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CAUGHT INSIDE # 130

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The question is can we keep it up? The answer is yes, as long as, like a satellite in outer space, we can keep our orbit from decaying. Our orbit being the entire biomass system of tourists and waves that keep the island of Bali’s heart beating. Right now the best we can do is deal with it. But dealing with something means having it in hand. Which we barely do. What happens when we lose our grip? One need only look at the shortcut in Canggu to see what kind of inhuman chaos ensues. The answer? For everyone on earth to be thoughtful. Which millions of years on earth has proven impossible. It’s just not in our survival mode. So what’s next? Circle the wagons, I guess. Take our surfing world, observe our orbit’s momentum and health and keep it in hand. And we have such a wonderful orbit happening. But now, with the steamrolling effect of greed tourism and irresponsible development sounding like a death knell, it’s time to look at Bali’s surfing healthspan rather than its lifespan. Th
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BLENDER BABE

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Now listen, I have two development projects on two islands, two ex wives, chewing on me, I got two savage pre-teen daughter pullin’ the plug on my bank account, I got a Covid lockdown, my business is in shambles, and now I have been invited on this hell trip to Mentawai with my surf star friends and I am in Sumbawa and I have to be at the Bali airport by dawn and because the Bima airport is shuttered I am going to have to drive to Bali with precious little time to spare for the whole goddamned thing. So I did what any self-respecting surfer would. I bet the farm. So now, my clock is ticking. I leave my kids here at Lakey Peak with their Indonesian. Grandma, you know, it takes a village and all that, I load up and start driving across Indonesia again to get back to my place on Bali. By myself, three islands, 24 hours straight, of hairy roads and sketchy ferries and I am all alone. Driving at night, which is suicide in some parts of Lombok, with bandits and downed power lines and cra
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GIRL POWER: A Poets Heart: A meditation on Flora Christen Baturbatur

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Batu Bolong, Java, you have caught a flash of the infectious smile belonging to Flora Christen Butarbutar, Indonesia’s first professional female longboarder. Aside from the effortless way she weaves through the crowded line-up with a natural grace, Flora’s poise doesn’t stop at the nose of her single fin. She has consistently broken every stereotype when it comes to surfing in Indonesia. In the quick flash of seven years, Flora has not only found, but propelled a career within the surf industry as professional female surfer. She’s also the face of an Asia-wide beauty campaign for Dove soap, has been featured on ESPN’s women, and has taken the podium at the Asian Women’s Surf Championships. All the more impressive when you realize she first picked up a surfboard at 25 years old. Whether she meant to or not, Flora’s rise to prominence set a precedent for Indonesian women. One that has highlighted inclusion, cutting against the country’s historical lack of female participation in the
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SAVAGE BEAUTY - THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MENTAWAI PLAYGROUND

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The betrayal was complete. A roaring wall of Ocean water bursting through the jungle in the darkness of night. A sea where there should be no sea. Her child ripped from her arms, her husband found mangled and reeking in the debris two days later. She still could not bear the thought of what had happened to her sleeping infant. Below her left ankle, her foot had been half-severed from her bones after a tumbling nightmare through the grove of palm trees, tin rooftops ripping against the night like scythes. Here, on her home island of Silabu, she walks and remembers all this. She will always remember. A lot of her died that night. Her eyes had swum before her as the doctor’s big, hooked needle entered her skin around her raw wound. Her foot was now a swollen, bleeding pumpkin. She had passed out at the sight. She was afraid to sleep. The nightmare might return. That hoarse, steady roar of the Ocean, the screams, the entire village running past her home, that last wild look at the impo
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THE LAST TIGER - GRAJAGAN STILL HOLDS MYSTERIES

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Part One Moving from the dry jungle, she padded to her place on a small rise that looks out over the Ocean. She had time yet. The late day sun was cooling and she was waiting for the scent. The scent that came when the Ocean would withdraw and the land beneath would become exposed to the sky. Then she could saunter down among the shallow green pools of water and slap fish and crabs and eels from the shallow pools with her great paws. The monkeys would follow her. And they would dart in for a steal as her pile of fish and crabs and eels grew behind her. She would roar and swipe at the monkeys and, like a flock of birds, the monkeys would scatter and reform and try again and again. When it came time to feed, she would carry her squirming pile of food in her great jaws and go back to her spot overlooking the reef. There, she would hang her head and eat slowly. And she would listen for signs of danger in the silence that came between the great waves that would roll in hissi
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TAO OF KAI - KAILANI JOHNSON IN BLACK & WHITE

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One more big wave and our little boat is going down. Ours wouldn’t be the first ship to sink in this notoriously stormy channel between two Mentawai islands – although this wooden bath toy barely qualifies as a ship. With each battering swell, the weathered planks flex and moan as if to say, “I wasn’t built for this!” I turn to check on Kailani Johnson. The 21-year-old pro surfer from Bali has her earbuds in, head nodding to a rhythm. Her eyes are focused on the whitewater steadily rinsing over our boat’s tiny portholes like the inside of a car wash. If Kai is nervous, she’s not showing it. We’re stretched out on our backs, side by side like sardines in a tin can, the boat’s roof mere inches from our noses. I can’t help but feel like we’re in a floating coffin. In the rear of the boat, our captain is squinting into the storm, eyes locked on the horizon while swells converge on us from all directions. He’s soaked from head to toe, a damp cigarette slotted defiantly between his lip
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CAUGHT INSIDE # 129

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Caught inside indeed. One look at this photo, the contents caught inside the stomach of our local sea turtles, and Surftime realizes that our work is not done. Not by a long shot. Sure, our magazine is here to cheer things up, to promote Indonesian surfing, to expound on the paradise that is our surfing lives here in Indonesia. But we also must never shirk our responsibility to remind one and all that paradise comes at a price. A price that we are not paying. We are stealing from the ocean. We realize how tiresome it is to be scolded about the environment and what we must do to keep it healthy. We realize this. But just look at this photo again. Take a good long look. Would you want that in your stomach? In your children’s stomachs? We surfers take so much pleasure from the ocean yet we do so little to protect it. And we, us surfers, are the front line. And yet we are so useless, letting the enemy pass through our ranks without a fight. But remember, the whole concept of us saving
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