Around The World In 80 Waves

There is an enormous swell on the way but we thought we would sneak a mellow session in before it arrived. The wind was on the waves but as the sets rolled through it cleaned up.

The whole posse in the water got taken out by one set which suggested the swell has arrived.

The wave is a right and I finally bagged a few on my forehand including one delightful ride which went on so long everybody thought I was surfing back to our island. Loads of fun before getting out under a gorgeous sunset. Great end to a great day.

We surf here on successive days. The first session was mostly ruined by the wind cutting up the swell, but the second was four five feet of beautifully peeling lefts over the reef.

At times it is very shallow and because the water is so clear you can see the rocks sand and fish you are surfing over.

Lots of fun in the baking sun. My tan wont need much topping up after my stay here, that is if I haven’t turned into a strip of crispy bacon by the time I leave!

The surfers on the island have been split into two groups and mine consists of a Chilean guy called Jo, an Australian girl called Andrea, three Germans called Carla, Nico and Lucas as well as my good self.

After breakfast we have so much fun at this break. Despite my painful derriere I am on fire and tear down the line all morning.

I had forgotten how close to the equator we are and got a tad scorched in the morning sun. The left side of my face is a tad raw and I will look more like Casper the friendly ghost for the next couple of days as a consequence due to all the zinc I will now have to wear!

I don’t mind though because I caught so many great waves.

As soon as the fast boat had made the journey from Sumatra to our island we had breakfast and were then taken straight out to this break whose name translates to the sleeping wave.

Things were a bit manic as everybody piled over the side and was desperate to bag their first wave here.

I did bag one that somebody blatantly dropped in on me and then spent most of the rest of the session going over the falls. Twice landing butt first on my fins nearly creating a new crack in my backside! That I didn’t damage the fins was a miracle.

I got out tired and more than a tad tender, and then spent most of the rest of the day kipping in my little bungalow.

This is the name of the place that I am staying in on the island of Simakakang. You can walk all the way around it in a tad more than an hour. Www.aloitaresort.com

Sadly the internet connection here is awful and I am even having issues accessing my own web page. (I am in the middle of the Indian Ocean after all!)

So for the duration of my stay here it looks like posts such as this without pictures will be the best I can do. I will post the pictures to add colour to my narrative later.

The Mentawai Islands are a chain of approximately seventy islands and islets off the western coast of Sumatra in Indonesia.

I am going to be staying on one of those islands, which is actually too small to fit on this map, but is actually located between Sipura and Pagai North.

I have given myself more than a week here and may well stay longer than that if I like it.

The reason for that is of course the waves that are available here. Warm water, clean perfectly peeling waves and blue skies near the equator. What more could a surfer ask for?

It has been weeks since I last surfed in Japan so I am chomping at the bit at the moment just to get my board in the water again. I am now just hoping that the airlines have not put too many holes in my stick during all the flights since then!

After an early start in Singapore I have an eighty minute flight to Jakarta which finds me back on Javanese soil for the first time since G-Land. Largely down to the unbelievably efficient Changi airport it was a painless trip. It also meant I crossed the equator again. 

However I don’t stop for much longer than the time it takes me to get another Indonesian visa, because my next flight takes me on to Padang in Sumatra. I have ended up flying about a thousand miles on two flights just to get a hundred miles across to the west side of Sumatra which is a bit wasteful, but it was out of my hands. It is the second overnight stop before catching a boat to the Mentawai Islands tomorrow.

The first thing I noticed upon arriving in Padang are all the wonderful buildings.

There are so many style like the one you see here, with the roof eaves arcing exponentially upwards.

The whole of this area got absolutely hammered by the Boxing Day earthquake and Tsunami of 2004 so it is good to see so many magnificent structures still standing.

However that doesn’t stop the Axana hotel in Padang, where I am staying for the night, providing me with earthquake survival tips when checking in.

Definitely a first and given how many hotels I have stayed in around the Pacific Rim of Fire without getting anything, I can admit that it is a tad alarming that this one thinks it necessary.

There are other natural threats around here for me to consider though, albeit in dwindling numbers. The Sumatran Tiger is listed as critically endangered because there are only 400 left in the wild. It looks like it may go the way of both the Balinese and Javan Tigers that are now extinct, which would be a massive shame.

One of the sad facts of the world is that there are already more tigers in captivity than there are in the wild.

Saying that though I didn’t fancy my chances much if I bumped into one on the way back from my beer run to the shops! 200kg of danger that I wouldn’t want to mess with.

