An Indian head dip holiday
Asia is gearing up for the entry of surfing into the Olympics by building out their own surf competitions. They are rather late to the surf party but none of that diminishes their stoke of surfing nor their enthusiasm.
Deni Pirdaus & Dean Permana, two of Deus’s Indonesian family members recently flew up to Chennai India after receiving Invites to compete in a leg of the RAST tour there.
RAST was founded back in 2016 by a Chinese extreme sports entertainment platform REnextop, in cooperation with their partner, the Asian Surf Cooperative (ASC). Now in it’s third year, the RAST tour has become an important tournament series in the region enabling Asian surfers to compete and communicate with each other across a number of events held in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and now Chennai India.
While it is indeed a tournament, surfers from all over Asia are still able to compete in a friendly environment, meet others with the same passion and visit amazing surfing spots while experiencing the different local cultures. Asia is a big region, and RAST will keep finding more new places and grow along with its members and the surfing scene in Asia
The boys were there to compete in the Longboard division of the surfing competition. It was held at Covelong Point, Chennai in India from the 22nd-24th of August.
The boys both made it right through to the semi’s where they tied for third place. Coming in second was Marven Abat a surfer out of the Philippines, and winning the Men’s Longboard division was our good friend, and another BK boy, Arip “Mencos” Nurhidayat.
Both Dean and Mencos are in the Indonesian National Surfing team who have been training around Indonesia getting ready for the 2020 Olympics in Japan.
Dhea Natasya, who is also on the Indonesian National Surfing team took out both firsts in the women’s longboard and women’s shortboard events. We are super stoked for her.
Making it a bit of a hat trick for Indonesia, was Mega Artana who won the men’s shortboard event.
Security at the little beach on the east coast of India got super tight when the and the governor of Puducherry, Dr. Kiran Bedi, arrived at the awards ceremony giving a speech and awards to the contestants.
The third and final stop of the 2019 REnextop Asian Suring Tour 2019 will take place on December 15-17, 2019 in Cherating Beach, Kuantan, Malaysia
