100 Days of Indo // Part 1

Last year I was able to do a trip with some good mates to Indonesia for 3 months. With the help of Sovrn Republic and Funkhouse Media were able to get together all the footage into an epic 6 part series, enjoy!



Watch Episode 2 Next ►

So it begins. As we land on Bali and get acclimated to Southeast Asia, we explore the southern part of the island, known as the Bukit, and explore the options for surf. As we cruise around the island for the first week, we make stops at Bingin, Balangan and Uluwatu. Testing our language skills, we get indigenous with some elderly locals near Nyang Nyang.

A SOVRN Republic Web Series
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In Association With Funkhouse Media
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Music:
Hit The Road by Gyom
Kingston Shuffle by Good New Tunes
Parametaphoriquement by gmz
Brake Dub by belaf
Feet in the Sand by Morgantj

From L-R: Brian Daigneault, Travis Lindsey, David Elliot, Jeremy Jennings, Jay Neyer, Alex Arkeilpane

Getting off the beaten path....

     We have now been on Bali for a week, Thursday we got an earlier start and wanted to check out another spot called Green Bowls, also on the other side of the bukit. We packed up the backpack with a few snacks and waters, and then got the surfboard on the scooter and took off. Once again I looked at the map before we left to get a mental image of what roads to take to get there, I love looking at a map and then just heading off and hoping I get it right. Well we ended up at the place I wanted to get to, but it ended up being a resort that wanted 250k rupiah ($25 USD) just to go down to the beach, some spots I look for are just a dot on a map and usually not in the right spot, so they always take a lil extra finding to get to. So once again we head back to Uluwatu, grab some food at our favorite warung, and chill for a bit before I went for a surf. I had a good hour and half surf with not to to many people out, I also tried surfing a new peak that is a lil more up the point that I got some fun backside snaps on. We headed back to the room to take our mid day relax session which usually consists of a dip in the pool, maybe a coca cola or ice cream, and watch some funny or surfing youtube videos. We went down out in front of our place to Bingin for an evening surf and smoothie, it was max low tide and i had to basically walk 150 feet on the reef step by step, pretty painful and annoying. But from the beach we both saw perfect left draining barrels, it is a hard wave to surf because the take off spot is so small, there's basically about 15 guys within 10 sq ft all trying to get a wave. Most of the time a local gets it and makes it all look to easy, I got one barrel but tried to stall to hard and didn't make it, got a few more smaller ones, then caught one did a snap and my board slide way more than it should have. I knew exactly what was wrong, flipped my board over and of course a fin had fallen out, so that was the end of the session for me, on my way in I got a few cuts on my hands and feet from the reef being so shallow. Jeremy and I enjoyed a smoothie before heading back up to grab dinner and passing out because we both were exhausted.
     Friday morning I ate a quick pbj and headed towards town to ship a few things I had bought for a friend and also for somebody who had donated via my blog here. The whole process at the post office took almost an hour, the language barrier just makes everything take a lil longer, plus there were a few other people there, and I had to package the gifts and write out the addresses. Finally I got out of there stopped by the market to get more Peanut butter, stopped for more gas, then made my way back to the room where Jeremy was kicking it. We basically layed low most of the day, looked into some other spots and airfare where we might want to travel to, I started getting board so I took the scooter on some adventuring. Most of my friend's and family that know me know I always like to explore, especially when dirt biking, I'm always looking at different trails while riding and more often then not get separated from the group because I explored a new trail a saw. I can't help myself it's just who I am, well this exploring really paid off because I found a road into a dirt trail that took us right to a spot next door called Dreamland, the way the map shows its 6.5 miles, the way I found is not even 1.5 miles. So now it's like my go to spot when Bingin is to low tide, after I went over the other side of the bukit and literally took any road I could off the main road and towards the beach. Lots of dead ends, people asking where are you going nothing back here, but finally found some roads to look outs on the cliff to see some surfable spots. I also stumbled across a beautiful temple with lots of chinese tourists eating and taking pictures with the view. I ended up meeting a surf that had just got out of the water named Peter from Aus, he had been coming to Bali for over 20 years and had some great knowledge. He explained how to get to a few surf spots I was looking for and what tide there good on, lots of good info to make surfing here in Bali a lil easier for us. When I got back me and Jeremy were both hungry, so we went to find a lil mexican place a friend had told me about, we had to explore for awhile until we finally found it down the road at Padang, it's called Sunset Grill, and it was decent mex, of course not as good as home but nice to mix it up!
