Taking a Chance: Lembongan

By Guest blogger Melinda Page

When Neil and Yolanda invited me to join them in Indonesia for some beach time, I secretly suspected that it was one of those polite invitations issued casually, but not seriously. Stop by when you’re in the neighborhood. Let’s have lunch sometime. Even if they were serious, I wasn’t sure I wanted to join them because let’s face it—vacationing with anyone’s family is often an invitation to the worst lunch imaginable, one that involves food poisoning and vomit. And for ten whole days? Well that just seemed excessive.

Besides, for the past year I’d spent most of my days sitting in an empty room, staring at a blank wall, talking to myself while trying to write a book. I wasn’t sure if I was capable of having a conversation with another person, much less four other people who were all related to each other. 

But surfing was involved, and to me, catching a wave feels like an out-of-body experience combined with the best roller-coaster ride and a first date with a really cute boy named Nisid. In short, and even though I’m terrible at it, I find surfing pretty irresistible.

So despite being nervous with two capital Ns, I said I would meet Neil and Yo on Lembongan, a fairly obscure island off the south coast of Bali that I unearthed on some even more obscure web chat about surfing for beginners in Indonesia. Given that it was the height of the surfing season and Indonesia is notorious for generating big swells and waves fit for the pros, I was a little worried. Was it actually good for beginners? I had no idea.

Local boats on arrival

Good for novices or not, there I suddenly was—well not exactly suddenly because there was that plane trip followed by a ferry boat and two rides on the backs of two different motorbikes—but anyway, there I was at the 10-room Suka Nusa, standing in front of our lumbung-style thatch-roofed cottages (editor’s note: a lumbung is a traditional rice-storage barn on stilts with a steeply pitched roof), saying hello to Yolanda and Ruby in a totally natural way, as if I’d just popped over for lunch. We had sunset cocktails on the beach followed by a great dinner at our hotel that night—nasi campur, gado gado, tuna—and later, after Oscar and Ruby went to bed, we sat on the porch beneath one of our lumbungs with shots of Scotch (thank you for stopping at Duty Free, Neil!) and I talked my face off and thought okay, so this isn’t so bad.

First sunset on Lembongan

The next day I woke up early, determined to work, which I did for a few hours before we all convened at Suka Nusa’s breezy open-air restaurant for what would become the morning ritual for the next nine days: Bali coffee for the adults (which, as Neil explained, is boiled on the stovetop, resulting in a nice layer of sludge in the bottom of the cup), watermelon juice for the kids, and banana pancakes for everyone.

Coconuts, freshly hacked from Suka Nusa's trees

After breakfast, I watched in awe as Neil coached Ruby through some math problems and Yolanda convinced Oscar to study for his final 8th-grade Spanish and math exams. All of this happened without any drama or even any real complaining from anyone. Me? I went surfing. I met Wayan, who owns NewBro Surfing, which is down an alley on the way to the beach and attached to his family home. He did all the introductory dry-land training in his family’s courtyard, which doubled as their temple. I stretched and put on my rash guard while surrounded by brightly painted offering bowls, ceremonial sashes, and a few of his aunts who smiled at me while shelling beans into cooking pots. His wife’s sewing machine was set up in a corner, a few feet away from the surf board racks. Lest you think all of this entirely too quaint, Wayan surfed while wearing a black trucker hat and electric blue faux Raybans, and had a sidekick named Robot. (P.S. trucker hats float. Who knew?)

Temple offering bowls like these surrounded us at Wayan's shop as we got ready to surf

The surfing was great, but definitely challenging. It was the first time I’d ever surfed a reef break from a boat, far from shore, and it involved what felt like an endless amount of paddling. A pretty serious workout, even for me (a sometimes-serious swimmer), but I loved the long powerful waves and the close-up views of the surfers who actually knew what they were doing. It was, I concluded, not for the novice swimmer. Or really anyone who thought they might like to “try” surfing. I had no clue what kind of swimmers Oscar + Ruby were, but it seemed conceivable that they would go out on the boat once and then declare they were done, making the whole surfing trip a flop. I crossed my fingers and hoped they’d be able to make it.

This is what's at the end of the road in Lembongan

That night, I fully intended to go back to work, but Oscar + Ruby had spotted the Lembongan Theater—a great big open-air space with cooling ceiling fans. The cute family who owned the place served us dinner while we sprawled on modernist beanbags that were hipper and more comfortable than I thought possible and watched Little Miss Sunshine on the big screen. I’d seen the movie before and I knew it was great, but hearing Yolanda laugh on one side of me and Ruby on the other made it seem even better than I remembered. On the very dark walk back to the Suka Nusa, listening to Oscar + Ruby dissect what they liked about the movie, I thought to myself, these kids are smart. And funny. And nice. I kinda like hanging out with them. But tomorrow, I resolved, I was going back to work. No more movies.

