A Good Deal

Walter Hoffman on an epic wave at Padang Padang, Bali, before this awesome wave was known to the surfing world. Photo: Don Marsh

After I returned from my first trip to the beautiful island of Bali, I thought I had been to heaven. The surf was perfect. It was consistent and made up mostly of long, hollow lefts, just the way I like them. The lifestyle was idyllic, languid and slow moving, the best way to live. The people were gracious, happy, and inspirational—they made me want to be like them. Prices were outrageously inexpensive. A comfortable bungalow, three good meals per day, transport by bemo or motorbike, plus batik, woodcarving, or other local handmade gifts for friends and family back home cost almost nothing. It was a heavenly vacation.

At home in Hawai’i afterward, thinking about it all at a distance provided necessary perspective. It was even better than I had thought it was while I was there. I couldn’t wait to go back to Bali. I told my close friends about it, and my genuine enthusiasm was quite persuasive.

I knew that my friend Walter Hoffman spent a lot of time near the area anyway. His business was fabric and he traveled the world, Asia in particular, in search of new materials and new sources. He questioned me thoroughly. Apart from the surf reports, I think the part that made the biggest impression on him was how inexpensive it all was. Walter, even though a very successful and astute businessman, was notoriously tight and dearly loved to find or make that elusive “good deal.” The Bali “deal” in the mid-1970s couldn’t have been better.

Two years after I first toured Bali, Walter and OP Sportswear President Jim Jenks were traveling through Australia researching surf fashion and setting up new accounts. Australia always has been a leading locale for sport/lifestyle fashion and at that time was home to some of the most forward-thinking surf companies like Quiksilver and Billabong. Most of the stuff made or worn down in Oz was several years ahead of anything in the U.S. and a good indicator of what was going to be happening soon on the world’s beaches. Walter mentioned to Jenks what I had told him about Indonesia. They planned to visit China and Japan next anyway, so they decided they could stop off for a few days in Bali.

Walter found the most inexpensive way to get there. True to form, Walter’s steerage-class itinerary involved a milk run out of Sydney, up through Darwin, to Timor, and then on to Bali.

Darwin, Australia, is one of the most humid places in that entire huge country. The flies are so bad that the Aussies always joke that one has to drink his beer through clenched teeth to strain out the insects. Jimmy Jenks was sweating profusely while they waited through the layover, nervously eyeing the decrepit-looking twin-engine prop plane they were soon to board for the next leg of their journey.

Walter, with a patience born of many years spent waiting for waves, not only was unfazed but even felt a tiny bit triumphant about the money he was saving by coming this roundabout way. Quantas Airways had a flight direct from Sydney to Denpasar, Bali, but it cost twice as much. Twice as much! Finally, the flight was called and everyone boarded.

Australia and Indonesia are actually very close. From Darwin to Timor is only about 400 miles, so the flight was not long despite the slow, old airplane. As their flight made the approach into Dili, East Timor, both noticed what looked like fires burning in the hills around the capital city. Landing, the plane taxied up to an antique terminal, and everyone was invited to deplane.

Outside, they felt concussions of distant explosions and heard what sounded like gunfire. Jim looked at an oblivious Walter for explanation but got nothing except a smile and an offhand remark.

“Isn’t this bitchin’?” commented Walter as they walked.

Beyond the terminal they saw groves of swaying coconut trees and beyond those were rolling hills of dense jungle. It was pretty nice, except for the smoke, flames, and mildly unsettling noises arising from the distant dark.

A thin young man in a white shirt greeted them and beckoned the whole group to where he waited behind a small table. He stood next to a shorter man in a fancy military uniform with a chest full of medals and mirrored aviator sunglasses.

The young man spoke English and, speaking for the soldier in charge, asked everyone to show their passports and medical cards. Entering Indonesia back then required a visa and an up-to-date medical card as proof of a number of mandatory vaccinations. Everyone had the proper stamps on his card except Walter who, in his search for the cheapest flight, had found one that neglected to tell him a yellow fever vaccine was needed to get into Indonesia. Of course traveling through Asia did require cholera and smallpox shots in those days and, since Walter did that often, he was current on those, but yellow fever was uncommon.

Jenks on the other hand had gotten everything just in case, and his card easily passed the inspection. The boy in the white shirt had detained Walter, explaining that entry was refused and he would have to wait several days in Timor for the flight to return, at which time he would be sent back to Australia. Meanwhile, the other passengers were already reboarding the airplane, whose engines were still running. Jenks noticed the delay with Walter and the immigration officials. He lingered to see what the problem was.

“What’s the deal?” demanded Walter, his face turning red.

Patiently the boy explained a second time. The military man behind obviously didn’t speak any English but just stood there, looking somewhat formidable behind his mirrored shades.

Jenks recognized the problem immediately and made a good suggestion to Walter. “Maybe ask the guy if some money will take care of it,” Jim suggested quietly.

The translator picked up on it right away and with a quick glance around to see if the coast was clear, nodded his head in agreement that this was indeed the way to solve the problem.

“Well, how much will it take?” Walter asked the lad.

Again glancing around somewhat furtively, the kid said something in Indonesian to the military man who returned a quick, one syllable answer.

In a quiet voice, the youngster told Walter and Jenks, “Fifty dollars will fix everything. This is the only immigration check; from here on the flight is domestic, nobody else will look at your documents.”

“Fifty dollars!” Walter bellowed. His loud voice and angry tone made the boy wince. He had hoped not to attract any attention to this definitely illegal transaction.

“That’s too much. Ask him if he will take ten.” Walter felt he was on familiar ground negotiating price.

At this point in the story as related to me by Walter several months after the fact, I was shocked and shook my head in disbelief. I was familiar with the history of Timor.

Back in the twelfth century, Chinese travelers discovered huge forests of sandalwood and began trading in it. The Dutch and Portuguese came in the sixteenth century to set up colonies to further exploit the sandalwood trade. For almost 200 years, they fought over the island until a treaty in 1860 divided it between them. The Dutch took West Timor and Portuguese got the eastern half of the island. During World War II, the East Timorese fought with Australian commandos against the Japanese occupation: 50,000 of the Timorese were killed in the conflict. In 1949, West Timor became part of Indonesia when the Netherlands relinquished their colonies in the Dutch West Indies. In 1975, the Portuguese left East Timor after four centuries of rule. In the power vacuum during the decolonization and creation of the Democratic Republic of East Timor, the Indonesian Army invaded and annexed it.

The events in East Timor, small, remote, and poor, escaped international attention. At the time of Walter and Jenks’s trip in the late summer (winter in the Southern Hemisphere) of 1976, East Timor was in the midst of a small but brutal war in which 200.000 East Timorese reportedly died. I couldn’t believe that Walter would bargain over an insignificant amount of money in the midst of such a dangerous situation, and I told him so.

“Walter you’re such a cheapskate, how could you do that?”

“Whaddya mean?” he answered in true Walter form, proud of having bested his adversary and come away with a good deal.

“He took the ten dollars!”