In Reply to: Lombok posted by Rose on Thursday, 26. August 1999 at 11:23 Bali Time:
I guess it depends what you want out of where you stay. We were tempted to stay at Kuta because we had the impression that Sengiggi might be a bit busy. Sengiggi is just a little village which has a few good restaurants and only one 5 star resort right in town. The rest are spread along the coast a bit. You could shoot a gun down the main street at 9 am.
We hired a jeep,driver & and guide (out driver could not speak english and our guide couldn't drive) for two days. On the first day we went to Kuta and through some excellent countryside and villages.
Kuta itself I found to be a huge disapointment. If you want to surf, I suppose it is where you go, but that white beach you see in the brochures it actually quite large coral bits. The hawkers are awful - not many but persistant beyond belief and our driver was warning us to not leave anything about or it would be stolen. Had a nice lunch there and left.
The second day we went up to Mount Rinjani through a local market (where you are the only tourist)and some great scenery complete with monkey forest (monkeys much more polite than Bali).
Ended trip with a walk down a million steps to the bottom of a spectacular waterfall and back along the coast to Sengiggi.
Sengiggi has beautiful white beaches with cheap and good accomodation right on the water. Abolutely clean water you can bob around in all day while the (very polite) hawkers show you their wares from the beach.
You can catch an outrigger to the Gillies for the day or longer if you want. It take about an hour to get there.
As Rose put it, the culture isn't there like Bali because it is a Muslim Island, but the people are lovely.
Hope this helps.