INDONESIAN KIDNAP

Ando was from Narrabeen and he was a good mate, but it had still taken much of the night and endless beers to get the information out him. He'd never been shy to talk about the place, perfect points, heaps of swell, no crowds, the normal Indo dream. But that was as far as he'd ever go, all I knew was that it was somewhere in Sumatra. Tonight though he obviously felt he'd teased me long enough and by the end of the evening I was left clutching a soggy beer coaster in my hand, on the back of which was a hastily scribbled map. It was all I needed.

The original plan had been simple enough, I'd fly out to Java and get a few waves in before Breno, a mate from Victoria, turned up, after which we'd fly onto Sumatra and go and check out Ando's secret spot. Breno touched down in Java a few days after me, he didn't even get a chance to see the ocean. The beer coaster map told us to fly into a small town lost somewhere in the middle of Sumatra and by pure coincidence there was a flight from Jakarta that afternoon.

Later that day we arrived in Sumatra and drove away from the airport, through the streets of the seediest Indonesian town I'd encountered in all my travels in the country. We had no real idea where we were, we just got the taxi to drop us off at the bus station were we waved our map around and shouted out the name of the town we wanted to go to, it turned out that it was a twelve hour bus ride away and with no more buses that day we had no option but to kick back here for the night. This wasn't a good time to be in Sumatra, Shurato had just been overthrown, the economy was in tatters and civil war seemed on the cards, the atmosphere in town was tense and we saw no other foreigners.

The next morning we left on the first bus out of town heading for the coast, for the first ten hours we traveled through the jungle with no sign of the ocean and it wasn't until nearly midnight that we pulled into the muddy bus station and found somewhere to stay for the night. The next morning we followed the instructions on our map and walked for an hour along the coast, by now we were both beginning to wonder if trusting a map that had been drawn in a drunken stupor on the back of a tatty beer schooner was such a hot idea, our fears were further confirmed when we reached the beach that we'd heard so much about from Ando just to find that the swell was only two foot. Aside from a few wooden shacks at one end of the beach there was nothing else here but thick jungle. In one of the huts we found an old American hippy living with his local wife and their kid, he used to surf back in California in the '60's, but had left in search of something more. He gave us a place to stay and showed us where all the different reefs were. Within an hour we were out surfing, just enjoying being in the water again, even if it was only small.

Over the next three weeks we rode the best waves of our lives, a ten foot, three hundred metre left, an eight foot backdoor Pipe style right and another perfect little left. And every session it was just the two of us in the water, we couldn't believe our luck, we'd stumbled into paradise.

It all came to an end to soon though and after three weeks we had to return to the real world. We retraced our steps back to the sleazy town we'd originally flown into and found that we had a three-day wait until the next flight to Jakarta. We got a room in a cheap losman and passed the first night without any worries. Then the heavy shit began.

The next evening one of the losman workers introduced us to a group of police and military staying in a bungalow a few doors up from our room. They flashed their ID cards at us and invited us inside, it was the kind of invitation that you have no choice but to accept. They led us into the front room, locked the door behind us and closed the curtains. We knew right away that we were in serious trouble and that these guys weren't real police, but even so for a short time they continued to pretend that we were all best mates. Then they made the call, we were all going to the disco, like it or not.

