i heard one of the brazzo camp owners at asu murdered/deliberately ran over another brazzo owner from a rival camp... that's just gossip from a few people though.
there was some info on the ASL site a month or so back about it, not sure where the investigation is at though.

mantas - i know what you mean with the travel. i'm currently stuck in padang due to storms turning back ferries. aarrrrgh, i just want to get back out there.having my mate email me reports of one of his all time best sessions isn't helping matters either!

Hang in there Spook.

Maybe you could pass the time by praket you anglish with some locals.

i like it when someone scream past on a motorbike and yells "hello mister where you from" and then roars off before you've even registered who it was...

Yeah, it's a classic when they appraoch you and blurt out every English phrase they know.

"May I introduce himself" "This is the rainy season" "The cat is outside"

Spook, have you heard much about the Bali bombers execution? What the feeling on the ground?

haven't been paying much attention to be honest. out in the islands there is no stress about it at all, and i would be suprised if any of our mentawai crew know anything about it at all. there's a high proportion of christians out there too.

in padang i'm not really worried, but heard on BBC that the execution was taking place, and opted not to go out for beers in one of the few western establishments. that's about it.

padang is a fairly strict muslim town, and there was recently a bunch of terrorists caught in bukkitingi trying to blow up a backpacker cafe.

but on the whole i feel completely safe and unthreatened. there's more risk of being run over crossing the road here than anything else.

No hello mista syndrome yet? dud ma head in!

Spook you still there?

yep. still here. still getting great waves.
things have slowed down the past week swell wise, but there's still plenty of fun shoulder-head high waves around. now that the swell has dropped we've been able to explore some other areas and sections of reef - we've found 4 new spots in the past month, all of them worthy.
and i got a nice racy little wave tonight. only shoulder high but i tucked up into it for a little 4 second shack. sweeeeeeeet!

any of you guys on facebook? we have a page which we update regularly with photos. PM me and i'll send you the link if you're interested

oh yeah, and some lobster fishermen swung by this arvo and dropped off some big fat crays that they couldn't sell - 25 of them! epic dinner tonight.

last night we caught some barracuda and spanish mackerel, so we've been eating well

Thanks for the PM Spook, sick photos. Sounds like the whole venture is going well. It must be very satisfying to carve something out of the jungle like that. When it becomes a world famous place, you can tell your kids that you built it from the ground up.

I'd like to see some of the fish photos, Spanish Mackeral is one of my favorite fish, we do occasionaly get them here during May. Do you eat the Barracuda and GT's? I thought they would have ciguatera.

I'm tempted to go there just for the fish. I could just imagine what it's like.