And loses gorgeous surfer locks for Drake-style haircut while in prison!
You’ll remember, of course, the story of an Australian surfer who was facing a helluva storm after being arrested following a wild melee outside the exclusive Moon Beach resort on the Sumatran island of Simeulue.
Bodhi Mani Risby-Jones, who is twenty-three and from the Queensland holiday hamlet Noosa, was “accused of an alcohol-fuelled, naked rampage outside a beachside resort that left a passer-by in hospital and prompted an angry mob of residents to threaten to burn down the hotel.”
He was accused of hitting a motorbike rider and throwing the moto onto him after he fell into a gutter. The resulting leg wound, cops said, needed fifty stitches.
In retaliation, furious onlookers then tried to burn down the resort.
If you know Indonesians, you’ll know they love a little mob-action.
It always strikes me as odd that so few travellers to the happy island of Bali are aware that beyond the superficial smiles is a history so bloody it defies the imagination. In 1965, during the great Communist purge that would lead to the downfall of Sukarno and usher in thirty years of Suharto rule, an estimated half-a-million Indonesians were murdered. The CIA reported that the massacres “rank as one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century, along with the Soviet purges of the 1930s, the Nazi mass murders during the Second World War, and the Maoist bloodbath of the early 1950s.”
In Bali, they took up the cudgel with gusto. Five per cent of the population, eighty-thousand people, women and kids included, were butchered.
Anyway, up there in the northern Sumatran province of Aceh, real good waves etc, Islamic law, aka Sharia, rules in morality matters which means flagrant homosexuals, the polyamorous, anyone from the 2SLGBTQ+ community, as well as boozers who like to get a little punchy, may be publicly caned.
A very bad situation for the kid, although the matter was resolved after Rigby-Jones agreed to pay the injured moto-rider twenty-five thousand Australian dollars or the equivalent of two-years salary for the man.
Along with the twenty-five gees Risby-Jones and the Moon Beach Resort had to pay for a special “cleansing ceremony” that involved the spectacular public slaughter of a goat and thirty kilograms of rice and delicious spices.
Now, in a sensational twist, Risby-Jones, who exchanged his surfer locks for a Drake-style haircut while behind bars, says he and the family of the man he beat hell out of are on the best of terms!
“We embraced, we gave hugs, we shared laughs. They told me I was basically part of the family so I feel much better about it now, yes,” he told reporters. “I’m welcome to come back and even stay at their house whenever I want. So, that feeling of guilt is definitely much smaller than it was originally.”
After hugging prison officers, Risby-Jones was bussed to the airport before being deported back to Australia.
“It’s been a long time coming and I’m feeling amazing and super happy and grateful,” he said. “Everyone has been very nice and accommodated me well. Thank you.”
