LOMBOK FOR LEBARAN

So… Blog 2 of 3 to finish before I go home in a week. Due to intense procrastination on blogging, I am condensing two big trips into one blog. My last blog was a doozy of a post so I think I’ll impose a word limit on myself this time: 3,000 words (including this little introduction.) So, word economy is the name of the game and I’d best start right away.

The second biggest vacation of the year, after Christmas break, is Lebaran (aka: Idul Fitri, or Eid al-Fitr) when everyone is done fasting for Ramadan and they go to their hometowns to celebrate. We get two weeks off, instead of the usual one week term breaks. Although my work visa was actually (barely) renewed on time, I still chose to stay in Indonesia for this break. Indonesia has so many things to see and places to explore. I don’t feel like I’ve seen even a tenth of what the country has to offer.

For this break, my friend Aasha and I explored Lombok. We spent about half our time on the little island of Gili Air (again; see previous blog for my first visit there) and the other half on the Lombok mainland. We had ideas about getting over to Flores and Komodo too, but these didn’t pan out. What we got instead were some new friends and travel mates. More on this later.

Early Saturday morning on the first day of break (because you don’t waste weekends; that would be unthinkable,) Aasha and I hopped on a flight to Bali. We got a taxi to take us to the eastern port of Padangbai (also see previous blog) with the hopes of getting a boat ride to Gili Trawangan that day. The sea had other plans however. Due to excessively big waves and the fact that no one wanted to die and be sent to a watery grave, no boats were making the Bali-Gilis-Lombok trip that day. Some hawkers were really trying to sell us a slow boat ticket instead (the only one that was running,) that would take us all day to get to our destination. They were very pushy and even followed us around town. Fortunately, we didn’t take them up on the offer. Instead we managed a deal with someone else: one night’s accommodation, breakfast, and a one-way boat ticket to Gili T the next day, all for 50 USD. It was a blessing in disguise because we discovered that Padangbai is actually a really lovely town (once the hawkers have dispersed.) We enjoyed walking to a small, secluded beach, eating dinner, and seeing the stars for the first time in a long time.

The next day we pushed our way onto the dock where the Marina Srikandi boat was leaving from. You need a ticket to get on the boat, but it actually doesn’t reserve you a spot. You just have to get their early enough to elbow your way to a spot. If you don’t make it, tough luck, you just have to wait for the next boat. We sat on the top of the boat (the only space available) with some other young travellers from Europe. It started out fine, but by the end we were totally soaked by the waves coming up and over the edge. We arrived soaking wet but hey, it’s the tropics; you dry quickly enough.

One of the first things I remember about Gili T was that there was a white, 30-something year old man locked up in a little cell at the dock. What he was doing there was a mystery, but seeing as he still looked drunk / hungover it wasn’t too hard to concoct a story about some terribly embarrassing, maybe even illegal, thing he had done to make an ass out of himself the previous night. Gili Trawangan has more people, more parties, more places to eat, more bars to drink at. I prefer Gili Air. That doesn’t mean we didn’t enjoy our one night on Gili T however (it was supposed to be two, but night one was at Padangbai, Bali, as you recall.)

Aasha and I went snorkeling, which turned out to be a bad idea, because the surf was going out and we got stranded on very ragged, cutting rocks. That night we enjoyed a splendid dinner with a carafe of sangria between us, chatting away and enjoying the night breeze and the stars. (You know, I appreciate being a girl – woman? Am I a woman? Am I an adult? – because I get to do things like having splendid, star-lit dinners with a carafe of sangria and chatting away the night with guys or girls and it’s pretty normal either way in society’s eyes.) That night there was an outdoor screening of Midnight In Paris, which seemed too good to be true and I couldn’t – and didn’t – pass up the opportunity.

The next morning we took a boat to Gili Air, where I'd spent some time with my parents during June break. Aasha and I wanted to have accommodation before we got there, and the only place open that I could get a hold of was the place I had stayed with my parents, Youpy Bungalows. So a horse cart to Youpy it was. Talk about déjà vu. Here is where I hope to condense time (and save words, seeing as I only have just over 2,000 left. Am I really going to be able to make this goal?) So let me just say the next four days were spent learning how to scuba dive, eating dinner, and relaxing.

