Bali Echo Visitor's Guide

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February/March, 1998
No. 033/VI/98

cover story

Galleries Galore
The boom in
contemporary Balinese
art

A Matter of Taste
Why bourgeois Balinese
are collecting art

beyond
bali

From Toraja to the
Togians
Sulawesi's most seductive
parts

Treading Lightly in
Lombok
Tips to being a green
tourist

regular
features

Weekender
The Saltmakers of Amed

Home Grown
Legian's Legend,
Made Kasim

Health and Beauty
The Ubud-based
Bali Utama Spice

Books
The search for the Great
Bali Novel continues

Cuisine
Bumbu Bali cooking
school

Fiction
Marni's Ride by
K. Landras Syaelendra

Jungle Drums

advertising index for
Bali Echo web site

"You were the first Bal-o to really get it right," was what Gerry Lopez, thrice winner of the 'Wimbledon of surfing', the hair-raising Pipeline Hawaii, said to Made Kasim when they were introduced at G-Land in 1981. Kasim was rewarded with 'getting it right first' with an open invitation to Lopez' Honolulu home - and has since accepted, frequently. He was not, however, rewarded with sponsorship until five years later. By 1986, tired of having to scrape together the funds to keep him surfing around the world, Kasim was ready to throw in the towel. In a twist of fate, it was at exactly this point that he was offered sponsorship by Aloha, Japan. Kasim promptly reversed his decision to retire, and stuck to the international circuit. He was stuck to the international circuit in 1989 when he came off Chiba Beach, having just competed in the Marui Pro, and bumped into the love of his life, now wife, Toyomi. And he was still stuck to it in 1992 when he competed in the Surfing Olympics longboard championship. "To compete in the Olympics, Indonesia had to have a complete team that included a woman surfer, a boogie boarder and a long board rider. So I put my name into the Indonesian Surfing Association to represent Indonesia in the long board contest. After six months of intensive practice on a Malibu, I got placed seventh out of 28 countries."

But Kasim is no name-dropper, and he soon tires of my endless questions about contests, sponsors, and encounters with surf heroes. I try a different tack, and on gentle prompting some of the yarns Kasim has been quietly nurturing escape through the gap in his teeth and spill onto my notebook as a pile of scratchy abbreviations. Like the time when he was out the back at G-Land (which, by the way, he claims as his favourite surf spot in the whole world) and a shadowy torpedo-shaped beast began circling him, then disappeared. "You start to worry when a tiger shark disappears, because it usually means it's gonna suddenly come straight up from under you." So what did he do? Did he freak? Did he faint? Did he scream and wave his arms? "Aawww... I thought I should probably get on the next wave," says Kasim in the Newcastle drawl he has clung to as a souvenir of his heady days with McCabe. Or like the other time when he was airlifted to Singapore with a dysfunctional liver and a face the colour of an egg-yolk. "I wasn't feeling too good, kept going to the doctor here for tests and kept being told that nothing was wrong with me. But my face was going yellow, and my leg was blown up like the elephant man." It's another near-death experience that he punctuates with little throw-away laughs. "I really thought I was finished, but I'm still here now. Well... I can't drink anymore. Ha-ha."

If moving to Australia and working with McCabe is one bookend to Kasim's wild surfer days, then his mysterious, almost fatal illness is the other. Since his recovery, Kasim has flipped his former party-dog image on its head. He is now a successful business man, a loving family man, and a responsible citizen in Bali's Surfing Land.

Made and Toyomi had been going out for almost a year when they married in 1990, and in 1991 Toyomi gave birth to Tina. When Luna was born in 1995, Kasim found himself in an unenviable situation. Double kids, no income. So he approached his former sponsor to lend him the money to open an Aloha shop in Jalan Legian. In a short space of time, Kasim had made enough to be able to go it alone when, in the following year, he opened his Da Hui shop in Jalan Padma.

Being manager of the Da Hui and Aloha shops makes Made Kasim much more than a figure head surf legend. It makes him an important part of the expanding surf/skate accessories industry, and by extension a major decision maker on where to channel sponsorhip locally. So for all those grommets with professional aspirations, Kasim is not just a respected senior, but a gateway to the international circuit. "This is where the biggest changes since I started surfing have taken place," Kasim offers. "There's much more money around now for sponsorship, and the international circuit has loosened up alot since they introduced the Top 44 system." (where you only have to be in the Top 44 to gain preselection to major events instead of the Top 16 as was previously the case, ed.) Nevertheless, gaining sponsorship is tough work, and labels as big as Kasim's Aloha and Dahui are currently only sponsoring three local kids between them, even if they do happen to be Bali's three top surfers. Koming and Pepen, who are signed to Aloha, won the Bali Open Championship in 1996 and 1997 respectively. And Kasim signed Adi Putra to Dahui after he came second in the Bali International Grommet last year. "I'm pinning alot of hopes on Adi Putra," Kasim reveals. "The big test is gonna be this February, when he goes off to compete in the Pro Junior in Narrabeen (Sydney)." When Kasim's eyes start to glaze over, I know he must be reminiscing. His protegee, the Sydney-bound seventeen year old Adi Putra, is the same age Kasim was when he first cut it in the Australian surf.

by Emma Baulch
photos by Putera and Jason

Above:
Kasim at Padang Padang on his McCabe's board