     So Saturday I wanted to show Jeremy some of the spots I had explored and found the day before, after having some snacks for breakfast, we hit the road with my surfboard strapped on and a backpack. It took me a bit to find some of the spots since I went down so many different roads the day before, but we ended up getting to them and he was amazed how beautiful the scenery was and nobody around, we also brought the camera to take some pictures, as you can see below! Our goal was to find a spot I have been seeing on the map called Green Bowls, we looked for a it a few days before but weren't successful, since I had met the Australian Peter and he told me how to get there I thought we would give it another shot. I followed his directions and they were perfect everything he explained made since and we for sure would have gone down the wrong road without knowing it. As we got to the cliff to check the waves below, a lady came up to Jeremy asking if he wanted to buy a bracelet, he started looking at one ladies bracelet, then another lady came over to show him hers. I look over and say "here comes the heard", next thing you know Jeremy is surrounded by half dozen ladies trying to get him to buy their bracelet! I was just standing a bit away laughing and just saying no no, go ask him, pushing them all back to Jeremy, check the video below to get a lil idea, haha it was one of the funniest situations I've seen on this trip so far. After he haggled with all the ladies for about 15 minutes, he got a bracelet, and we headed down the 300 something steps to the beach. We got down there and the waves were probably 8ft faces and pretty mushy, but we came this far I said F it I'm going out, as I started to paddle out a few other guys came out as well so ended up being about 5 of us surfing for 45 minutes. It was okay to get some big drops and a few turns, and of course go right since every wave I have surfed here so far had been a left, and being regular you just want to go front side sometimes! We made our way back up the 300 steps, on the scooter, back to our place, to have a late lunch. I relaxed for awhile, then went over to Dreamland to catch a surf, it was super fun, the wave is like a shorter trestles/southside hb, can get a few rippable turns off hen pump to the inside to get another turn section. I got back and we sat down for dinner around 7, it was kinda busy here so took a lil longer for the food, but as always it's delicious and filling, another good day in Bali!
     Sunday was a mini holiday for Jeremy at least, since we were headed to the doctors to get his stitches out! We got to the doctors around 10am and got right into the room, the doctor to a few minutes to prep , then went to work on cut and removing the stitches, if you would like to watch and see my reactions, click here. They came out easily and pretty fast, after we asked the doctor if he could super glue over the cut and stitch marks, he gave us a blank stare as we handed him the super glue bottle. After a lil while of explaining and saying it's okay just go for it, he put a line of glue over the cut, I could tell it wasn't enough so I got the tube and went at it to fill the whole area and all the lil stitch holes! After paying the $15 it cost to remove the stitches we went next door for some groceries and I got Jeremy a lil ice cream, because he was such a lil trooper, haha. Once we were back to our place we had a snack and checked impossibles which looked pretty decent form the cliff, we both grabbed our step ups and headed out there. It ended up being super messy, sideways winds, pretty walled, just all around not that fun, we got out after about 40 minutes. We had lunch, chilled around the room and pool for awhile, and started checking some forecasts again, we decided to try to get out to Dreamland which I got pretty fun the day before. We headed to the beach quite awhile before low tide was going to start hitting to hopefully get some waves before the tide stated dropping more and gets to crowded. That basically exactly happened, got a few waves to ourselves and within 30 min there was 10 other guys out and waves were getting better, after about an hour there were 30 of us out and waves were even better. We were both pretty stoked though since we got our fair share of waves and they were all rights, Jeremy was having a blast being back in the water and it was nice to have somebody to sit with and chat to out there. Got back to the room showered up and hit an early dinner at the mex place we had tried a few days before but instead we ordered a large pizza and two large Bintang's, great end to the day I must say!
     Monday we were attempting dawn patrol and did our best by getting to Uluwatu by 7:30am, it was sprinkling a bit on our way, as we arrived and was checking the surf it just started absolutely pouring out of nowhere. It turned the already steep, sketchy, messed up path down to the beach into a river, we decided we probably couldn't scooter back in the rain so might as well surf. We basically floated downt o the water as if we were on a water slide and paddled out as it was still pouring rain, but after about 30 minutes it let up and turned the sky into the most vivid double rainbow I had ever seen. The rainbow only lasted 10 min or so and throughout the rain and rainbows we still managed to have a fun 2 hour sesh with a few less people out then normal. We did our usual walk up the stairs check some photos the guys got of us then sat down to enjoy a meal at our favorite spot Salen Warung and watched the waves. We had our normal relax sesh for a few hours during the middle of the day with a few pbj's to hold us over, and we both got to skype the family again, since the internet had been on and off the past few days. We decided to attempt to go back over to Green Bowls and try to get an uncrowded mid tide session, but the wind was onshore and just a mess, so we made our way back across the bukit to Balangan and also checked Dreamland, but nothing looked to decent enough to get us excited. We called it quits, I worked on this blog for awhile then we hit a new spot for dinner we had stopped by earlier for gas, there prices were a bit cheaper than where we had been eating and seemed like a fun environment. The food was great, cheap filling, we stayed around and chatted with the owner for awhile telling her we will come back tomorrow, unfortunately she was closing down for a few days to prep meals and gifts for huge ceremony her family was having in a few days. We poked into the surf shop called Flame Balls next door to check out a few boards that caught our eye, ended up also chatting with the owner. Super cool guy we assumed was from Germany with his accent, he gave us lots of info on our thoughts of trying to travel to other islands nearby. We ended the night sitting on out balcony, scoping the internet researching islands, surf spots, accommodations, and prices to travel nearby. We haven't put anything in ink yet but we are seriously considering trying to do a trip in a few weeks to the island of Sumbawa, home to Lakey Peak.

