surf camp versus boat charter

+ for surf camp, if I am annoying the crap out of you, you can walk away.

Good advise Shaun, wish I could walk away.

If I wanted to hear your opinion Morris, I would rattle a bucket.

Fuck mate ,all i know is indo is very expensive compared to back in the day . Im not saying i was a pioneer but i used to pay $1:00 aus per night/day to stay out front of Nias and meals where $1:00 also . Asu was for free in the big haunted house and you would have to take all your food and hire the cook to cook all meals and pay him about 1 or 2 dollers for his troubles per day . Yeah this was 20+ years ago but the point im making is how the fuck can the indos justify charging more or less $300:00 per night to stay at Mentawias ? Bali is so dam expensive as well . Yes it is so popular and thats now how much people are willing to pay but you get cunts throwing money at them ,they think every body is rich and wants to get robbed , My advice to any new indo traveler is to think like a local and pay like a local and go find some waves where you dont have to pay $30:00 dollers per Barrel

I hear that luke.
If longstay you can still get places for less than $1 a night, 50 000 rp a month in front of epic waves. I dont know what the attraction to Bali is, so many stick to bali but they can have it. Rats nest of a place.Crowds, kooks,traffic, cops,attitude,scammers, Bogans, Soupy pollution. shithole. Good waves though.
If short term holiday and you have coin, boat or camp with speed boats hands down. Good waves often rather than sussing them out yourself and waiting-getting skunked.G-land is still up there with the best though and not too pricey.

300 000- 500 000 not 50 000rp

Dave, just got back from 2 weeks with Slim from baliwaves.com. scored waves from Balian to Keramas to Uluwatu. Basic accommodation, good price and Slim didnt make a bad call on location the whole trip. This was my second stay and didn't disappoint. Check www.baliwaves.com for more info. All guests are there to just to surf so you will be with like minded individuals, we even made a 5am start one day to score the best waves, totally worth it. :)

Fuck mate ,all i know is indo is very expensive compared to back in the day . Im not saying i was a pioneer but i used to pay $1:00 aus per night/day to stay out front of Nias and meals where $1:00 also . Asu was for free in the big haunted house and you would have to take all your food and hire the cook to cook all meals and pay him about 1 or 2 dollers for his troubles per day . Yeah this was 20+ years ago but the point im making is how the fuck can the indos justify charging more or less $300:00 per night to stay at Mentawias ? Bali is so dam expensive as well . Yes it is so popular and thats now how much people are willing to pay but you get cunts throwing money at them ,they think every body is rich and wants to get robbed , My advice to any new indo traveler is to think like a local and pay like a local and go find some waves where you dont have to pay $30:00 dollers per Barrel

By: "lukesripping"

Theres still heaps of places you can stay cheap in Indo if you know where to go from $5-$10 per day and still get local meals from a $1 upwards and can often do this a stones throw from camps/resort where guys are paying hundreds of dollars per night, plus lots of times the option of staying with a local family or kepala desa with true Indo home cooked meals, just spent a month in such a place.

Its pretty simple why lots of resorts/camps/charter boats are so expensive in Indo these days and its because its all funded by western interest that want to earn western dollars and basically because they can and people pay, each to there own i guess.

It's funny the whole "I can do Indo cheaper than you trip". 20 years ago I was staying at the old Periscopes surf camp in Sumbawa for $6.00 a night and the guys staying up near Lakey's would come up and smugly tell us we were being ripped off. Thing is after a few weeks they started coming up for meals of the finely cooked Buffalo Bolagnaise that we were getting served. One day a few of us ventured up the beach to try a vegetable noodle dish up at their camp. I found a worm crawling around in my half eaten plate. I guess sometimes you get what you pay for.
If you get along well with people and can afford it do a boat trip Dave. More variety of waves and you tend to surf more if only to get away from the claustrophobic confines of the boat. If people shit you off easily stay at a camp as a boat can be a testing environment if your surrounded by douchbags!

Agree YS. You'll surf more doing a boat trip than staying on land.

Ov-course you will surf more staying on a boat , "der" and yes it will cost more than i would like to pay .

Hey YS,

Surprised I didn't run into you down at Periscopes back then. Used to spend a bit of time in Juf's camp around that period.

Surf camps vs. boats - both have pros and cons. Yeah, you'll surf more on a boat but you'll also pay more. And do you know all the people on the boat? Nothing worse than getting stuck on a boat with people you're not keen on. If you think the guy who gets drunk and tells the same story over and over is annoying when you meet him in bar, how will you be when you're stuck on a boat with him for ten days?

Land camps are good when you know there's a variety of waves nearby and you've got access to them. They're also good if you're in Bali and see the long range charts cop a few deep bruises in the southern Indian Ocean. That'll give you around a week to plan, book and travel. You'll be in position when the swell makes landfall so you can surf yourself silly.

I dont think its true you will surf more if staying on a boat.

There is only so much hours a day you can surf no matter where you stay and in the tropics there is also only so much time you can spend in the sun especially if you want to surf again the next day.

From what ive seen having worked at a surf resort and even worked on surf charter a few trips, plus heaps of time doing it cheap, it comes down to the individual ive seen plenty of guys staying at resorts or doing it cheap pretty much do nothing but surf and ive even seen guys on charter boat trips barely spend any time in the water?

That said charter boats do have one big advantage and that is your generally anchored a stone throw from a break so can often time your surfs around changes in conditions and the coming and going of any crowds.

But that said i know a few waves that rarely get surfed by charter boats and mostly its because they dont have a proper/safe anchorage it eye sight or even close by and there still pretty good waves.

I could go on forever so many pros and cons.

Hey Stu maybe we did surf together then? I was a different looking person in those days..... For a start I had hair! Someone over there described it as looking like an old piece of carpet. I was also toned and skinny unlike these days as I'm battling to stay out of the hundred club.
I saved Juf's life once when he was trying to learn to surf on a pretty solid day and lost his board and got washed way out to sea. Dunno if he ever surfed again after that?
About 5 years ago some grommets from the mid coast of Adelaide asked me if I'd ever been to Sumbawa. They told me they had been climbing around the ruins of the old Periscope Surf Camp and saw my nickname burned high up on a rafter of the overgrown ruins. They said "it couldn't be" as the ruins looked 100 years old. Memories came flooding back of a drunken night on duty free Bonded Beam monkey climbing high into the rafters with a red hot iron rod. I swear I hadn't thought about it once till they brought it up.

Ha ha...my name is/was up on that rafter somewhere too! In a similar vein: I was at G'land a few years ago and went for a walk way out around the corner past Kong's. About 20 minutes on from the start of Kong's, where it's all just closeouts on the reef, there was an old abandoned fishing boat sitting high and dry on the reef. It was falling apart and looked like it'd been there awhile. I mosied over to have a look.

I poked my head in one of the old portholes and there, written along the roof beam in faded black texta, was: "Pete Trick was here!"

Pete was a guy I knew in Cronulla and hung out with when I was a grom.

As for Sumbawa, I've got two mates at Lakey right now and was happy to tell 'em tonight that this Thursday, Friday and Saturday are gonna be pretty good indeed.

Reckon it might depend a little on your fitness level also. For anyone who's been on a 10-12 day boat trip, they'd know you can barely lift your arms out of the water by the end. I also find I can't see by the end on account of the sun. So if ya fit and all you want is waves, waves, waves (+ variety) boat might be the go.....if you want a bit of a cultural experience / waves / chill time land camp might suit you better...........what sort of waves do you want to score?