We were led outside, shoved into the back of a jeep and set off through the dingy back streets of town and onto the outskirts where we came to a big hall that housed the 'disco'. There were a couple of heavies on the door who rolled out the red carpet for our fruit loop tour guides. At this stage we realized that we were hanging out with some solid gangsters. Inside, the darkened hall is filled with wild-eyed Indonesians all tripping out on the fact that a couple of stupid foreign surfers have rocked up. Our escorts try and make us feel at home and buy us beers, but by now Breno and myself are freaked out and just want to get out of there. Suddenly two of our escorts come up behind us and physically jam some kind of pill down our throats, we couldn't do anything but swallow whatever it was they were forcing down us. Then they frog marched us back out to the waiting jeep and drove in circles around the town for a while, probably trying to make us disorientated before driving back to the bungalow. After checking that no one was watching they bundled us back into the front room, locked the doors and pulled out the guns. They searched us at gunpoint and took all the money and other valuables that we had on us and then waited for the drugs they'd fed us with to take effect and for us to pass out. However by now we were so scared that the adrenaline pumping around us kept us standing. They made fun of us all night, leaning against the walls of the room waving their guns at us and making us dance with the girls they'd brought back from the disco with them. One of the crew laughed that one of the girls was his sister, shortly afterwards he shagged her on the floor in front of us. Meanwhile the head of the gang started to get more and more wound up, I think he must have been stressing that the drugs weren't working, he started yelling at us and manically waving his gun around until a couple of the other guys calmed him down.

As the sun rose and it became clear that we weren't going to go down from their drugs they came up with another plan and called up one of the dodgy workers from our losman. He arrived after a few minutes with all of the luggage from our room and the gang leader paid off our bill and sent him away. Now we knew we were in even bigger trouble than we'd dared imagine, they were going to make us missing in action. No-one would ever know what had happened to us, any investigation would show that we'd stayed a couple of nights in the losman and packed up and left the next morning, never to be seen again. Once again we were led outside and pushed into the back of the jeep. We drove through the forest and up into the mountains for two hours, eventually pulling off the road and heading along a track to a small clearing halfway up a mountain. Looking around us we could see nothing in any direction except jungle, no coast, no towns, no people. We knew what the plan was, they'd messed up when we didn't go down off their drugs and because we'd seen their ID's they couldn't just rob us and leave us. We knew we were about to die.

We tried to be philosophical about it, yeah, we'd had some of the best waves of our lives and got some big barrels, so we accepted it. Nice knowing you buddy, yeah cheers mate, we've had some good times. There and then we shook hands and waited for the inevitable.

An argument started to break out, they were yelling and screaming at each other, it seemed as if half of them wanted to kill us and the other half weren't so sure if that was a good idea. The argument felt as if it went on forever, we were both freaking out and Breno was starting to show it. I knew that we had to try and stay calm because if we both lost it then they'd have to kill us, so whilst reassuring Breno that everything was cool I started telling our captors that we could get them plenty of money and that we'd keep quiet about it all

After a couple of hours of this they began to calm down a little and finally we were put back in the jeep and driven away. They took us back into the town and on into the bungalow. Then they went through all our stuff, taking what they wanted, binoculars, torches, money, anything. All the while they're screaming abuse at us and threatening us. By now Breno's totally lost it and started raving and shouting and even though I'm just a scared as him I know that we can't afford to loose our cool, so I started yelling at him to calm down and reassure him that we're going to be alright. But by now they're loosing interest in us, they're to engrossed in all their booty.

Outside the bungalow door I see one of the cleaning kids walking past, without letting our captors see, I grab his attention and get him to call us a bemo. Ten minutes later the bemo announces its arrival with the beeping of a horn. We don't wait to see what reaction this provokes in our captors we just grab the bags beside us (which contain the passports and air tickets that our captors didn't want) and jump into the bemo. As we speed away we're too scared to even look and see if they're following us.

We get to the airport ready to get on the first flight out of town, wherever it's going, but there's nothing due to leave for another two hours. So we just sit there feeling sick to the pit of our stomachs, chain-smoking Gudangs, wondering what to do, expecting at any minute to see them walk through the airport doors. Meanwhile, we can see military vehicles and police cars tearing up the street into town, we don't know what's going on, someone tells us there's rioting taking place in the town, but we don't care, the boarding call has just been made for our plane.

A few days later and we're safely back home in Oz, trying to come to terms with what happened and how on earth we'd managed to get out of it. Interpol detectives come and talk to us and reporters interview us. We just tell people that we'd wanted some good, uncrowded waves, we'd got them but at what price?