Jeremy trying to buy a bracelet and getting bombarded buy all the ladies trying to sell him one, watch the video by clicking the video tab above!

A look at the reef out front on a semi low tide, you can now imagine what the bottom looks like, but covered with urchins.

One of the cool cliff spots I found with a lil run down hangout.

The abandoned resort I came across and brought Jeremy back to, he was just as confused as I was.

Break in, hospital visit, and haggling

     After a long day of surfing Uluwatu the day before, we decided to check out a new spot on Sunday. We were trying to find Dreamland, but ended up at a spot we both have heard of called Balangan (Ba-lang-in). It was a dream like beach with 100ft cliffs straight into the water 30 ft from the take off spot, exactly what I picture a wave in Bali to look like. It looked fun, about chest high, ripable, and way less crowded than Uluwatu where we had been surfing last few days. We grabbed our boards off the scooter and walked down the hill, down the beach, got a quick stretch and then paddled out into the line up while watching chest high lefts reel off. Both Jeremy and I found our spot and traded off some fast waves we had to race down the line dodging sections to get a few quick check turns and either a barrel section or a big snap at the end. One thing that has been very weird to me about surfing here in Bali is what they call sea lice, there these little microscopic tadpole looking things that will bite you. It's nothing to crazy but some of them kinda hurt and it's just annoying haha, I didn't get any the first few days, but they were pretty bad at this spot. After surfing for over 2 hours and getting some of the longest waves I've had a in a long time (200ft+) we got out to get a bit to eat at the warung. Jeremy had his usual local style banana pancake, they basically through a bunch of mushed bananas into a waffle style press that fry's a pancake. It's pretty delicious, filling, but super fatty, who cares were surfing close to 5 hours a day and sweating more than enough to burn it off :) haha. I tryed a local dish I had been seeing recently, fried rice plate which was also good and filling. As we got back to the scooter and I opened the seat I realized that someone had broken in and stole my phone and a few bucks I had in there. We had my phone with us because we use it for the navigation since some of these roads are super confusing, and rarely haves street signs over there names. I was of course mad, devastated, and just a lil sad since I had so many photos, videos, and memories from my trip so far on there! We raced back to the room so I could try to locate it with some software I had on it, but it wasn't working they must have already turned it off and erased it. I called my mom to tell her what happened and to report it to verizon and started changing my passwords just in case even though I doubt they wanted my facebook haha. While I was talking to mom, Jeremy headed down to the beach out front to catch a few waves, I finished skyping and headed out to meet him. I got out there and he was nowhere to be found, I couldn't have missed him since there is only one path down tot he beach. A friend of ours staying at our place swam out and after it took a minute to understand what she said since she was out of breath and has a thick british accent, but I guess Jeremy hit his head and got a pretty good gash. I got into the beach and up to the warung to take a look at it, he was already wrapped up by a nurse that luckily was there visiting from California! He was a lil nervous having his first head injury in a foreign country, but we kept him calm and I got him back to the room to grab a few things then we went to the hospital. We ended up at a private clinic and he got 6 stitches, took about 30 minutes, cost us about $50 and we were good to go. Grabbed few things at the store on our way back and hit some traffic, we got back around 5pm, chilled for awhile then went out with some friends from the place were staying at. We went to a bar on the cliff at Ulu (uluwatu's) called Single Fin, super fun cool environment, we had some drinks after a long day, and got back and to bed by midnight.
     Monday we woke up around 8 and just cruised around the the property, hopped in the pool, then helped Jeremy buzz around his cut and clean it up to put a new bandage on. After I skyped the family, it was nice seeing them all since I hadn't skyped all of them together in a few weeks, they are all jealous of all the pictures I have been posting. We chatted about what they have been ding the past week, and how everything is around the house, my dad had just gone to the desert for the weekend so heard some funny stories form that. Then I showed them around our room and where were staying with the webcam, explained how the money works, and how busy the roads are! It was over an hour skype sesh but was really nice to have time to talk about so much and explain everything I could about my experience's so far. When we finished Jeremy relaxed and took it easy while I went over to Uluwatu's to grab a surf and pick up some photos they got of me a few days ago, there were some cool shots! The waves were really fun, about chest to head high, got quite a few