April/May, 1998
No. 034/VI/98
cover story
Ground Breakers
Bali's top corporate
women
Out of the Frying
Pan
The legacy of widow
burning in modern Bali
beyond
bali
Pedal Power
Cycling around Lombok
regular
features
Sidelines
The cultural
value of
Indonesia textiles
Adventure
Off-road trips by Land
Cruiser
Bali's surf hero of
nineties, Rizal Tanjung
Health and Beauty
Mandara's many
Bali
spas
Books
The Butterflies of Bali
Food
Four delis that have
survived the crisis
Photo Gallery
F.X. Marit captures nyepi
on film
Jungle
Drums
advertising index for
Bali Echo web site
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in all his glorious
goofiness
Kuta
Beach was still sparse and wild when the couple established their Fatty’s Restaurant
just across from what is now Norm’s Bar. It offered the perfect conditions for a
dream childhood, and it didn’t take long for the boys to settle into their new home.
Son Number Two, Ferry, got himself a surf buddy called Ketut Menda (who went in to compete
on the international circuit and later opened Bali’s first surf shop Bali Barrell),
and the two spent all their time together on the Half-Way break. By the time he was in
primary school Rizal was tagging along with them to the beach and would look on in awe as
the two mounted their boards with ease and carved down the face of a wave. At eight, Rizal
had learned to do the same.
Rizal had been sharing a board with two other grommet buddies and surfing the Half-Way break for two years when something happened that he would now describe as “really gnarly”. An airborne fin, still attached to its board, came to rest between his earlobe and the side of his head, leaving his ear pendulating from a thread of skin. Traumatised, he retreated from the coast and steered clear of the surf for a year. “My mum had a restaurant in Jalan Teuku Umar in Denpasar and my school was nearby, so I just stayed there. A year later I went back to the beach, and when I saw how good the waves were I just jumped straight back on a board.” With this act, Rizal Tanjung’s formative years in the womb of Kuta had commenced.
A surfer’s skin is scarred skin. It is borne, as is a war wound, like a trophy. The wounds heal eventually but the gnarly tales by which they were acquired blossom eternally, for it is by their scars that surfers map their careers. Festering coral cuts, Sumbawa. Fin in the head, Nias. Shark bite, Margaret River.
Like a surfer’s skin, Bali is pockmarked with sacred surf sites. Each landmark harbours its own intricate myth, stakes a claim to a slice of Bali’s surfing history, and each is eager to boast its connection with Rizal Tanjung in his formative years. The Half-Way break that coaxed him so gently when he was learning to stand up sighs his name in her ebb and flow. The walls of Bali Barrell reminisce about the good ol’ days when they bounded his hangout. The sculpted board-riders atop the awning of The Surf Shop remember watching over Rizal as he swept the pavement. The perfect lines at Padang-Padang are uppity about being his favourite break. And in a much less subtle gesture, at Bemo Corner Quiksilver broadcast their sponsorship of him in a life-size, in-action billboard photo.
On his return to the coast a year after the gnarly ear incident, Tanjung joined his grommet contemporaries in making Bali Barrell his home away from home and latched onto Made Switra - his senior by two years and once part of Bali’s professional surfing clique until he was forced to retire early due to knee injuries - as his surf buddy. Tanjung had been surfing every day for eight months when the JISA Open was held at Kuta Beach in 1986. Competing in this open event at 11 years old, he clinched third place and was awarded Best Performance. In a coincidental kind of way, it was his success at JISA that secured him his first ‘sponsorship deal’ - the aforementioned Paul Nicholls board.
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