BRISC in a nutshell

It all started with dad chasing Debs from Wild Asia around Suntec City’s Exhibition Hall last October at ITB Asia asking how he could speak to this rather austere and important-sounding figure – Dr. Reza (the head honcho at Wild Asia). After a few weeks of text stalking, we finally arranged a rendezvous and met the not-very-austere-in-the-end Dr. Reza for dinner. It’s all a bit fuzzy in my head from there on but one day several months later, we sat round a table in the shade of the bar pavillion on Pulau Tengah and drew-up the concept for BRISC – Batu Batu Reef & Island Study Centre – a partnership between Wild Asia and ourselves.

BRISC in a nutshell? Basically, we Batu Batu are building our resort on a lovely untouched island that we really don’t want to spoil. Wild Asia has the know-how and contacts to help us achieve that aim (being a social enterprise whose stated aim is to “inspire and create positive social and environmental change”). It occurred to us that a good way of going about it was to create a not-for-profit entity which offers revenue-generating nature-based activities on the island (diving, trekking etc.) and used those revenues with (fingers-crossed) some external funding to run projects to conserve, preserve and proliferate life in and around the island.

BRISC will be located behind the tree line on the Long Beach – the loveliest beach on the island – and is being designed right now by 2 architects – Ian Hall and Seng Kheong – who are volunteering their time for the cause. It’s a very exciting project and I cannot wait to see the updated BRISC plans. Here’s a photo of the first-stage BRISC layout. Will post updates as they come in.

For the official blurb on BRISC – follow this link:

https://batubaturesort.wordpress.com/brisc-competition/

Have a good weekend!

Bali Trip Part 2 – the things I forgot to mention…

The problem with starting a post after dinner and finishing it half asleep – is that you forget to put in everything you meant to. So here’s – Post 2 on Bali – the things I should have mentioned/shown and didn’t.

1) Pictures of Tony’s House/Shop – Naga Mas.

2) The lovely fabric / umbrella shop near Ubud. They have such a variety of fabric and it’s so attractively colour-arranged – I had to show you a picture.

AND – I also wanted to show you the parasols below. I’m not 100% sold on them yet – I’d thought plain canvas traditional parasols would suit Batu Batu’s style – but honestly – these are growing on me. Any opinions – let me know! I’ve included some pics of the Amans in Bali which use these very parasols (Amankila on top, Amanusa below).

3) I wanted to tell you about a dinner we had one chilly(!) evening in Soori with Jen and Mathieu – an Alaskan-French diving-and-much-more couple. They motorbiked all the way from Sanur (no mean feat in the dark on those roads) to meet and have a chat about BRISC (BB’s reef and island study centre). In the summer they dive, and for the past few winter seasons, they ran Morino Lodge – a ski lodge in Japan which had in fact been suggested to us by Hans – my ski-school classmate. Anyway, over a large but slightly too dimly-lit meal, we navigated our way around unknown but tasty food and talked diving and pranayamas and trees and organic vegetable farming and islands and boats and skiing and english lessons and more. Jen and Mathieu are currently working on liveaboards in Bali – but will hopefully make a trip out to Pulau Tengah in August to have a look-see.

One of my very favourite things about working on Batu Batu (staying in luxury hotels for the good of the job aside) has been meeting so many great people who pop-up from all over – through forums, random dive sites, FB, friends of friends. And with internet and social networking sites – it’s been so easy to make contact. When I lived in London and had no real need to network, I hadn’t realised how easy it was to find all these nice, highly competent people to potentially work with. It’s really been a revelation and a bonus…

Eating, lounging, “sourcing” – a working holiday in Bali

We recently returned from a week’s fact-finding / “espionage” / sourcing (i.e. the hospitality industry’s term for “shopping”) trip to Bali. Our first stop – Alila Villas Soori. We’ve been admiring the Alila-style for some time and I felt that it was highly important (!) for the sake of research and the resort to experience it first-hand. We were not disappointed. The resort is not particularly close to anything – the roads around are narrow and pot-holed – and once you’re there, you’re more or less just there. In fact, we didn’t leave the confines of the resort over the three days we stayed there – a good excuse to put those “sourcing” trips on hold and spend the time lazing about the pool and beach (when not running after our highly mobile toddler).  A few things we loved and learned from Alila Soori – the importance of understated, smiling, seamless service, the glasses of icey cold water (with orange slices) which appeared every time we put our bottoms on a sun bed, the lovely sliced wood tables – found all over the resort, their generous use of candles and lanterns at night, the in-villa nespresso machine, the excellent local balinese dishes served at Cotta over-looking the sea, great big breakfasts and the complimentary freshly-made baby food. The villa prices are steep – but I can highly recommend looking at Jetsetter from time to time where we got an excellent deal.

