The search for uncrowded waves

Hello,

I find myself writing this on the eve of yet another adventure. Tomorrow at 7 AM we will go to the next island over, Lombok, and we will hopefully find the promised land; perfect peeling waves with only a few hardy souls riding them. From the beginning:

Arriving in Bali was quite the adventure, 3 planes, 4 nights (one in LA (thanks Max), one in airplane (not sure where Saturday went as I never actually experienced it, and one in Tokyo (again thanks Max (Preston!). So when I arrived with 600,000 rupiahs in my pocket you can be sure I was not quite right when I guy selling me my tourist visa tried to steal 50,000 of the little buggers from me. I guess its only 5 dollars but still, that will buy 5 plates of Nasi Goreng, (the standard fried rice here) a real Reef or O'Neil shirt (undoubtedly made here in some sweatshop) or a ride on the back of one of the ubiquitous scooters to just about anywhere in Southern Bali. To say this place is cheap is an understatement, many ppl have remarked that this is hands down the cheapest country in the world, and that it also has coral reefs that have perfect swells breaking over them is just a huge bonus.

So the surf. So far it has been difficult to find the perfect wave, although today we came close today. (I say we as in the 4 Germans who are "studying" here, and Johhny my Argintinean friend who I will be traveling with) In the last week we have surfed Kuta beach (6-9 foot with strong offshore winds and plenty of barrels to be had) and Canngo (6-7 sideshore wind, but we were the only ppl out) on Bali, and two coral breaks on the closest island Nusa Lembongan known as Lacerations, (apparently very aptly named according to Johhny and quite dangerous when there are 50 australians in the water and 8 foot waves breaking over three feet of water). Its been very fun to say the least. The best day for me was today surfing Canngo with one german guy (my germans were lured to the next peak by 4 hot Australian girls) and riding it over a deep shelf for about 200 feet. SO sick.
Bali is amazing in other respects as well. For example, to pamper myself before setting out to Lombok I treated myself to an hour long Massage (50,000 rupiahs) a seafood basket including a whole red snapper, clams, crab and calamari (also 50,000) and a new reef shirt, you guessed it 50,000 rupiahs. SO for 15 bucks we were stuffed and relaxed beyond belief, we literally had to sit in the street for a few minutes before going home, and even then if you saw us you would think we were drunk based on the slow shuffle and swaying from side to side. We are currently staying at a place with a gorgeous garned for 80,000/night, and im paying 15 cents/ minute to use internet. I love this place.

And the nghtlife is incredible, we went to a 4 story bar/club/disco and drank 1,000 rupiah beers(about 10 cents) and 10,000 drinks till 12 and then danced upstairs to the same 12 songs on repeat (or so it felt, i mean why bother to have a DJ if you just play the same songs) or so until about 4 in the morning, headed to the other club till 6 and then stumbled home to wake up to perfect surf all of today, albeit with slightly less ability than other days. All in all an amazing place, and if there only werent so many ppl it would be perfect.

That leads me to my final point, Lombok is the next island over (of which there are between 12-17,000 in Indonesia) but is a completely different Island. Most ppl never go there, the surf is as good (at least in some places) and there is this 10,000 foot volcano I want to climb and then go to hot springs in the crater. I wont have internet, or may not, we will see. But I will have a cell phone, in an emergency call 08983147319, placing the country code for Indo in front (god only knows what that is)

Ok time for one last beer with the Germans, and then sleep. Hope the new week goes great for everyone!