Indonesia.

THE MORE TIME I SPEND OVER THERE, THE MORE I find Indonesia has to offer skate-wise. Every time I go I am amazed by the hospitality (despite the State Department warnings) and new parks that are popping up everywhere.

In Jakarta, Indonesia's sprawling capitol city of over 10 million people, Didi from the Indonesian Skateboarding Association just put together a new outdoor metal and wood street park that's fun to cruise, as well as a figure-eight-shaped bowl that is a knockout. Not too many skateable backyard pools, but this will do nicely. When I skated it, the bowl was still under construction but already looking kill. There are quite a few up and comers as well, including some really young guns. The neighborhood looked on in awe and total incomprehension- skateboarding rules.

After an all too brief stay in Jakarta I cruised to Bandung, Charlie's zone. Charlie, also from the ISA and Hobbies, has been kicking life into the skate scene ever since I have known him (and long before), and is working on another park there. In the meantime we took to the streets. Driving in the pity is nuts. You think big cities in America are hectic? At least some people understand the idea that there are lines on the road and an inkling of what they are for. In Bandung and other big cities, sometimes it seems like all bets are off. So with that in mind, after hitting a ledge over some stairs, we went to a median where Dymas and the others proceeded to stick multiple variations over the gap as traffic came and went.

The next spot was an insane gap from KFC parking lot to the street that Dymas was trying and landing, but couldn't stick. It wound up being right across from a police station, and after a little while the fuzz came out and told us to move. We talked him into another try or two (try that in America) but didn't want to press our luck. Finally Dymas took us to a rail, but unfortunately there was a security guard there. "Can we take a few pictures?" we asked, waking him from his nap on a cardboard mat. "Oh, not a problem," he told us. So Dymas set to the task at hand and a small crowd gathered. He stuck the nosegrind and we called it a night with beers in front of Circle K. Wait a sec, these guys are young guns drinking beers, and that the hell are Circle K and KFC doing in Indonesia? Wouldn't you like to know.

Unfortunately for my skating prospects, I was headed to do research in East Timor so I could only stay for a couple days. If you haven't read the recent (last three years) history of East Timor, please put this mag down right now and go look it up somewhere. OK, got it? After 25 years of abuse and mass killing at the hands of the Indonesian military, the East Timorese voted for independence in August 1999, setting off an Indonesian-scorched earth policy that destroyed the land. I was there when it started in August of 1999 and have been back three times since; it is an amazing place.

I did know of an empty pool. It had been empty since the first time I had been there in 1997, collecting rain during the wet season, and evaporating again during the dry season. It was a gift from the Australian commandos of WWII to the Timorese; tens of thousands of them had perished defending a few hundred Aussies at the last line before the war turned against them. Unfortunately the pool had no trannies to speak of, but fuck, I was the first to skate it. Or was I? Well, I am the first to document it at least. So there you go, pool skating in East Timor.

So I brought my skateboard, thinking I could be the first person to skate in East Timor. Right after I get there, however, I see footage of some kids riding planks of wood with wheels down a hill in another city. "Well," I thought, "Maybe that doesn't count..." After all, they weren't real skateboards. Or were they? Later in my stay I heard more rumors of kids riding planks of wood down the street, and finally I heard that an Au stralian aid worker there had left a real skateboard (and unfortunately a razor scooter too--too bad East Timorese don't have health insurance) and kids were riding it! Maybe I wasn't going to be the first, but a moment of disappointment quickly turned to a smile. "Fuck it, I'm glad there are already skaters here," I thought. It's already been introduced, it's already on its way, and people are already cruising and having fun. Now they need to work on paving more of the streets.

After a few weeks it was time to go, and again I didn't want to leave. But Bali--the Indonesian tropical paradise/tourist trap of doom--was calling. A couple of the Oregon girls, Dawn and Danielle, had a pad arranged at a Brazilian surfer and his Hawaiian girlfriends' house. We spent a few days on the beach, eating and drinking amazing fruits and juices, staring and laughing at all of the tourists with bad haircuts and crazy get-ups incorporating sarongs, short-shorts, banana hammocks. or whatever. On the second day we looked for and found the Diamond Skatepark in Perumahan Mutiara, Denpasar. One of the best things about the park, unfortunately, was the graffiti that said "War of the Guts." Another was a young gun named Gungde who's got a surf style and will be ripping in no time. The park was a mess of dilapidated plywood stuff, but it did for somewhere to skate.

On the way back I overstayed in Bali and almost missed my flight out of the country, so I had to pass on the return plan to Jakarta to skate the park one last time. The best part is that it'll be there when I get back. 'Crete is permanent, Indonesia will be there, so don't leave your board behind!