fun ones, perfect lil quick evening session. On my way back I had to get some petrol (what they call gas here) for the scooter, and we needed some water since we have been going through it so fast, we had been drinking 2-3 waters ( over a gallon) between both of us per day. I found a small market that I went into and ended up haggling for a whole box of 12 bottles which comes out to almost 5 gallons, got it all for $4 :), literally 33 cents each. It works great for us since the waters at the warung's and where were staying are close to a buck each, now we can just grab a water before we leave and be good to go! We chilled for awhile, went and watched the sunset and had a smoothie, came back and Jeremy was out early, I was up for awhile munching, working on this blog and editing the surf pix, ended up passing out around 11:30pm.
     Tuesday we both slept in until about 8am, relaxed, cleaned Jeremy's cut, and changed the bandages. We took a dip in the pool then I got him setup to Skype his family on my computer, they hadn't talked to him much since we got to Bali, and hadn't seen him since he left for Hawaii almost two weeks ago! While he was doing that I hopped on the scooter and went to find a phone place since I explained earlier in the post mine got stolen, I had no luck but I adventured a bit too. I checked out a spot just a few miles down the beach called dreamland, to get there you enter this huge grand entrance like to a mansion or something. Its a trip like a whole new world in there, nice big paved road with no potholes, private villas, lil stores, and a few bigger hotels closer to the beach. I checked out the beach and the warung's, also grabbed a few things from a lady vendor, a few sarong's for some friends and was on my way back. I got back and Jeremy just finished Skyping the family, so we got on the scooter and headed to Uluwatu to get lunch and I wanted to get a surf in.  We ate at our local lil warung and watched the waves for 30 minutes, I paddled out for about an hour and had one of the worst sessions of my life. Just wasn't getting the right waves or in the right spot, it was very frustrating, I finally just gave up and figured it wasn't my day and headed in. When I get back Jeremy looked all nice and relaxed, apparently he had gotten a 30 min shoulder massage by lady that was walking around, he haggled her down from 60,000 to 30,000 (basically $3) and he said it was well worth it. I was so frustrated about my session I just wanted to leave, we got back to the room dropped everything off and packed up again to head to the clinic to get a check up on Jeremy's cut.  When we got there we asked about the price, and they said it was going to be another $25 to have them look at the wound and replace the bandage, we said no thanks, bought the ointment needed for $3 and went on our way, I have been taking care of the cut and it is healing great! We snagged more snacks at a market next door before heading back, we try to cut out one meal a day that we have to buy, so we get pbj's, crackers, wafers, pringles, and some other small things to snack on in between meals. We brought the GoPro with us on to take some video while scooting, we got some funny stuff that will be up in the Videos section a day or two after this is posted so check it out! I headed out to Bingin last night to get a quick evening sesh with the GoPro , I didn't get much footage but just practiced how to use it in the water, which if anybody has used a GoPro while surfing, it is very hard to get the right shot! We sat down for dinner around 8 and browsed through some local surf mags they had lying around, enjoyed dinner and crashed by 9pm, just another day traveling, surfing, and living the dream in a beautiful place!
     Wednesday we did our normal hang around till 9ish and then figured out what to do today, we decided to go check out a spot called Nusa Dua on the other side of the peninsula. We have both seen some sick pictures and videos of this reeling right hand point break, so I looked it up on the map and got a decent idea of where it was. We left around 11am towards the airport and followed the signs marked Nusa Dua, we arrived about 45 minutes later after a few wrong turns at the beach. It ended up not being the right day for the spot waves looked decent size and surfable but nobody out, guy we were talking to on the beach said tide and winds were wrong,it also looks like a hell of a paddle to get out there. Apparently when its firing you can hiring a boat to drop you of for about $3 bucks and at the end surf and catch white water back to the beach, just looking at the setup we could imagine how good it could get. After hanging at the beach for a bit, having a snack and some water while chatting we went on our way back up to Uluwatu. I went out for a surf but didn't have that great of a time, pretty crowded, and I was already tired from traveling a lot on the scooter earlier in the day. We cruised back to the room, went in the pool, had lunch, and watched some surf clips on youtube for awhile. I ended up going down to Bingin with my GoPro for a bit to get some clips but wasn't very successful, then ended the night with smoothies down on the beach at the usual warung while watching the waves and the sunset.

