Alone in Asu

First of all thank you for all of the nice words for Haley. Thanks to you she’s healed and strong and ready to meet me in Tokyo tonight.  If you do ever fall victim to the nasty Dengue, drink lots of water and then call Haley, she’s an expert now.

Sorry for filling your inbox with posts recently. If you look at the previous post dates, you can see that they were written a while ago, it’s just that there was some kind of satellite malfunction somewhere in space which meant Asu was disconnected from the www. Now I’m in a Starbucks in Kuala Lumpur and surfing the internet faster than the wave coming in over the reef in front of Asu Camp. For the last 2+ weeks I was in Asu, Haley was thousands of miles away at a conference that she didn’t want to miss. Luckily, her ruthless sickness, most likely her second round of Dengue Fever, finished up shortly after she left. She was happy and I was relieved to know that she was recovering.

I wasn’t exactly alone after Haley left. I got to spend some quality time with Team Asu: our good friends Earl and Samantha, the staff Desi, Manna,  and a little bit of Folo,  two mostly extremely cute 5 and 6 year old girls Oli and Miso, 6 puppies, 3 dogs and a nice cat who I named Cookie. We had fun, and with all the real guests gone we didn’t exactly have a lot of responsibilities (especially me).  We ate like kings, played like kids and shut down the camp for the off-season in style. Those last two weeks blended into one big nice time that I couldn’t put in chronological order if I had to so here’s a big jumble of some of things that happened/I remember:

1. I got to surf a bunch of times right in front of the camp at the left hander reef break. Every time I went out I was a little less scared of the sharp reef that I was sure was going to eat me up when I fell and every time I got a little bit better at positioning myself deep enough to actually catch the beautiful waves. And every time was awesome, amazing, etc. On sunny days I would sometimes miss waves, because I was staring down at the school of bright blue fish swimming around beneath me. There was not one other person to compete with for waves. Earl and Sam came out a few times, but they just helped my cause by telling me where to go and how hard to paddle. I never got barreled, but I think I will next year and I barely touched the reef that I was so scared of with the toes of my booties.

2. I also got to surf another wave off the island of Bawa that was 30 minutes away on Earl’s boat. That one was a right and according to Earl can be big and scary, but for us it was harmless and beautiful. That was lots of fun too. We did that twice (one time with Samantha too) and each time we would snorkel around after. We saw a turtle, some huge Trevally, lots of fish and tons of coral.

3. We snorkeled out in front of the camp a few times.  Giant clams, coral everywhere, crystal clear water, etc. On our last night we decided to try out a waterproof flashlight and go for a night-snorkel. When we were about to jump in, it seemed that the flashlight was already getting weak, the tide was very high and there were big swells pushing into the keyhole in the reef where we planned on jumping in. We didn’t have another night, so we went for it. We were all a little scared for a while and when we looked under water where the flashlight beam was you couldn’t see shit except for when we were dangerously shallow and trying not to wash up on the reef, but for some reason it was lots of fun. A good old-fashioned adventure. We did end up seeing thousands of really weird little worms and some neat phosphorescence that lit up with our movements. Eventually we washed up on the beach as planned and walked home through the jungle.

4. We made kites from old hammocks and palm fronds and flew them high.

5. We ate lots of good food including: fish tacos, lasagna, steamed veggies, barbecued fish, chicken curry, salad topped with Feta cheese, freshly baked bread, french toast, porridge with fresh papaya and bananas, Beng-Beng chocolate bars with peanut butter on top, tea, coffee, cereal, fruit salad, banana cake, etc. Manna made most of that and now he is on his way to Bangkok to learn some Thai specialties. A little bit ridiculous to think that the food will be even better next time.

6. We baked cookies with all kinds of good ingredients.

7. We hung out on the beach and in the palapa lots.

8. We bought some rope and made a couple of swings. Neither of them were as cool as we had hoped they would be, but they were still cool.

9. I missed Haley and called her lots.

10. I went on a 3 hour walk with Samantha around the whole island. One neat thing about the island is that it lifted up about 2 meters after an earthquake in 2004 which means that a bunch of reef is now above sea level and you can still see dead coral formations everywhere. It also makes for big tidal pools that you can swim in with the fish or just watch the waves push through. We saw some nice trees, friendly locals, jungle and beauty all around.

11. I woke up at sunrise almost every morning and walked down to the beach with the puppies.

12. A couple of the days were rainy. Those days were lazier than usual.

13. Sunsets and moon rises were great too.

14. Earl and I played lots of acey ducey. I won the first tournament, he won the second and is currently ahead 4-1 in the third. Another reason to go back.

On November 1st we packed up on one of the most beautiful days. I got one last surf in, while Earl and Samantha took care of some things to close up the camp for the season. The sun was bright, the water was blue and clear, the wind was light and offshore and the waves looked like they were out of a magazine. It was a good way to end my 3 weeks on Asu and made me even more sure that I wanted to return. The previous night we had cooked some cookies with even more ingredients than usual, so we ate some of those along our journey.

The journey was:

20 minute walk to the boat, 30 minute boat from Asu to Nias, 2.5 hour drive across Nias, sleep, wake up and get in 10 minute car to airport, 1 hour flight to Medan, taxi to hotel. done. Everything went smooth as silk.

It was really fun to be with Manna who had lived in a small town on Nias most of his life and had never done a lot of things we were doing so everything was exciting to him. Some things I notices were:

It was his first flight. The first time in an elevator. The first time on an escalator. The first time using a telephone that was not wireless- he didn’t know whether to pick up or dial first and he seemed to not want to stretch the stretchy cord that goes between the phone and the handset. In Asu, they do have hot water, but it didn’t look like the shower at our hotel so I taught him how to turn on the shower. He asked me ‘where’s the water for the toilet?’- darn flush toilets. We were in a fancy hotel with card keys, where you need a card to open the door and then a card to turn on the lights- very exciting.

In Medan I mostly just enjoyed the fancy hotel room and the sushi and said goodbye to Earl and Samantha and Manna as they went to Bangkok and I went to find my girl in Tokyo for the last two weeks before home.

Other notes:

The Starbucks ‘bistro box’ sucks.

Go giants.

Happy birthday people. Sorry no more birthday pictures.

Yesterday at sushi with Earl and Sam, I ordered a roll and asked the guy if the tuna was raw or cooked. He said fresh. Turns out it was freshly cooked. I tried to switch it for something else and they said sorry ‘no exchange’, so I said fine I’ll just send it back and order something else… ‘sorry, no returns’. The first thing I ordered was rice. The rice came after we were done and asked for the bill. Samantha asked for a hot cappuccino and got a cold one. But the sushi was good. And don’t blame the language, ’cause Earl and Sam speak it like locals.

$75 cameras don’t take nearly as good pictures as more expensive cameras. Some of the nicer pics here are from Earl’s camera.

Never got a picture of me on a wave in Indo. Another reason to go back.

I saw 1 rainbow.