Stage 2 — The Push
Room for a turn at Tungku Beach
Tungku Beach, Brunei — where the real surfing began (and yes, there are crocodiles)
We moved from Cornwall to Brunei when Ben was six. I had no idea what the waves would be like. What I found was an empty beachbreak, a handful of the friendliest surfers I've ever met, and the perfect place to push a kid into his first green waves. Oh, and saltwater crocodiles in the river next door.
When we packed up our life in the UK and moved to Brunei, surf was not top of my list of concerns. I had no real idea what the ocean would offer — Brunei isn't exactly on the surf map — and I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I packed the foamie just in case. And on a hunch, I'd just bought Ben a 5'4 shortboard before we left, knowing that getting hold of decent equipment in Brunei once we arrived would be next to impossible.
For the first few months, the hunch seemed misplaced. The sea was flat. We were new to a new country, finding our feet, and the board sat in the corner gathering dust.
Then November arrived.
Waves in Brunei
A secret nobody told us about
The swells started coming through every couple of weeks. Nothing huge — often smaller and softer than what we'd grown up with in Cornwall — but there was something those Cornish waves could never offer: the place was completely empty.
Tungku Beach became our home break. The local surf scene at the time numbered about five people. Five. And every single one of them was welcoming in a way that's rare anywhere in the surfing world — genuinely glad to see a new grom and his dad paddling out, cheering Ben on from the water, giving him space on waves without being asked.
For a six-year-old learning to read green waves for the first time, this was everything. No crowds meant freedom. Freedom to pick the right wave without anyone dropping in. Freedom to get it wrong without an audience. Freedom to paddle back out at whatever pace we needed without feeling like we were in anyone's way.
Ben was in his shorts, catching waves until my arms gave out. Every session a little more confident than the last. The happiness on his face after each ride — that specific glee that kids have when something clicks — was so evident that even writing this now I can picture it exactly.
The push
This is the stage I described in the introduction to this blog — and Tungku is where I lived it most fully. Standing waist-deep, reading the sets coming through, timing the push so Ben caught the wave at exactly the right moment. Watching him go. Waiting. Then collecting him at the end of the ride, turning him back around, and helping him paddle out to do it all again.
It sounds simple. It's one of the best things I've ever done with my time.
The break can pack a punch on its day — proper wipeouts, straight onto the sand, and occasionally bits of driftwood washed down from the jungle to dodge on the way in. Ben had to learn quickly that the ocean doesn't always cooperate, and that coming up after a hard one and paddling straight back out is just part of it. He learned that at Tungku.
A note on the crocodiles. Brunei is home to saltwater crocodiles. They live in the rivers. The locals always assured me it was safe — and to be fair, nobody ever seemed to see one when there was surf running. I have, however, seen plenty in the river. Make of that what you will. We kept surfing.
Ben after a helping hand to line up a nice little right hander.
The moment I knew
Over the next few years, Tungku became the constant between all the bigger trips. Between Sri Lanka and the Philippines and the Maldives, there was always Tungku — reliable, uncrowded, ours. The surf population has grown since those early days, from about five regulars to maybe fifteen. But there are still sessions when it's just the two of us out there, hooting at each other across the water, laughing at wipeouts, completely in our own world.
One session stands out above all the others. The day Ben paddled back out to me with a look on his face I hadn't seen before — different from the usual grin. Quieter. Like something had just happened that he was still processing.
He'd got his first barrel.
He didn't say much. He didn't need to. I knew in that moment that the boy was properly hooked, that the foamie and the whitewash and the cold Cornish mornings and all those pushes at Tungku had led somewhere real — and that there were going to be a lot of adventures to come.
