Wow: Rizal’s Java Surf Resort!

A seven-hectare spread overlooking uncrowded, world-class waves…

Did I mention, and I may well have over the previous three posts, about my recent vacation in an Uluwatu villa, perched like a well-padded crow’s nest on a three-hundred foot cliff? And how I shared this three-bedroom, infinity-pool equipped home with the noted shaper Matt Biolos and San Clemente father of the year, Dino Andino?

Oh, reader, don’t be embarrassed for me when I tell you I felt like a king ruling a dynasty of slaves! A whore of modern capitalism!

Apart from documenting the well-received opinion of Matt Biolos, I was also treated to a sunset barbecue with the great Balinese surfer Rizal Tandjung, who is now forty years old.

An aside: does the Asian have sole rights to the game of ageing beautifully? The western man implodes in a ball of hair and clammy flesh. The Asian, on the other hand, becomes even slimmer, even more graceful. Rizal rippled across the tiled floor, supple limbs folding and unfolding like an instructional anatomy doll.

Rizal was a one-time staple of Taylor Steele films from the nineteen-nineties and I asked him what he did, now that his star had dimmed, although I didn’t state it in such bald terms. Rizal retrieved his phone from one of his two beautiful children and swiped through a series of photos of the surf resort he’d built with his father-in-law in the East Javanese village of Watu Kerung. 

I’ll describe. Six pretty Javanese-style houses sit amid seven green hectares overlooking three bays, with world-class, if heavy, reef ledges in two of ’em.

From his resort’s website:

Rizal Tandjung first discovered the potential beauty of Watu Karung back in 2009 when a friend took him surfing there. Rizal was amazed and blown away by the pristine, serene beach with its special landscape and rocks out in the ocean. One rock cliff in particular, stood out because of its “Sphinx”-like features, or depending on where you stand or how you look at it, it could resemble a princess or a baby’s face.What really made an impression to Rizal was its powerful waves, it reminded him of surfing in Hawaii. These waves made his pro surfer friends such as Kelly Slater, Bruce Irons and Josh Kerr (just to name a few) also come to experience Watu Karung. A photo of Bruce Irons made it on the cover of a surfing magazine and he mentioned it was “the last secret spot”. Many other photo’s and stories about WaKa eventually cicrulated in different surf mags which put it more on the spot. The goal is to slowly build up the place over time to become the beach retreat they dreamed of. Time is not a factor, they don’t want to rush “art”.

A vacation at Rizal’s resort costs between one hundred and four hundred US dollars a night for a house, and includes three eats a day. Decode the price list here. 

Study Desa Limasan’s Instagram here.