Avoiding Tigers, Plane Problems And Lost Passports On Tour With The NbC

Chapter One: The Plane Journey

We went out and played a gig at a little cafe in Balangan in Bali and then got back home to our bamboo apartment at 9pm only to realise that we had forgotten something.

I went over to Rhys, our photographer, and asked, “Hey, bro, by any chance did you go and grab our passports from immigration?” A terrified look came over Rhys’ face and he said, “Bro, I’m like six large Bintangs deep and I’m going to be honest - I have totally forgotten about the passports.” So we jumped on our scooter and drove like the wind to get to the immigration office, both of us stressing at the thought of having to go into a small village and wake people up. We arrived at the office and the travel gods were in our favour because the office was still open!

After making it past their guard dog, which looked like a small Chewbaca, we walked in and explained our situation in our best bahasa; which is getting pretty good. Luckily they had been waiting there and handed us our passports straight away.

We woke up at 3am to the sound of the dogs at our accommodation going bananas, and realised that our alarm hadn’t gone off and our bailies mate Gede was probably being bailed up by the dogs thinking he was coming to case the joint. After settling down the dogs and getting in the car we headed off to Denpasar airport.

We got on the plane and I fell asleep straight after the safety briefing. Rhys awaked me. I’m like, “Sweet bro, how’s it going? Can’t believe we have already arrived.”

He replied with, “Nah, bro, there’s a problem with the plane.” I started to freak out, but looked out the window and realised we hadn’t left the ground yet. My heart returned to my body. When you travel with Lion Air, if you pay for one hour, you get another five hours free.

Chapter Two: Arriving in Java

We departed the plane and using our bahasa powers got a driver to take us three hours south to where the waves are, Pacitan. Driving to this village was like driving through Jurassic Park; the jungles are dense and the landscape looked like it was hiding some interesting fauna. We arrived at the beach and the surf was pumping, so we jumped into the water and washed off the day’s transport smells that had been building since 3am. The next morning we headed off to a beach break and along the way our friend from Portugal informed us that there had been tigers spotted in this area. So as we were walking through the knee-high grass, there was a certain sense of heightened awareness looking out for not only snakes but also god damn tigers.

At the beach, we saw turtle tracks from where it had nested so we put down a late night mission on the next full moon to go and see if the eggs hatch to hopefully catch some footage.

Chapter Three: The Clean up

We awoke early and the surf was literally falling from the sky with some of the waves bouncing off cliffs and doing their best impressions of aquatic skyscrapers. We decided it was a better idea to do some beach cleaning than sacrificing ourselves to King Neptune. We collected three large plastic bags of rubbish from the beach and I am still processing the data as we speak. Pacitan is an amazing spot - the local people are beautiful and always smiling, it is the closest thing to paradise that I have seen in a while. The beach is well maintained by the locals with both rubbish and recycling bins present and it’s truly a pleasure to share this area with the locals and add it to the list of places we have ventured during this tour so far.