I had decided I wanted to learn to dive during my trip with my parents. It looked like a lot of fun and I figured this would be a great place to learn. There are – at least – half a dozen dive schools on Gili Air alone. I chose one called Gili Air Divers. I had a great instructor and good dive buddy and I enjoyed every minute of it. (I learnt too late that my certification is SSI and not PADI, but even if SSI is not as widely recognised, I still feel like I had very sound and thorough training.) As an added bonus, almost everyone at Gili Air Divers spoke French (including my dive buddy, Thierry, and my instructor, Arno, both from France.) I enjoyed hearing everything in both languages and even chatting with Thierry in French. And being used to les francophones as I am, I was not alarmed when Thierry started to faire la bise upon greeting. Anyway, one of the best experiences was on the first day of diving in the open ocean when we circled around a big coral and I had a feeling just like being submerged in an aquarium. (!!! So cool!) One of the worst experiences was at the end of my three day training when my nose got clogged with snot, I couldn’t breathe, and my sinuses started aching and pinching and so drove me to distraction that I had to surface. Fortunately I had descended far enough for long enough to cover the requirements. And lastly, one of the craziest experiences of my training was in the pool, when we had to practice breathing from the regulator out of our mouths in the water. The best way I can describe it is like the reverse of drinking from a water fountain. You take the regulator out of your mouth underwater, press the button to release a torrent of air bubbles, and then have to open your mouth underwater and breathe! You drink in the stream of air while totally submerged in water! This has to be one of – if not the most – crazy, mind-bending, counter-intuitive things I have ever done. There is a good reason why your body freaks out a bit if you open your mouth to breathe underwater. But, hey, it’s okay. It’s all part of the training. And now, I am a certified open water diver. I did four dives for training and two more a week later in Kuta, Lombok.

After my training was done, Aasha and I decided to stay one more night on Gili Air so that I could have a chance to relax and lie in the sun one day without the stress of diving (which, fun as it is, can be a physical drain.) For our last night we found new accommodation (Banana Cottages, just behind Biba. Highly recommended for anyone who might find themselves on Gili Air.) Which was not only cheaper, but came with A.C. and hot water! They were also newly built. Aasha and I somehow got the honeymooners’ suite with a king sized bed and a heart-shaped shower drain!

The next day it was off to the Lombok mainland. (Approx. 1,500 words left. I need to stop these word count updates. They’re not helping.) On the way over we struck up conversation with a Dutch guy. He was connecting to shuttle bus to take him to Flores, while we were Senggigi-bound by minicab. But even though we only chatted for an hour or two at the most, it was fun to talk (he turned out to be a big NFL fan, unexpectedly) and he gave off that easy-going and friendly vibe that a lot of travellers do. Connecting with other travellers is one of the best parts of travelling.

Aasha and I had been doing a good job so far of chatting and making friends with all sorts of fellow travellers. We found, during out time on Gili Air, that our generosity one night in making new friends was soon repaid. We wanted to eat at Biba, the best Italian restaurant on the island, but it was very crowded, as usual. We waited for 20-30 minutes before finally landing a table for four. It was just the two of us, so we had two empty seats. Later, two girls about our age were looking to sit down, but got turned away because the restaurant was at capacity. We offered them our two empty seats and enjoyed talking and eating with them that night. Soon (was it just the next night?) two couples sitting at a table for six did the same thing for us. They were from England and three of the four turned out to be teachers, so we had plenty to chat about. The night ended with ice cream and several rounds of Uno. I doubt I will ever see them again (or the girls at Biba or the Dutch guy from the boat,) but I enjoyed every minute of our dinner with them. Amazing the good times you can have when you open yourself up to sitting down at a table with someone.

And speaking of making cool, new, international friends… it was about to happen again in Lombok.

The directions for catching the shuttle bus were not especially clear, but we shuffled on down a little street to an out of the way café. Aasha, our Dutch friend (Nicolas,) and I were worried that we were in the wrong place but suddenly this café jam-packed with white 20-somethings sprang out of nowhere and we squeezed our way in. I nearly freaked out when someone took out tickets – I didn’t know what was going on – but soon enough we said goodbye to Nicolas and were lead out to a jam-packed minivan, our luggage unceremoniously thrown onto the roof and bungeed corded down. I believe we had 15 people in a 10 passenger van. I was in the back with two other women. Just as we were about to leave, someone began speaking to me in Bahasa, trying to tell me something. I was confused and suddenly a man with the shuttle company was squeezing himself into the already cozy backseat. So, with arms and legs pressed in, we started down the winding coastal road to the resort town of Senggigi.