I am on my way to the Mentawai Islands which are off the west coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. There was no chance of getting there via a direct flight from Hanoi so I have got to make a couple of stopovers to break up the journey. The first of these is today in Singapore.

I am only going to be in Singapore for eighteen hours between the flight in from Vietnam and the flight out to Jakarta tomorrow. I will also be returning here for a few days later on my travels.

Consequently I have checked into the hotel at the airport itself to minimise on transit grief, and allow myself a day off everything apart from the ever present administrative backlog.

My hotel is so close to Changi airport that it is possible for the air traffic controllers to watch me doing the back stroke in the pool on the roof.

However in the interests of public safety it is probably best that they keep focused on the the job at hand.

I should say at this point in all fairness to them arriving at the airport is probably the most pain free landing, immigration and customs process of my entire trip.

From walking through the doors of the plane, to checking into my room at the hotel took less than twenty minutes. I can’t fault Changi airport at all to be honest the service and standard of the place is amazing.

Saying that though, any airport that decides to build the world’s largest helter skelter slide inside it is always going to get my approval.

The biggest slide is four stories high and buying enough duty free entitles you to a free go, which I am hoping to take advantage of later today. Wheeeeeee!!!!!

In John Rambo style I am breaking out from behind Vietnamese lines today, but without the aid of a compound bow or any RPGs. To do this I was originally going to buy a moped in the north and then try and get it across Laos, Thailand and possibly Myanmar all the while heading down towards Singapore.

Whilst that journey might have been a wee bit challenging with an eight foot board attached to the side of my wheels it wouldn’t have been impossible. However the stresses of that, or the warnings I have been given about the number of ne’er do wells in that area which is known as the golden triangle, who might want to try and take advantage of a surfer on his own, were not what put me off attempting the journey.

It was more as a result of getting a bit burned by my Central American road trip earlier in the year. I looked at the map and wondered realistically how long it might take to complete the journey. I would have had enough time originally but shuffled my flights into that spare time to ensure I was at Tom and Lily’s wedding, and was a bit glad when my hand was forced on the matter

There would undoubtedly have been some fun stuff to report on including some potential for surf on the west coast of Thailand as I worked my way down. There is still an outside chance that I may still get to surf there, but it just depends on how I juggle the days remaining on this trip.

As a consequence of all the above I wisely opted for a taxi to the airport where I am getting on a flight down to Singapore, instead of the Top Gear Scooter Surf Special.

It all went well today apart from at Hanoi’s airport, which must be the most inefficient one I have experienced on my travels thus far. I almost missed my flight because their check in system is as well administered as their highway code.

I have two hours of utter chaos before scraping through by the skin of my teeth as usual. The look on the check in clerk’s face when he realised he would personally have to run my 8’0″ surfboard through the airport to ensure it got on my flight was priceless.

I will not dare open my board bag until I get to the next beach in fear of what might have happened to the contents due to the knocks I am sure it has experienced along the way today! 

Ho Chi Minh, who I have discovered used to work in the kitchens on the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry route between the United Kingdom and France, was the leader of the revolution in Vietnam to free the country of foreign rulers.

A western backed resistance fighter in the second world war, he went on to lead the nation into the struggles which freed his country to follow its current communist ideology. He died before the end of the Vietnam War but when tanks from the North Vietnamese army rolled into Saigon many bore the slogan ‘Uncle Ho still marches with us’ on the side.

His embalmed body is currently on display in this mausoleum in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi. The embalming was done despite his will requesting that he be cremated. As a consequence I don’t much feel like going to peer at his pickled corpse.

I have also been having too much fun on the scooter to head inside just yet. I am glad to be mobile so do a bit more sightseeing.

A few hundred metres down the road is Vietnam’s Presidential Palace. I nearly got myself in a bit of bother taking this photo. They were not too fond of me passing my camera through the railings so I could get a shot without iron bars in it, and I got told to be on my way. I was then watched suspiciously all the way back to my moped, where they looked more than a little concerned by my helmet camera contraption.

I didn’t stick around for long thinking it best I get away sharply from the situation, but then had so much fun riding through the rush hour traffic as you will have seen from the videos. I pulled up outside the Moose and Roo bar once more and then had a great conversation and a few drinks with an Australian couple, Tony and Trudy, who hail from the western end of The Great Ocean Road.

What a thoroughly enjoyable day.