Two weeks ago I returned from a short trip to Bali and Lombok. This was my ninth trip to Bali and my second trip to Lombok.
I originally tried to book a flight to Jakarta on 3 February, but changed my mind on 1 February due to the floods in Jakarta. Instead, I used my QFF points to fly to Bali on Jetstar.
After clearing security at Sydney Airport, I purchased a litre of water from a coin operated machine near the departure lounge. We left at 8 pm instead of the scheduled time of 5.35 pm. On board the plane, there was confusion as a French couple wanted my allocated seat near the window. I told them that I would move if the fight attendant agreed as there had been announcement over the PA that passengers should sit in their allocated seats as Jetstar 'service' is based around handing out food, video players and comfort packs to seat numbers. With difficulty, as passengers were still coming aboard, I moved my bag from the overhead locker and moved to a seat in the middle of the plane. A woman then asked for this seat as she was traveling with her sister and her baby. The Jetstar hostess muttered that seat allocations should have been sorted out by ground staff instead of inside the plane. I then repeated the exercise of moving myself and my bag to yet another seat. This seat was two rows behind the bulkhead where mothers used cradles attached to the bulkhead for their babies.
I sat in the middle seat sipping on my pre-purchased water and eating my home brand muesli bars enjoying the 'excellent customer service' as described on the Jetstar website. Around me, seven babies screamed their lungs out for the entire journey. The same Jetstar air hostess who had seen me moving twice, observed my predicament and gave me a free can of beer. This air hostess will probably be sacked by Jetstar for being kind to a passenger.
Thankfully, this misery came to an end when the plane landed in Bali. I paid for the VOA ($A32.58) using $A and received change in $A and Rupiah. The customs official asked me how much alcohol I had in my bag. When I replied one litre, I was waved through.
I purchased a taxi voucher for Rp 45,000 and tried to catch a taxi to Central Kuta. A few taxi drivers looked at my voucher and would not take me. Finally, a grumpy taxi driver agreed to take me. He left me struggling with my luggage as he marched on ahead. He then drove in silence to Central Kuta.
Unlike Jakarta the streets of Kuta were dry. As the Jetstar flight was two and a half hours late, it was now midnight and I did not have a room booked. However, I found a room at my first attempt for Rp 120,000 per night (including breakfast) at Agung Cottages. The room was fan cooled and the hotel had a swimming pool.
Next morning, I used a money changer - PT. Balidavalas Money Changer located just inside Poppies Lane 2 off Jalan Legian. I have used them many times and have never suffered from the magic tricks used by other money changers. They also did not charge commission and their rates were good.
I tried to book a trip through Perama to Senggigi in Lombok, but as they were having a staff conference in Lombok, the best they could do was to sell me a ticket to Padang Bai for Rp 40,000. At 6 am the non-airconditioned bus took me to Padang Bai via Sanur and Ubud. At Padang Bai, I purchased a ferry ticket to Lembar for Rp 28,000. The ferry left at 9 am. I made a mistake of sitting near one of the speakers attached to a giant karaoke machine. Otherwise, the trip to Lembar was pleasant with calm seas and I was able to observe small flying fish jumping from wave to wave.
When I reached Lombok, there was no sign of public bemos, so I had to bargain with the obnoxious bemo operators in Lembar. With two others, we paid Rp 120,000 for the bemo trip to Senggigi. The last time I had been in Senggigi was in 1977. Then, Senggigi consisted of an almost deserted beach. The only people on the beach were local villagers collecting sea shells to burn them in tiny kilns to make lime for cement. I had read about tourist development in Senggigi and I was expecting something like Sanur or Nusa Dua. Instead, I saw that Senggigi consisted of a narrow strip about 20 metres wide from the beach to the road. Into this space various losmen and hotels were established. The grounds of these places were cramped and did not have the lushness of Sanur or Nusa Dua. On the other side of the road were various shops and bars. The whole area looked run down as if there had been no recovery from the monetary crisis of 1998.
I found an airconditioned room at Lina Cottages opposite the Perama office for Rp 75,000 per night (without breakfast). After dropping my luggage, I took a swim in the ocean which was only a few steps from the hotel. At Lembar, a skilful pickpocket had stolen my watch. Being in Indonesia, I knew that a watch salesman would approach me in the next few hours. Sure enough, while I was eating my lunch a salesman came into the restaurant and sold me a Seiko watch with a blue face for Rp 50,000. This watch is still going.
Next night there was a small parade in Senggigi to celebrate Chinese New Year (Hari Imlek). There were two dragons and about twenty children banging gongs. I managed to photograph them.