For me, the trip passed in silence, but Asha began chatting with her seatmates upfront and was on pretty friendly terms with them by the time we arrived. They were a couple from Switerland (Swiss-Germans) named David and Andrea. The four of us started looking for a hotel in town, having no plans or reservations. We wandered around for a bit before finding something nice and fairly cheap. We ended up being hotel neighbors. We parted ways for a while and Aasha and I ended up on the beach, enjoying the shade and some very expensive Cokes while planning the next leg of the trip. Would we try to get to Flores and Komodo? How would we do that? (We had also looked on Gili Air, but nothing seemed quite right. We found one reputable company that left on a bad day for us, and one company we knew nothing about that left on a good day for us, and ending up booking nothing.)

I was swimming when who should stroll by on the beach but David and Andrea? I called to them and we all sat down together. (On my way out of the water I cut my toe on a sharp shell or something and had to have it bandaged for the next several days. That was a real bummer. But not especially relevant to anything else…) We looked at different tours and talked about what we might do. That evening we went out for beers and dinner and stopped by the Perama tour office to see if they had anything available. There were two spots possibly opening up on a Komodo tour, if a couple of people did not call to confirm said spots. But if that didn’t pan out, there were also some tours that went around the interior of Lombok to see cultural and natural sites. In the end, we didn’t get on the Komodo tour. Instead, we spent the next week with David and Andrea.

Our friendship with David and Andrea formed very fast. You can get to know a person over time if you work with them, much faster if you live with them, but probably fastest of all if you travel with them. David and Andrea were at the tail end of six months of travel through Asia. After having spent so much time together, they said, they liked to meet and talk with new people along the way. At times we were afraid they would get tired of us, but they never did. We went on the two-night-three-day tour around Lombok together with a private van and  driver. The first day we saw a monkey forest (not nearly as cool as the one in Ubud though,) and drove north and east to Mt Rinjani (which we did not hike up; maybe another time…) We saw a beautiful waterfall though. Sadly, the locals were intent on throwing as many plastic wrappers, cups and cigarettes as possible on the ground. The water was freezing cold and I just managed to edge my way up to it. I don’t understand how some people actually bathed in it. Not only was it utterly frigid, but the water pounded the ground with enough intensity to flatten a person.

That night we slept in a cute, little, wooden cottage. It was actually chilly at that altitude (this was the town that most of the Rinjani tours start from,) and I had to dig out my one pair of socks from the depths of my backpack. David and Andrea were fine because they had all their warm clothes from Mongolia. We enjoyed talking the night away and playing cards. For dinner and breakfast the next day we sat on traditional, outdoor, roofed pavilions, Rinjani in view.

The next day we joined up with a Perama tour for the day. They were starting out on a multiple-day tour that would eventually end up at Komodo national park and then bring them back to Lombok. We got to crash at Perama’s private island, Gili Kondo. We swam and replanted some coral, had dinner, a bonfire, singing and mandatory group bonding through line dancing. The tour left to sail on through the night and we (along with some British girls who were – or weren’t – in the same boat as us) stayed and slept in an awesome, tiny tree house on the island. The next day we were treated to some amazing snorkeling and a visit to a tiny spit of an island, just a sand bar really, that actually got smaller the longer we stayed on it. It was beautiful though, sand and water and bright blue sky as far as the eye could see. One of the more beautiful spots on our whole journey I think.

Day three took us to some weaving and pottery sites on the interior of Lombok. We were getting tired, so we spent a lot of time sleeping in the van, but I did really enjoy stopping at the pottery village and picking up a few items. That night we headed back to Senggigi where we had one more night at our original hotel. The next night we took a day tour south to Kuta (Kuta, Lombok is not to be confused with Kuta, Bali) stopping at an interesting, multi-religious temple complex. Our tour guide there (a friendly, middle aged man bedecked in green, yellow and red with a pot leaf belt buckle, Bob Marley on his T-shirt, and reggae playing from his hand phone,) explained to us that the temple was very old and traditionally had hosted Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim worshippers altogether. We also stopped at a traditional Sasak village before arriving in Kuta.

Aasha and I thought we might part ways with David and Andrea then (surely they wouldn’t be mad enough to voluntarily keep themselves in our company any longer,) but Andrea suggested we all search for a hotel, so, we happily did just that. We found a little two story house opposite a café that had a total of four rooms. The accommodation was perfect: a room for 250,000 rp ($25) with three large beds and breakfast in the morning. Some things in Indonesia are so wonderfully cheap.

