The Swimming Pool

Trent Munro's back foot sits in ankle deep water, the other is balanced on the deck of his board. Both hands hold the towrope attached to ajetski skippered by Joel Parkinson. He stares toward the wall at the end of this pool in the Islamic republic of Malaysia, concentration ruffling his brow. "I am way more scared than any heat at massive Chopes or Pipe," he says, barely looking up. "The nerves are freaking out my gut."

Pressure? From a man-made two-foot wave? What's the problem? A wave only breaks once every three minutes, see. There are three people to share the waves between. Fall and you've got another nine minutes to wait for your shot. There are only 20 waves to be ridden in the hour before the pumps get too hot and they send the last swell down the pool.

It's day two and the tide - yes, the tide - has been pumped up overnight and the wave is breaking closer to the end of the pool. There's less time to tow in and more chance to blow it. In a few moments, Rarko will see a swell rise from under the wall, there'll be a collective "go" yelled from onlookers, he'll push the throttle to 11 and Trent will need to ride on one leg before planting his back foot on his board, back fin scraping along tiles on the bottom of the pool. Parko will swing toward the wall and a second later Trent will slingshot within a metre of the brickwork and into the righthander. Eight seconds later the wave is over. It will be three minutes until the eight 50,000 litre vats refill with water to create another wave.

What are we doing in Kuala Lumpur in a wave-pool with ajetski? We're here on a two-day Stab experiment to test out the world's biggest wave-pool, Sunway Lagoon. Two days earlier, Taj and I arrived before the pack to check out the pool: the way it breaks, its surfability and to see if the whole photo-trip thing was going to be a waste of green. Entry into the park is exactly like going to Seaworld or Dreamworld, complete with tigers and pirate ship rides and rollercoasters. Ceramic lions stalk the park walls and the ironically-named Jeffreys Bay wavepool. The park and complex sits below hotels, a mall and a faux volcano in a valley that was once a gold mine spanning over two million square metres.

The J-Bay wavepool is the centrepiece of the park - an Olympic-sized swimming pool with a fanned opening at the base: no opening in the walls, no grills, no sign of any wave-making device. Waxing a board in a theme park feels... weird. And paddling out into a lineup without a single ripple feels even more ridiculous. Staff and local lifeguards gather around as the water in front of the wall starts to bubble. The world number three is in the pool! Expect aerials! Expect big spins! The huge silos of water behind the pool thump and a swell moves from under the wall. Here we go. Taj paddles. He kicks. He drops his chin to the board for more momentum. And the chubby two-foot swell passes underneath before lapping into the bay. Crunch time. Oh boy, this is going to be interesting. Three minutes later another wave emerges from under the wall. It has two wedges one on the left side of the pool and another on the right side. It looks three foot, maybe. Taj paddles, stands, knocks out a little backhand reo and a low-fi reverse and the wave dies. The lifeguards look unimpressed. The wave is like a weak left running into a pier at, say, the Spit on the Qoldie or Huntington Beach in California. Eight waves later the pool's empty, there's been a few lame wash climbs and I'm rattled. Things need to improve quickly. It's time to meet the management. Time to climb the chain of command and go beyond the man controlling the levers of the pool out the back.