the homestay. Fortunately I find a nice Javanese who gives me a ride back to the homestay on the back of her motorbike. After buying the odd souvenir, I dedicate the rest of my time to surfing. Trying to make the most of the waves before I return to landlocked Switzerland. No sooner than I know my world trip is over and I am in a plane en route to home.

one of my last Balinese waves and someones head.

Bye bye Indonesia.