From Soori we moved further east, closer to the more densely populated tourist town, Seminyak. At 3pm on our first afternoon there, irritable with hunger and searching for lunch amongst hundreds of restaurants, we found ourselves at the lovely Cafe Bali – where we were all instantly calmed – my husband by the array of French newspapers on offer, our baby by a large fruit salad and me by the lovely decor and good food.

Other Seminyak highlights included the great variety of beach / resort wear collections ideal for Batu Batu’s boutique (Beachgold and Sabia being two favourites with lots of very floaty simple cotton/viscose summer dresses and simple sandals which I hope to stock on Pulau Tengah). Jalan Gunung Tangkuban Perahu in Seminyak was also a gem for furniture – shop-after-shop-after-shop of reasonably-priced pieces – but you have to be patient and have time as the road runs for several kilometres and there are hundreds of shops to sift through. One shop we came across had a great selection of restored and re-vamped old teak pieces – a few items perfect for our spa pavillion and resort boutique. There were also some colourful, old keropok (indonesian prawn crackers) tins in various shops – cheap and great to use as lanterns.

On our penultimate day in Bali, we met-up with Balinese-Dutch Tony – someone had suggested him to me through the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree forum. He took us to his house/shop, Naga Mas, near Ubud – several houses and out-houses overflowing with his antique collection – anything from whole Javanese houses to beautiful looms-turned-coffee tables, carved doors, trunks, sideboards, bits of boat – you name it! He also took us to Tepi Sawah in Ubud for the best ribs and crispy duck I’ve ever eaten  – do stop by if you fancy a meat-fix Balinese-style. But the best thing about Tony for Batu Batu is that he’s been in Bali for over 40 years and knows where to find quality items from parasols to batik, shell trinket boxes to stone carvings, lanterns to the do not disturb signs found at the Aman Resorts…

Finally, I thought it was worth mentioning our final stop on our final day – an excellent, laid-back, authentic beach-side Italian, Sticky Fingers on Echo Beach – where we ate very good freshly-made pesto with penne and dark chocolate cake whilst watching the surfers “ride the waves” in the distance (a nice change from the more trendy-chichi spots in Seminyak). And so with our stomachs full we headed at speed for the airport (as anyone who knows us well knows we are rarely on time) and just about made it on time to board our flight back home.

Next stop, next week – Yogyakarta, Java for more sourcing!

A weekend on Pulau Tengah by Dada Bacudo

When I put out a call for volunteers for our reef and island centre project on Lonely Planet’s forum, Dada Bacudo, an environmental manager (recently back in SE Asia after a stint in Uganda) answered my call. A flurry of emails followed and 48 hours later, Dada was en route to join our expedition to hatch a plan on our little island…

I was in Bangkok recently, looking for information on diving sites on the internet when I encountered a call for volunteers to help out with a conservation project for a resort currently being built in Pulau Tengah, Malaysia. I am an environmental manager experienced in working with finances for national parks, and currently with time on my hands I decided to contact Cher Lassalvy, the owner of Batu Batu resort. Cher kindly extended an invitation for me to join a group of natural scientists from Wild Asia who were already familiar with the initial stages of the project. Without much knowledge of the location at first, I thought “Why is my plane ticket bound for Singapore? I thought we’re going to Malaysia?” Not knowing how exactly I could contribute, I set about with optimism and began my little adventure in Pulau Tengah.

A vision was planned

I learned later that Pulau Tengah is a tiny island located within the jurisdiction of Johor, a state in Southern Malaysia, which is next door to Singapore. Batu Batu occupies a good portion of the whole island, and to get there first entails a trip to Mersing, which is where the jetty to other more famous islands in Malaysia such as Pulau Tioman is located. From Mersing, it takes 40 minutes on a slow boat, and only 20 minutes on a speedboat.

