2nd visa run

In Malaysia again this time to apply for a 60 visa.

To summarize the last 2 months; I arrived in Jakarta with nothing planned, didn't know where to go first. I decided to skip Bali and the crowds and ended up in Batu Karas. This is a tiny fishing village east of Pangandaran in West Java. (I'll try to include photos later)

Batu Karas was a great place to begin. An easy and forgiving right-hand point break that went on and on over a soft black sand beach. The locals were great. Genuine and helpful.

I then took a cheap flight to Johor Baru, right over the bordre of Singapore in Malaysia. I realized that if I got a 60 day visa I'd have to travel around the holidays so in the end I opted to just hop back into Indo for another 30 "on-arrival-visa". I figured Nias island and it's world famous right-hand reef break would be a good place to hang out for the 30 days and get some waves in. I didn't know then that it would take me 5 dyas to get there.

Nias was a little disappointing. Locals were friendly-ish but not genuine. Each "friendship" ended up in a salespitch. The area has doubtlessly gone through some hard times, was hit very hard by the Boxing Day tsunami and earthquake. But I think the generosity of travelers and NGO's has created an unneccessary and artificial dependency on handouts.

On Nias I met an Estonian surfer (the only Estonian surfer according the FHM Estonia magazine). We were talking about trying to go to the Mentawai Islands overland. Most people go on chartered yachts because of the complications in reaching this remote chain of islands off the coast of Sumatra.

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