(By the way, I passed over the 3,000 word mark 65 words ago. Screw it. Whatever. I’d rather have more details than too few. Haha! Like I’d ever write something with too few details! But perhaps I should just finish Lebaran and save Vietnam for one more hastily compiled blog.)

That night we made more new friends, thanks to my striking up a conversation. They were two German travellers, Chris and Sharmaine, who had both been studying in Australia. We all ate dinner together that night and had drinks at the café opposite our homestay. We bonded with Sharmaine right away. I liked Chris too, but he was so utterly, unshakably German. Prim, precise, serious about everything (including having fun,) far better groomed than me, and with almost laughably high expectations about Indonesian customer service. (He said he was going to try to write a letter to get money back after being ripped off on the ferry ride to Lombok. I just smiled and nodded and told him not to get his hopes up too much.) What I do have to be thankful to Chris for, however, is letting me have a go on the motorbike he had rented. It was my first time driving a motorbike and it was so much fun! He took me to a rather quiet road where I wouldn’t have to worry about traffic and I enjoyed zipping up and down the hills with the sunset in view. And once I had tried it, I found it wasn’t too scary after all.  

The next day was David and Andrea’s last full day in Indonesia before their flight to Malaysia. We walked up and down the beaches, taking in some absolutely spectacular views from the hills. We passed a dive shack at a hotel and I signed up for a dive the next day. David and Andrea would have probably gone with me if they hadn’t been leaving. We continued our ambling and ended up at beach that was mostly populated by locals. We had a blast swimming with the local kids. The inner teacher in me came out because we must have played with those kids for at least an hour or more. They taught us words in Bahasa while we taught them the same words in English. (I am happy to say I brought amusement to all when I accidentally called my kepala (head) a kelapa (coconut.) Why do those words sound so much alike?!) We also bonded over reciting the Pancalisa (sort of like the Indonesian version of The Pledge of Allegiance) which all school children, regardless of class or background, know. They were delighted that we knew it too.

A scrawny little six year old took a liking to me. She spoke hardly a word, but basically attached herself to me so I gave her a piggy back ride for the next hour. Of course, all the kids wanted a piggy back ride then, so I had at least two or three children hanging off me as I swam around and bobbed and twisted and ducked underwater. Eventually their mothers called them away and we were free, but I really did enjoy playing with those kids – who were a mixed group from 4 or 5 to maybe 12 years old – and learning Bahasa from them.

David and Andrea left the next day, which was definitely bittersweet. Aasha and I both really enjoyed hanging out with them. They weren’t just traveling companions, but I really feel like we became friends in that week. I sincerely hope we will be able to meet up again someday in the future. I went for my first post-certification fun-dive (with more francophones, bien sûr,) and made sure to log the dives in my dive book. It was funny, but the guy in charge of the dive shop knew who I was already. Turns out he was friends with Arno, my dive instructor from Gili Air. I’m not surprised they all know each other. Apparently Arno had mentioned an American girl who spoke French and the guy in Kuta figured I had to be her. So once again I got to converse in French!

Aasha, Sharmaine and I spent our last couple of days together. Chris had left for a Rinjani trek and Sharmaine moved into our room in David and Andrea’s recently vacated spot. We walked around town a bit, freed a baby goat from a fence and bought a few pairs of travel pants. (I am convert to the ways of travel pants now.) We also rented motorbikes and explored the coast, enjoying the beach, dinner, and a beautiful sunset from a high peak at the end of the coast road. We almost didn’t make it up because it was too steep. We ended up parking the motorbikes and hiking up. It was well worth it.

We headed back on the Sunday before school recommenced. It was a full vacation, even though we didn’t cover as much ground as we normally do on vacations. It was nice just to stay in one place for a couple of days, both in Gili Air and in Kuta. The landscapes were breathtaking, I got to learn how to dive, and best of all, we spent almost the whole time in the company of new and awesome friends whom I still hope to be in contact with in years to come.

Well, I’m just about to 4,000 words. I’ll just have to write about Vietnam this week and post it as soon as possible. Sorry for my long stretch of procrastination followed by (hopefully) four blog posts in one moth. I want to be caught up before I get on my flight home for Christmas however. So… stay tuned. More adventures are on the way!