Traveling isn’t often a bucket-list type of activity for me. I don’t tend to go places just to have been, to check them off the list. To me, a place is usually synonymous with an idea or an activity. Traveling is a verb, it’s something you do, not something you take in. How you travel has a direct effect on how you experience the place you’re moving through. You can choose to skim, to consume the culture in small bites only when you have the appetite, or you can dive into it, bathe in it, try to see it from the inside out and understand how it fits into the world you know, the world you came from. Despite making it a priority to budget large chunks of time off during my year, the term vacation doesn’t really resonate with me. Looking back though, this trip was something of a vacation, a vacation from my reality, from what I’m used to. I didn’t know what to expect from this trip. Sumatra had been a nagging idea in the back of my mind for years but how to make it happen, what I would do, how I would travel through a place so remote to my understanding, I just didn’t know. Somehow I found Amy’s Place, and now it all makes sense.
2019 was the second year of IKKW, the International Kook Killer’s Workshop. Started in jest in 2018 when Jb came to visit me in New Zealand, when the rest of the snow science community was gathering for the biennial ISSW, or International Snow Science Workshop, Jb and I used the opportunity to mine stoke throughout the South Island while pondering the deep mysteries of what contributes to kook behavior in otherwise normal individuals, and also, how to kill it. Last years trip proved to be so successful on a number of fronts it seemed only fitting to line up another conference. Clearly Jb had been thinking the same thing because in the middle of August, while I was in New Zealand and he in California, he sent me an IG message to get the ball rolling. This year, surfing was the only focus, we had options but after a little more back and forth, all on Instagram’s direct messaging, seven thousand miles apart, we had the trip booked. Krui, southern Sumatra, two weeks. Amy’s Place.
I don’t really know how I found out about Amy’s Place. I do remember that I reached out a year or two previously in hopes of making the trip happen but lack of time and funds cut the conversation short. When I got back in touch this year, she was stoked to have us, despite the fact that we were coming super late in the season and would be closing up her bookings for the year. I should say that I’d been to Indonesia once before, for about 10 days to the island of Bali with my brother and his wife. That trip was also something of a vacation, and despite not really knowing what to do with myself not needing to be on the move every day, the trip was beautiful and relaxing. So I kind of had an idea to the layout for Indo, I had done some more research and knew that staying at a surf camp was pretty much the only way to get things done. A trip like this is wildly outside of the known for people like Jb and myself, used to deep levels of dirtbagging en route to our favored objectives. But we kindly obliged.
There’s no easy way to get to Sumatra. There’s a limited amount of airports and beyond that the surfing destinations require hours long car or boat rides. For folks from Australia the flight to Jakarta might only be 5 hours. But for anyone coming from farther afield, bring a neck pillow. My confidence in the trip began to build when my intact board bag arrived in Jakarta along with me. Many thanks. Soon after Jb and his boards arrived and the stoke continued to rise. From Jakarta it’s a quick flight and a 6 hour drive to get to Amy’s Place. Easy enough, but in a land where you can’t speak the language, you’re constantly on guard for theft, rip-offs, and general misdemeanors. I was put at ease though, somewhat by knowing I had a bit of experience navigating foreign cultures, but more so by the presence of my companion, who might lack for cultural sensitivities with his boisterous California demeanor, but more than makes up for it with his sheer size, which has saved my ass at least once before.
We arrived in Bandar Lampung with vague directions on how to find our ride to Amy’s. I should take a moment mention the sheer volume of people that we were swimming through. Jakarta was an overload. Maybe it was the dozen hours of travel, or being unable to read signs or communicate easily, but it was all I could do to find a hotel for the evening. Bandar Lampung is much smaller, and the Airport relatively quiet, but there’s something about the Indonesian culture, the heat, the sounds, that just lend to an overall sensation of chaos. It’s amazing. Our driver found us and strapped the board bags on his rig and we were off through the maze of traffic. Bandar Lampung’s population is listed at about a million people, I’d guess all of them are out on a scooter in the streets every day.
A lunch stop, some hip-hop, a shit ton of honking , a few near head-on collisions and a couple of monkeys later and we’d arrived. Amy’s Place. Home for the next two weeks.
Amy was finishing her season with a trip in the Mentawais so she wasn’t around but her surf guide, Blake, and another Californian, Sunny greeted us along with the super helpful staff. We unpacked, racked up our fins and got out surfing that afternoon.
Somehow I find talking about the movement, the travel, the transitions, to be so much easier than how we spent our time overall at Amy’s. Like many trips, we quickly settled into a routine of following Blake and Sunny around to the local spots, getting scared, blazing around on scooters and playing shit tons of cards. We came to surf but more than that we came to experience, and while many others might suffice to have a session or three a day, kick back by the pool and drain Bintang’s till the bats start to fly, Jb and I both are just so accustomed to the idea of exploration that the need to find out what lay beyond the next bend was unrelenting. We must oblige.