As I caught my first glimpse of Pulau Tengah with its gleaming white sands, Reza Azmi, the ED of Wild Asia, pointed out a strip of long beach which he is proposing to be allocated for a research study centre. I agreed that it was a wonderful idea and suggested that we began focusing and talking about this project during the weekend. Reza and his team at Wild Asia have been on the island on several occasions to assess and suggest plans for the hotel’s environmental sustainability direction. I admire Cher and Dato Chua, her father’s commitment to build this place with environmental values in place.

On our first day, we were greeted with coconut juices and later sat down and put our heads together to articulate a commonly agreed vision for the resort. After a while, with more refreshments and lively discussions, Batu Batu Reef Island Study Centre (BRISC) was born. BRISC is envisioned to be a research centre that offers opportunities to study nature in a pristine environment in ways not possible in other areas. A big job ahead but extremely exciting!

We also discussed having volunteers to assist in reef and turtle population monitoring as these are the two concrete projects that need urgent attention. We also emphasized on BRISC’s biggest strength that is the commitment of landowners and resort owners to environmental protection, an issue some resort operators find challenging to grapple with.

Two days of nature trips

Among the Wild Asia team is an intrepid birder (aren’t they all?) named Dave Bakewell who went around the island to assess its biodiversity. Dave always came back with photos which are magical in their quality. As a non-biologist, all I can say is that where birds are abounding, other biological qualities thrive. Cher and I took to the waters by snorkeling, and I was quite happy to see a lot of marine life thriving underwater despite obvious challenges that the marine life in Southeast Asia face in recent years, such as the El Nino phenomenon.

What I marveled at the most in Pulau Tengah is the variety of beaches that the resort is bound to offer. There’s the long stretch of blindingly white beach, which will host BRISC, and where turtles abound and are oftentimes spotted. Cher’s family through the leadership of her dad hopes to start preserving the turtles by buying eggs off the poachers’ hands. The eggs could then be brought to a government hatchery project which has now run short of funds. Therefore, there exist opportunities for co-operation between the government and BRISC for continuous protection of the turtles. At the long beach, the family is committed to keeping it as pristine as possible.

The main activity hub will take place at another beach and where the freshwater pool will be built.

And the third beach where cottages are also constructed expands into shallow tide pools teeming with marine life. Dave who is an early riser reported back with beautiful photographs of sea cucumbers, starfish and crustaceans of all sorts.

Behind the beaches lies the jungle. Here, it is proposed to demarcate nature trails for guests to discover the wide range of unique flora and fauna and also to develop an organic farm where the resort’s restaurant can source its fresh vegetables and also an opportunity for tasting or cooking activities for guests.

Pulau Tengah and beyond

If it were up to me, I would just want to stay on as there are so many nooks and crannies waiting to be discovered. The island is also the location where the original version of Survivor was shot for many years and I fancied tracking some bygone celebrity trails!  But there’s more to the island than just the beaches and forest. Cher’s family packed us up in a speedboat and brought us all over the cluster of islands surrounding Pulau Tengah where wonderful marine and terrestrial structures flourish. Reza noted the GPS points for various rich coral and fish systems, all just within fifteen minutes away from Pulau Tengah. I also noticed some caves and would have loved to explore them if we just had enough time!

Alas, we ran out of time for exploration, and it was time to leave the island. Exiting Mersing, I was shown where the resort hopes to build its own jetty, which would spare most visitors the trip to Mersing town.

It was one of those moments which I am truly grateful to be a part of, and I hope that my involvement continues. Despite my cynicism of most CSR projects that give token advert for so-called sustainable businesses, I felt the commitment of the owners of Batu Batu resort to be very genuine. They have incorporated environmental considerations right from the start, and have reached out to environmental experts when they feel like they were treading in unknown waters. Plus, they truly love having the turtles beaching on their sandy shores, and they have thought up exciting ways to protect them while working with local authorities and volunteers. I can’t wait for the resort and BRISC to officially open early next year and it’s a promise to be an outstanding responsible getaway!

And not to forget a big thanks to Dave Bakewell for his great photos used here. See his post about this same trip on his blog.