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After cutting my foot badly on the same day I was headed to Bali's West coast, which is the surf coast for the May-August months, I was rather demoralized that I wouldn't be able to surf immediatly, but was hopeful that I might only be on the bench for only a few days.
I chilled in Medewi, and reconnected with my past life – i.e. being an internet addict – by going to a local internet cafe in the town of Pekutatan where most of the customers were giggling teenage girls using their plethora of social and pic apps, or teenage guys doing some gaming. I just tried to fill myself in on what had been happening in the cryptocurrency realm over the last few months while I'd been on the road. Things are moving so crazily fast there, that it's not easy to keep up. I do still intend to dedicate much of my time to one or several projects in this space, if/when I get my fill of travel 😉
A few days of interneting, with intermittent gorging at local nasi-padang buffet places at least mostly took my mind off the great surf
I was missing out on. That is, aside from the bout of diarrhea I got, probably from eating dinner at a padang place where the prepared food could have potentially been sitting out in the heat and flies since breakfast. What can I say? Sometimes food makes me do stupid things. I at least had a great “real-travel” experience of baptism-by-fire at my first squat potty. No toilet paper in sight, of course. Nothing a 20-water-bucket-flush couldn't handle (TMI?).
The places to stay at Medewi basically occupy 2 roads, and I'd guess there are about 8 or so “resorts” in total. The main break was pretty nice and clean while I was there (although I eventually stopped myself from going to the beach to drool at it), but a bit crowded already in the shoulder month of May. I think Bali has pretty firmly been “discovered” by the surfing world. I didn't bother checking out the less-well-known break on the other side of the river at Medewi, as I couldn't make any use of it anyway.
I was relieved that my meticulous treatment of my cut – 3x bandage change per day, disinfecting the
whole sandal each time, and applying a prescription topical antibiotic which they gave me OTC no questions asked – seemed to have staved off any infection. Healing was progressing, albeit not as quickly as I would have liked. It wasn't merely a matter of the wound closing (which probably should have been stitched), but also a matter of internal tissue repair, as my right toe was functionally useless and painful if I tried, probably due to muscle/nerve damage.
I resigned myself that it was pointless to stay in the otherwise boring Medewi sans surfing, so I hopped down the coast to another surf spot called Balian beach. I would say Balian has a bit more of a “scene” than Medewi, only in so far as having more, and a few fancier, places to stay at. Otherwise, it's a similarly chilled out surf town, without much nightlife beyond a few of the fancier hotel's bars. The beach is not particularly beautiful, making Balian a surf-eat-sleep kind of place.
However the accommodation was an improvement, as 100k rupiah ($9) somehow scored me my own private bungalow with wifi and a thermos of hot water delivered in
the morning for all-day coffee/tea. Just a 5 minute walk to the beach. Although my big toe was regaining some functionality, it still wasn't ready for surfing, and still had some rather fresh-exposed wound-like tissue. I had heard some rumblings about the danger of surfing with open cuts in polluted waters, and Bali has more than its fair share of some types of pollution (litter and car exhaust, most obviously) so I decided to Google “Bali surfing pollution” and quickly stumbled upon the rather
alarming article. I decided to wait a few more days, to play it safe. 😉
Eventually though, I deemed that I had enough closure to get in the water and that I could start slow by surfing the inside waves and on some shoulders of waves, so that I could hopefully both surf and not abuse my toe. It worked OK for a few rides, but then I dug in with my toe a bit to keep my balance at one point, and it hurt more than a little, so I called it a first day. It turns out that the big toe (at least the back one) is rather important for surfing, particularly
when you need to turn. So I took it easy my several days surfing at Balian, and never really attempted to catch the bigger outer waves at their apex, which was disappointing. But I met a good guy from Switzerland who also favored the cheapest warung (family-run eatery) in town, and we shared a few dinners. Turns out he was now living in Singapore, sometimes described as the “Zurich of Asia”, where I ended up deciding to detour to on my way to my next target country, the Philippines.
After a week or so in secluded Balian, I continued down the coast to the substantially more developed surf scene at Canggu.
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