Yeoh Siew Hoon
Writing about clicks all the time, it makes a nice change to write about bricks or, in this case, bamboo.
I caught up recently with Andrew Dixon, the former-banker-turned-hotelier of Nikoi Island fame, who's right in the throes of building his latest resort, Cempedak, on an Indonesian island he bought more than a decade ago.
Cempedak will be an all-bamboo affair, with 20 villas, and strictly for grown-ups, no kids allowed. It's in the same vicinity as Nikoi in the Riau archipelago. You get there by ferry from Singapore to Bintan, then an hour's drive to a pier and a 30-minute boat ride to Cempedak.
Working with bamboo has turned Dixon into a bamboo lover, and I mean that strictly in the emotional and intellectual sense. It's also brought out his love for carpentry, which was the only subject in which he actually won a prize in school.
And it's why he is rather inspired by Steve Jobs. Not for the usual reasons we might assume but because "his father was a carpenter and there's a part in the book [Walter Isaacson's biography, "Steve Jobs," Simon & Schuster, 2013] that talks about what Steve learned from his father -- that when his father made something, it looked as good from the back as from the front.
"And Jobs applied that principle, that attention to detail, to the products he made."
Dixon is applying that same attention to detail in the building of Cempedak; when it is finished, hopefully by the end of 2016, it will use almost 50,000 pieces of bamboo, some of them 20 centimeters (7.87 inches) in diameter.
A total of about 50,000 pieces of bamboo will be used in the building of the 20-villa resort.
"Everything will be made of bamboo, from the floors down to the handcrafted bamboo dowel," Dixon said.
There are even bamboo bicycles (except for the wheels, of course), and he has challenged his team to fashion standing fans out of bamboo.
"Our designer came up with a stunning-looking fan," said Dixon with a grin. "Unfortunately, it doesn't work that well yet. We have to sort out the aerodynamics."
With the fervor of a new convert, he added, "Bamboo is amazing. You can do anything with it. It's got a lovely texture, softer than wood, and it's environmentally friendly. It's actually a grass, not a tree, so when you cut bamboo, you're not killing it, and it regrows in three to four years."
Construction started a year ago, and currently, there are 60 crew members living on the island. So far, 20,000 pieces of bamboo have been shipped to Cempedak from Java and Sumatra.
Attention to detail in the building work.
There was a month of suspense when a cargo of bamboo was supposed to leave Surabaya about the same time as the ill-fated AirAsia Indonesia crash.
"It was supposed to take a week," he recalled. "But when we didn't hear from it for a month, we wondered what had happened to it. Was it bad weather or what? The navy finally found the captain [of the freighter carrying the bamboo] in the mangroves. Anyway, to cut a long and unprintable story short, the bamboo finally arrived."
If the bamboo had not arrived, it would have caused a year's delay to the project because "bamboo can only be cut once a year, in the dry season."
Bamboo also has to stay dry at all times, and so the architecture and design of Cempedak has to take into consideration wind and weather patterns on the island to make sure the structures stay as dry as possible during rainy weather.
They also had to treat the bamboo against the powderpost beetle, the only creature that loves to infest the plant. Hiring an experienced team of architects and builders with knowledge of working with bamboo was crucial.
Beyond the uniqueness of bamboo, Cempedak will also boast the only dodo bird in Southeast Asia. Somehow, Dixon has gotten his hands on a dodo exhibit, and the link to the island is that the native bird of Cempedak is the Nicobar pigeon, "which is the nearest living relative to the dodo."
The endangered and incredibly shy pangolin.
He has also discovered the highly endangered pangolin as well as silver-leaf monkeys on the island.
As with Nikoi, Cempedak will be sold mostly through direct channels.
"Technology has really allowed small, independent hoteliers to control and sell our own inventory," Dixon said.
It will have a similar price point as Nikoi: two nights for around 800 Singapore dollars ($568 U.S.). It will also be tied to a social purpose, supporting the Island Foundation, and there are plans to build a learning center near the island.
This time around, Dixon looks far more relaxed than he did when building Nikoi. Clearly the mistakes he made with building his first island resort have taught him well; like the material he's using to build Cempedak, it's a question of staying strong but remaining flexible with any new project, especially one that's as remote as this island is.
I can't wait to visit this all-bamboo island.