Jeremy's gash from surfing at Bingin, got 6 stitches

Always a lil scary when Jeremy pilots the scooter!

Our room here on the bukit, can see the ocean from the window, and that's the bathroom off to the right.

Surfing Bingin on Tuesday with the Go Pro didn't get to many surf shots but some cool sunset shots.

Bali finally!

     So we left off before I hoped on my flight from Honolulu to Shanghai, I am going to some up our 2 days of traveling to get to Bali in this next paragraph. We arrived at the airport 2 hours before our flight, got our surfboard bags all situated and paid for, then went through security. After getting through security I made eye contact with a girl I had recognized, she was at the end getting everything together from the scanning machine, ended up being my friend Brooke that I met in a sailing class down in Dana Point harbor a few semesters ago! She had moved to Hawaii a month ago and was going home for a few days, I thought it was so funny and random to run into her but we all ended up sitting down and chatting for awhile before our flights. It was cool catching up and talking about her moving to Hawaii and what Jeremy and I are doing on our trip! And then we were off onto the plane for our 11.5 hours flight to Shanghai, the flight ended up not being as bad as we thought. We got two meals, and snacks every so often, plus snacks that we brought ourselves, I also had my laptop with two batteries so we could watch a few movies. They were playing movies but there all in Chinese, I am pretty sure out of maybe 120 people on the plane we were the only white people, everybody was a Chinese tourist visiting Hawaii. One thing we thought was funny was the whole flight it was sunny, we had basically followed the sun across the Pacific so during our travel we had seen the sun for about 18+ hours! We landed in Shanghai at 3:30pm local time and our next flight to Bali didn't depart until midnight, so we definitely had sometime to kill. We cruised around the airport and found the gate for our next flight, stretched our legs and got some food and relaxed for a few hours. We kicked it by the gate and charged our electronics and started looking up some places to stay in Bali for the next night. I called my family to let them know I landed safely in China and that I would try to contact again when we arrive in Bali. We boarded our flight and took a nice 3 hour nap that cut out half the flight, the next couple hours it was still dark outside. But about 45 minutes before landing the sun started coming up and it was one of the most beautiful flight experiences I've had, flying over island chains with the sun rising as we were passing through the clouds!
     We landed in Bali on Thursday at 6am local time, got our VISA's super fast, and board bags were ready to go at the baggage claim. We had booked at room for a night in Kuta to get our bearings and look up some places to stay on the bukit, where all the waves are. We got to the hotel via a taxi with our board bags strapped on the top, kinda sketchy, cost us about 20 bucks. We arrived to the hotel named Warung Coco, got everything in our room then went back to the front desk to rent a scooter and grab some food, since we hadn't eaten in awhile. We grabbed the scooter which we both hoped on and cruised around Kuta for a few hours, just to check out the beach and what was happening around everywhere. The streets are crazy, first off everything is the opposite, so you drive down the left side of the road, and making turns across traffic is nearly impossible. For every car there is probably 25 scooters, they get around the crowded and sometimes narrow streets so much better, and of course much cheaper on gas. The traffic reminds me of the fourth of July back home in Huntington/Newport Beach, bikes everywhere and people going every which way, but picture all the bikes being scooters and there are no rules of the road! It is complete madness, but with my experience riding dirtbikes since I was 4, it is so much fun, everywhere you go is like a technical motorcycle race. We tried all day to find a place to get international driving licenses, I needed a mosquito net, and also some wall converters for our electronics. We looked up a few places on the map and Jeremy navigated as I operated the scooter through the madness, we literally rode the scooter around some of the busiest streets in the world for about 3 hours trying to find