Our time in Sumatra was a mixture of discovering all the great waves on offer and relaxing with fellow travellers and the locals, often accompanied by Bintang (local beer), not a bad schedule at all! The longer we were there the cultural contrast and unstoppable Westernization became more and more evident. Large mobile phone masts tower over the jungle and mounds of plastic are piled up everywhere because the concept of ‘environmental awareness’, which for us has become such an everyday thing is still fairly novel. However, if you visit Sumatra with the mindset of a traveler and not as a tourist you will discover it’s beauty and it’s soulful essence; mingling with the locals in the marketplace, in the streets or visiting the port where fishermen clean and cut up large marlin and sailfish. A funny anecdote was seeing a crocodile one day in the shorebreak at Mandiri Beach, it had probably come down from the river. The story went viral online, my friends in Tenerife heard about it and sent me a whatsapp message with a picture of the story they’d seen. The power of social media!