Not everyone on Lembongan feeds the tourists.  Lots of people harvest seaweed, which is used in the cosmetics industry

The next day, Neil + Oscar + Ruby all signed up for surfing along with me while Yolanda headed for yoga. After explaining that Neil wasn’t my husband and these weren’t my children, we were in the water and everyone was paddling toward their first ride. I lost sight of O + R + N many times in the waves, but I saw Oscar stand up twice, Ruby dancing and then falling, and Neil doing lots and lots of paddling.

Lunch on Mushroom Bay.  After lunch, we walked around in a circle

Afterwards, we were all beat in the best exhilarated/exhausted kind of way, and Oscar + Ruby announced their intention to celebrate their first successful surfing outing with another dinner and a movie. This time it was Jurassic Park. I said something about maybe skipping the movie, then took a long shower while listening to the geckos chirping and the doves cooing and the occasional rooster crowing. When I got out, I realized the Wu-Platts were gone. Okay, this makes the decision easy, I thought. I’m going to work. But then I remembered the feeling of being surrounded by Neil + Yo + Oscar + Ruby, all of us laughing, and how that compared to all those days spent staring at a white wall working on a book I no longer liked. Besides, my computer was upstairs and I was downstairs, and going up to get it seemed like way too much effort. So I went to the movie. Maybe I was imagining it, but Oscar + Ruby seemed genuinely happy when I showed up for the screening. Like I said, cool kids.

The famous cock breeder of Ceningan Island.  I still have nightmares about those roosters.

The next day, Neil + Yolanda entrusted me with Oscar + Ruby, and sent the three of us off for surfing without any adult supervision. As we walked down Lembongan’s main street, passing black stone temples with their delicate sandcastle-shaped towers and an endless string of guest houses and warungs (simple restaurants serving traditional Indonesian home cooking) and getting passed by the buzzing hoard of motor scooters, they told me about their visit to their family’s village in China. I loved hearing them tell me about an entire village filled with nothing but Wus, a place where no one asked you what your last name was. Instead, they asked you which generation of Wu you were.

One of Lembongan's many temples.

And then we were in the boat and out on the water and as soon as I jumped in I realized there was a huge swell and some seriously intimidating waves. This was a mistake, I thought. A really big, tsunami-sized mistake. Oscar + Ruby will never make it. But make it they did—before I knew it, Oscar was standing up, looking perfectly nonchalant on his board. Making it look easy, in fact. Then Ruby was up, riding a wave in glamorous Princeton-orange skull & crossbone-patterned pants. After that, I knew I didn’t need to worry about them, those kids were tough.

The waves are tough, but Oscar & Ruby are tougher.

Afterwards, tired and thirsty but feeling really stoked (yeah, bro!), we walked back along the beach where little urchin girls tried to sell us bracelets and Ruby made the first of what turned out to be a long series of jokes about crepes. A long series of jokes that went on for days. It took a while, but eventually I came to see the genius in her sense of humor. On Oscar’s part, I quickly realized that he has developed a pitch-perfect sense of sarcasm, which I appreciated immediately. Plus, he’s got some killer business ideas (Oscar, don’t forget: BKTK and the swim-up bar you’re going to build on Lembongan’s floating pontoons).

We surfed those waves way off in the distance.  See that pontoon with the attractive fringe on top?  That's where Oscar's planning to build Lembongan's first swim-up bar.

After that, the days blurred into a calm routine of surfing, homework, laughter, bali coffee, and banana pancakes. When we had just two days left, we realized there were so many things left to do—scuba diving, snorkeling, biking on neighboring islands, visiting all the hard-to-get-to beaches that still remained unseen. We had to split up to conquer it all, and while I loved my solo bike rides during which I could stop whenever I wanted and take as many pictures as I pleased and without anyone telling me I ate really slowly (okay, I admit it, I eat really slowly), I was surprised to find myself missing the company. In the end, it was a great experience that didn’t give me food poisoning, and it definitely didn’t make me want to vomit. Instead, it was that rare kind of trip that I wanted to suspended in time, a moment that I didn’t want to end.

Our last days at Dream Beach, with crashing waves, a sunset and happiness

Luckily I still had nine more days with the Wu-Platts. We continued our adventure in Cambodia and Laos with the addition of Nisid, and.....okay, okay, I know I’m miles past the 140-character limit and I also know everyone just wants to see pictures anyway. So here they are!

Neil paying for the bike he forgot to return just before hopping on the ferry back to Bali.

All the Wu-Platts are sad to leave Lembongan—especially Ruby. I took seven photos but she wasn’t smiling in any of them.