everything. We ended up only getting the wall converters at a big mall we stumbled upon, but while we were there we went to the market to grab some stuff we wanted like shampoo, snacks, water, fruit, etc. We then made the 45 minute trek back to the hotel in crazy traffic now that it was around 4:30pm, I think Jeremy was lack of better term, shitting himself the whole time we weaved in and out of cars, scooters, construction, potholes, and jumping up onto the sidewalk once in awhile to get around a group of cars, but I was totally in control :). We got back all in one piece and relaxed at the hotel for a bit before we grabbed a few beers and literally fell asleep with computer on lap at 8pm, great first day!
     We awoke on Friday, our second day in Bali, keep in mind we are 15 hours ahead of home (California, by the way on the top right of my blog I have a clock and date of my local time), so sometimes we are a day ahead! Got a quick included breakfast at the Warung(means shop/store in Indonesian) and found a taxi van to drive us and our bags up to the Bukit (hill in indonesian). We dropped off the rented scooter and packed our bags into the taxi, and sat back for the ride, it took about an hour since the cars can't go as fast as the scooters that are zipping around everywhere. We had looked up a few places on the Bukit and I had been recommended a few also, we parked in the general area, and I jumped out to cruise around and ask some prices. There were a few super nice places for a lil more than we wanted to spend and also a few cheap places but without some amenities we wanted. I finally went to a place called Leggies that had been recommended to me from a friend that was just in Bali a few weeks ago, and I fell in love with it. It'a probably about and acre small resort/villa style looking place, with a pool, full service cafe/restaurant open 7am-10pm, laundry, scooter rental, and of course WiFi. On top of that there's so many cool people that come through here that are younger which makes it a fun atmosphere meeting somebody new everyday. The vibe and setup is all very laid back, lounge chairs by the pool, big open lounging area in the middle with pillows everywhere, and its a 2 min walk to the cliff that's over looking the surf spot, and beach called Bingin, you can also see Padang Padang down the beach. We made a deal with the nice people at Leggies, since we want to setup camp here for at least 2 weeks, we came to the agreement that were paying 240,000rp or roughly $24 a day for our big room with 2 beds, bathroom, shower and a scooter with surf racks to cruise around with. So we feel its a good price, basically $12 each a day for an awesome place and scooter rental, our other expenses include food, which comes out to $10 each a day since we have been eating a lot, also lil gas here and there which is basically $1 for 2 liters(half gallon). So we got settled in at our new home stay, met a cool chick here from Australia that we followed on the scooter over to Uluwatu to see it for the first time. It is such an awesome setup, with lil warung's and place to hang and eat all down the cliff to the bottom where you paddle through the infamous cavern. After a bite to eat we headed to the Uluwatu temple that I've always heard of and wanted to visit because of course they have monkey's! We got over there and put on a sarong and bought some monkey food for a few bucks, they are so funny and cute, there were mothers, dads, and of course lil babies. You hold some fruit out and they jump up and grab it from you or you can hold it higher and they will climb you to get it, one of them perched on my shoulder and just ate it right there! We cruise around the temple for a bit, then decided to head back, Jeremy and I really wanted to get a surf since the waves looked fun while we were eating at Uluwatu and we hadn't been in the water in almost 5 days, which sounds weird being on a surf trip. We scooted over to Uluwatu and got a quick 30 min sesh as the sun was going down which was absolutely beautiful, we headed back in the dark which was interesting to say the least. After a few wrong turns, we made it back to the hotel, we sat down for dinner at a table with a few girls that are staying here. We ended up chatting for awhile and talking about where each other is from and where we have been on our trips. I thought Hawaii had a lot of travelers but Bali has some many more and from so many different far out places!
