Barry and I decided to accompany Hiromi on one of her surfing trips to Bintan. Barry had already been there twice and hated it. I was pretty excited tho, just to find out what surfing–the mother of skateboarding–was all about. We figured if surfing sucked we could go hunt for the escaped terrorist cos he probably swam to Bintan to seek refuge. Barry and I are obviously professional bounty hunters.

We had to wake up at 6am on Saturday to catch the 8am ferry from Tanah Merah to Bintan. I was too excited and didn’t sleep at all, which makes it 2 days in a row with no sleep because I was up all thursday night stressing over a blind date I had on Friday. Obviously my inability to surf was due to my tiredness, I even fell asleep on the surfboard and ended up in Australia.

So anyway we arrived at Bintan Lagoon Resort and I begged the surf shop to rent me a surf board. They were like, “Don’t be silly, you’re just gonna get killed, the waves are pretty big today! How about a bodyboard or a beach ball instead?” But Hiromi assured them that I was only gonna play in the white waters so they relented.

Me and Barry then spent like 2 hours body-surfing the ‘white waters’, which are… according to my equations is like the 2nd or 3rd times the waves break so they’re like baby waves all cute and frothing and foaming like a cocaine overdose. Hiromi is a real surfer so she paddled really far out to where the big daddy waves were. Pretty much surfing is about waiting for the right wave, paddling with it and then standing up from a prone position in a split second to surf it. Trust me its way harder than it sounds and oh my god, you’re gonna scruff and bruise your face, chest, knees and feet while scrambling to control the board, which has fins that can cut you too!

When we got bored of the white waters, we decided we were man enough to venture out to surf real waves with Hiromi. Paddling out was just crazy, we either had to go above the waves or duck dive under them. Since we hadn’t got the technique down yet, every wave was like getting hit by a freight train and we got swept a mile back each time so progress was really slow.

Eventually we got out there and just chilled on our surfboards. Well I mean I tried to, but I couldn’t even sit on the board. I couldn’t keep the board under me and kept capsizing onto my back. I’ve no idea how Hiromi just sits on her board and plays with the water. She must’ve been a sea turtle in another life.

Struggling to stay upright wasn’t exactly relaxing for me so I decided to try and catch some waves back to shore. Holy crap.. what a big mistake that was. Pretty much I missed my target wave by a mile and then I looked back to find a huge ass wave ready to crash onto me. I pretty much sat there like a… sitting duck. I didn’t have time to take a deep breath before I found myself being thrown about like a tangled rag in what felt like an industrial washing machine. I swear my toes were behind my ears. I had no clue where my board was and I was expecting it to hit me in the balls at any time. Just as I ran out of air my head broke the surface of the water. I took a deep breath and braced for the next wave which hit me up just as good as the first wave.

Barry was beside me getting roughed up by the waves too and he kept shouting for me to throw my board far in front of me so it wouldn’t hit me from behind. Yea right, like I could even reach my board to throw it?! It had caught onto another wave and was yanking me by the ankle. We finally got to shallow white waters and I took a moment to freak out. I could have easily drowned for real lol. I don’t know if thats even funny.

So I was done with surfing after that near death experience, so we went and got burgers for lunch. They cost like 20 bucks each lol. After that we just chilled and looked at girls frolicking on the beach for hours. We then tried surfing again. This time I made sure to stay in the white waters cos I was a pussy. Barry made up some excuse, something to do with his board shorts giving him a rash so he just sat on the beach and painted his nails and daydreamed about smoking cigars and getting back rubs from beach babes.

Eh, thats pretty much it, I conclude that surfing is fun especially the feeling of riding something organic… but its no sport for wimps, it’s pretty easy to get hurt or even drown if you’re not careful. I’ll stick to skateboarding for now. Hiromi, you’re crazy! Mad respect for doing such a gnarly sport.

I tried filming with a shitty camera just to try out wide-screen footage. Its terrible, we didn’t get anything good and then it ran out of battery after 5 mins. Anyhow, heres the video I made with all that shaky footage. You will probably get an epileptic seizure so watch at your own risk!

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