16. Beyond the shape...

So, back in Indonesian waters, I have the privilege of surfing every day and meeting weird and wonderful people, from Americans born in Venezuela, to Hawaiians born in Australia, and even the odd fellow South African. The concept of “world travelers” brings to mind a certain type of person, “surfers” bring to mind even more…

Something beautiful happens to all visitors in Sumatra; it is almost as if everything the modern Western society expects of you and wants from you disappears. This has a tremendous effect on the way people behave, good and bad. The engineer lives in board shorts and torn shirts, the sponsored athlete plays with local kids, the chartered accountant listens to everyone's stories and only calculates risks taken on secondhand rundown scooters. You can choose to have hangups, not adapt, and miss out on everything around you, or you can choose to be led by what the island has to offer.

Our noble steed went in for a service, so we were dealt with a smaller, lighter scooter…

So, of course, we had to go test it. We took the little pony out on an atypical Kru-in-Krui afternoon exploration. This meant driving through some small single round tracks and down sloping roads and turning into paths with no clue where they would lead us. 

On our last turnoff, we drove into a dead end, and as we turned around, we saw it: Eagles! Right there next to us! (Back story: as a kid, an escape from everything around me would be to draw and read everything I could on birds of prey. This has always been a quiet passion.)

The owner of the house came out, greeted us friendly, allowed these two foreigners to take photos of the birds, and then gave me a dead squirrel and a falconry glove… yes, that happened! See the video on our Instagram.

From this brief interaction, I first went into my sceptical mind, thinking: "Is this legal or even for real?" But only to find this man works at the university in the conservation of sea animals, specifically non-vertebrate creatures. He asked us to share our experience so that others may learn to conserve what is given to us freely.

See, it's easy to make assumptions and think you know who and what a certain person is like. The lesson I learned is to open your heart, not your eyes.

A famous surfboard shaper was asked: “How do you start shaping a surfboard and get it just right?” He answered: “It's easy, you take a block of carefully cured and prepared fiberglass and just shape away everything that is not a surfboard.”

We need to look deeper, be prepared to be shaped, and allow our guards to be down enough to see what life wants to teach us.

Maybe there is a little bit of Sumatra in every place we go, if we let it…

Written by: Vicus, also known here as "Pic"