You Can Still Get Barrelled Completely Alone In Indonesia

At this point, with the land grabs, wave privatisation, and Jed Smith tirelessly yelling at the clouds about the the surf industrial complex, you have to wonder if we’re living in the post-Indonesia era of surfing. A land romanticised into oblivion. Seems like there’s more to mourn than there is left to explore in the once mythical archipelago. 

But, there’s still a few diamonds left to dig up, if you’ve got the right kind of map.

“I had been sussing out a few zones for a surf trip away from home,” says Byron’s Afends frontman, Taj Richmond. “Nothing had really lined up. A few swells looked promising, then fizzled into nothing. Or we’d hear, ‘you just missed it.’ It was becoming the norm.”

In the end, Taj just booked the flight to Indo, stopped overthinking it, and let the situation unfold once he was there.

“This island was somewhere I’d never been before,” he said. “Everything was pretty smooth sailing except for the 2:30 am, 6.5 hour car ride from the airport, which was skits.”

Perhaps the most striking thing in this edit, aside from Taj’s surfing, is the complete absence of people — something rare the world over, and nearly impossible to find in Indonesia, unless you’re Mikala Jones.

“Surfing with no one out, almost every time, was unreal — so different from other Indo trips I’ve had. We could sit on a bank right out the front of our place and it’d just be us, no one in sight. Not much more to it. I was just experimenting with all sorts of different boards in dreamy lineups.” 

The boards Taj is talking about happen to be crafted by his longtime shaper, and one of the all-time great alchemists of board-building, sir Bob McTavish. His quiver for this trip included a 6’3 twinzer gun, a 6’0 asym, and a 5’10 super stock twin.

Pure, debilitating envy. Watch above.