After a couple of days Amy returned from the Ments to offer another inside perspective on the crazy, wild, chaotic beauty that is southern Sumatra. Her energy was infectious and after a short time it became easy to see how her often ruthless leadership was reflected in the most well kept, best-staffed surf camp in the area. You’ll have to make a visit or see me in person to hear some of her best stories but suffice it to say that for an American woman operating a business in southern Sumatra, things aren’t always easy, and she’s had some pretty wild experiences. Things can get emotional. If you haven’t been to a surf camp before, generally everything is taken care of, meals, beds, a fridge with beer. Everything at Amy’s was smooth, the food awesome and the layout conductive to a quick scooter to nearby breaks or a relaxing afternoon in a hammock.
I haven’t mentioned thus surf yet. So I guess I should now. At one point on the car ride from Bandar, a bright glittering light cut through through the jungle catching the attention of Jb and I. The light was the reflection of the sun on the face of a perfect, hollow wave. We knew it was on. When we arrived in Krui the swell was up, which meant some breaks were very, very large. We kept to town at first but after seeing the point clean, and maybe dropping we gave it a go. An absolute vicious beat down ensued and suffice it to say Jb and I dragged out asses back to Amy’s licking wounds and deeply humbled. The swell continued to fall throughout our trip with the exception of a few pulses. This suited us just fine. There were only a couple days when swell wasn’t reaching the town and those days we either surfed the point or traveled up the coast, through the jungle, and around town. We surfed a handful of breaks in all, each of them powerful and consistent despite their size.
The reef was sobering, my skills lacking, and every session throttled me in one way or another. Despite Krui being a far flung destination there was still potential for 20 Aussie dudes to be in the lineup if other waves weren’t working. But once again having the boisterous Californian on my crew payed it’s dividends, and while a crowd savvy Jb navigated the lineup I realized that I wasn’t as bad as I thought and that in fact I was more capable than most, other then the few absolute shredders and of course the local groms.
After a few days Blake and Sunny wrapped up their seasons and headed back east. Blake to Aus and then on to a Canadian winter, and Sunny to Bali for another month before heading back to the states. Jb and I were left to our own devices which we deemed sufficient. Blake and Sunny had buffed us out on all the local spots and we had a pretty decent idea of where to get what we came for.
Days blended. Books, fresh juice, spicy mie goreng, jungle dogs, perfect waves, reef cuts, card games, Bintangs. My favorite thing about Amy’s was how easy it was to go from relaxing at her place to a session in town, or a trip up the coast to scope conditions and be amazed by the lives of the locals in this unreally beautiful place. Every day was something new, and a little bit of the same comfort, absolutely perfect.
In the opening I said I didn’t know what to expect from this trip but as we all know, that doesn’t mean I didn’t have expectations. A much as we may try to let an experience unfold on its own volition, we can’t help but influence it with the baggage we bring, the perceptions we carry, and the ideas that are hidden deep inside. I expected surf, and I was rewarded. Before the trip I was nervous there wouldn’t be swell, but I should have been nervous there’d be too much. I hoped not to get sick like so many often do in Indo, and despite a few sweaty poo’s Jb and I escaped unscathed. After my first real beat down I realized the severity of the reef, and the vulnerability of my flesh, and hoped to make it through without any trip ending injuries. Again we succeeded. I knew the cultural experience would be wild, and I was not let down.
America is deeply imbedded in its own ass. How hard it can be to get any sort of real perspective on the world, or our own lives, when everyone around us is screaming, when everything is painted with a sexualized, materialistic, consumer driven tint. In Krui, around every corner, we came face to face with people living with next to nothing who appeared genuinely happy. It’s easy to be idealistic or hopeful when you only see such a small part of the picture. On the weekends we would see fully veiled women visiting the beach from areas of the country that operate under sharia law. On a trip into the jungle we witnessed a woman who looked like she had endured unspeakably hard times. Things were not all well. But all around us things were simpler. The perspective gained from visiting a country so drastically different from your own is simple: the overriding narratives of your home that so quickly disappear in a wash of ambivalence stand out like obvious signs. The things we take for granted, the hate, the division, the fear, the vitriol, the constant and relentless advertisement that are woven into the fabric of our everyday lives stands out for what it is, a pointless, ephemeral construct of our culture. One that is changeable from within, and without.
Amy’s Place was the spot for IKKW 2019, there could be no other. Mining the raw stoke of the southern ocean, absorbing a beautiful land and culture that offered valuable perspective, all while reflecting on the inherent and acquired kookiness of so many of our closest friends and family, and often, even ourselves. This might not have been the standard bout of suffering and dirtbaggery that Jb and I were used to but we were instilled with enough fear, awe, and curiosity to call the trip a wild success. Of course I’m already dreaming of the next IKKW whether that be in 2020 or beyond, but I can still see the perfect curls of Krui when I close my eyes, and I’m drying for redemption at the point.