     I awoke around 4:30am local time, my times are still very messed up, I was basically wide awake, so I messed around on the computer for an hour or so typing up some of this blog post and checking emails etc. Jeremy was up shortly after, we decided to check out in front where were staying which is Bingin beach, it is still relatively small out there since the swell hasn't wrapped all the way around the point, needs a bigger swell to get that far down the point, where were staying. We packed up the scooter and headed to Uluwatu because it gets the most swell, the waves were pumping at least to our standards. Over head, plenty of make able left drainy barrels, and some good spots to smash the lip, we were out there by 7:30am after a quick bit to eat at the warung. We surfed for about 3 hours and I caught about a dozen waves, keep in mind this is a very well known and easily accessible perfect left point, with only a half dozen take off spots, which means its pretty crowded! But none the less out of the dozen I caught I got 2 sick barrels and a few waves I got a some turns on, but one really good barrel, probably one of the better ones I have ever had. Uluwatu has a few takeoff spots and each of them shifts so you really have to be in the right spot at the right time to get that all time barrel, but it drains and becomes so hollow that if you get the right one your for sure getting a barrel, just gotta make it out! When you get out and walk up the sketchy steps up the cliff the first few shops you pass are photo booths that try to call you in to look at pictures there photographers on the cliffs get of you, and they got some really sick ones of me and my barrel, I haggled with them and got them talked down from $35 for 42 pictures down to $10 for 35 good pictures, 3 sequences. I am going to get the pix tomorrow, so they will be uploaded soon! We headed back home to eat and chill, we hoped in the pool for a bit to wash off and cleaned up and unpacked a bit in the room. But we were back at it shortly and got another hour and a half session in at Uluwatu, it was still sorta fun and a lil less crowded but wind picked up and brought it down quite a bit. We were now awful tired from being in the sun and water for close to 5 hours today we got back and lounged for awhile while chatting with some friends that we made here. For dinner we decided to try a place few miles down the road we have passed a few times, its a small Italian restaurant that had pizza, we were both stoked since we love pizza and haven't had it in awhile! It was a nice way to end the night, we ended up making friends with the owner who was a super nice guy that is from Indo and has been living in Bali for about 5 years. After a nice lil 15 minute drive back to the homestay we got a dessert banana pancake with ice cream on it and Jeremy passed out, I finished the night by typing up this blog.
     So that about sums up leaving Hawaii, flying, layovers, and the first few exciting and adventurous days in Bali! I can't wait to see what else this amazing island and country has to offer, and I want to see as much as I can since this has been my dream vacation. Since the first day of senior year at Edison high school, I was sitting in English class staring at a blank page for about a half hour after the teacher gave us our first assignment of writing a page about why we want to go to college. It was then and there that I realized I didn't want the normal straight to a 4 year university life after being in school for so long and really not knowing what I wanted to do as a career yet. Yes I am very good at many things and handy enough to fix or build just about anything, but I wanted more, and this adventure has fulfilled it everyday. There is no feeling like waking up in the morning and being able to explore and see something new that your eyes have never seen before. I strongly urge everyone and anyone if wanting to travel of course to get out there and experience something different, it will forever change your life and your perspective of living. Once again thank you to everybody that has made this life more enjoyable than ever, and continue to be in my life, I seriously can not wait to get home and be able to hang with all my family, animals, and friends again, Goodnight!

Coca Cola in Chinese

Sunrise flying into Denpasar

Monkey at the temples

A normal sight at a surf spot, pictured is at Uluwatu.