After two nights in Senggigi, I had exhausted what was on offer in there and took a Perama trip to Gili Trawangan (GT). As the Perama boat from Senggigi to the Gilis was not operating and the coastal road north was blocked by a landslide., the Perama bus had to travel south then inland through a monkey forest. Eventually, we reached the small port of Teluk Nara which is south of Bangsal. We waded to a 20‘ boat then headed to GT through two metre high waves. The face of one of the Australian ladies onboard took on the colour of her green top.
When the boat arrived at GT, I tried to find a hotel from the guidebook. A fellow came up to me with photographs of rooms in his Losmen. For Rp 80,000 a night (without breakfast) he offered me an air-conditioned room at Aldi Homestay in the village. This large room was clean with two large beds. More expensive rooms were closer to the beach. During the day there were frequent power cuts and thus no airconditioning.
As I am not a party animal, my two 'must dos' on GT were snorkelling and visiting the Japanese Cave.
I simply rolled up near the jetty at 10 am and for Rp 60,000 for the trip plus Rp 10,000 to hire flippers I went on a six hour snorkeling trip around all three islands. On my trip, I saw a large turtle swimming underwater and a Japanese wreck. Others saw a giant clam. We had lunch at a small restaurant on Gili Air which is not included in the price. On the snorkeling boat, I met a pretty NZ girl who had previously spent five years dancing with Riverdance in the US and Europe. She was looking forward to watching Balinese dances in Ubud. There is a great contrast in dance styles between Irish dancing with its emphasis on the feet and legs and Balinese dancing with its emphasis on the hands, arms and eyes.
My other 'must do' was a visit to the Japanese Cave. If you walk to the back of the village and along a wall, you will see concrete steps going up to the Communications Tower on top of the hill. The steps stretch for about a kilometre. When you get to the top there is a great view of the islands. Walk around the tower and follow the track at the back. You will see a small sign in English and Japanese. Walk down a slippery slope for twenty metres and you will see the entrance to an L shaped Japanese Cave. The cave looks like something out of the film "Letters from Iwo Jima". It has been blasted out of the rock. It has about a one metre high entrance and is about four metres wide. I walked in about twenty metres but did not fully explore the cave as I did not have a torch. I still do not know whether the cave was built by Japanese soldiers themselves or by forced labour.
You can return the way you came or walk down another set of concrete steps on the other side of the hill. If you do so, you will arrive at the "The Stud" - a horse riding place. Keep walking towards the beach and follow the path back to the village.
GT is a lot busier than Gili Air and is currently undergoing a boom. GT is a scene with western tourists lying on bamboo platforms near the beach ignoring the ocean and watching DVDs on small TVs. Their other recreation is to smoke through sheesa pipes. There are no motor vehicles on GT. The only form of transport is the Cidomo, a horse drawn cart.
After three nights on GT, it was time to head to Kuta Lombok. Perama took me by boat to Bangsal. There, I had to carry my luggage three hundred metres to the Bus Station. From there I took the Perama bus firstly to Senggigi, then to Mataram and lastly to Kuta Lombok.
I paid Rp 40,000 per night including breakfast for a room in a Losmen facing the beach. The beach in front of the Losmen was pretty, but devoid of swimmers. I was soon to find out why. After five minutes in the water, I had been bitten three times by sea lice. This was my first and last swim at Kuta Lombok.
I decided to try motorcycling instead. I had taken my Australian full face helmet, International Drivers License, motorcycle gloves, jeans, motocross jersey and elastic sided boots for this purpose. For Rp 35,000 per day without bargaining I had a set of wheels in the form of a semi-automatic Honda scooter. I was not even offered the usual ice cream bucket type helmet by the hirer.
I took off in an easterly direction finding a series of deserted bays. I did not feel hot riding around Lombok with all my motorcycling gear. Unlike Bali, there were no signs to guide riders and my GPS receiver was unable to help as I did not have any small scale maps of the area. The local farmers use the roads, particularly intersections to spread out their crops to dry. There are no petrol stations in the area and I had to purchase petrol in one litre bottles from warungs on the side of the road.
All the others in my losmen were surfers from the UK, Switzerland, Japan and the US. Every morning, if it was not raining, they would ride their motorcycles with surfboards attached to Gerupuk, a small village which does not have a beach but does have a few warungs and losmen set up for surfers. The real attraction of Gerupuk for the surfers was a fleet of outrigger canoes fitted with outboard motors. These canoes towed the surfers out beyond the break so they could surf in.
Due to Cyclone Nicholas off the north coast of Australia, there were heavy storms through the eastern islands of Indonesia. When it rained through the day, the surfers hung around the losmen. I sat on the porch reading magazines and newspaper supplements.
After four nights in Kuta Lombok, it was time to return to Bali. For Rp 90,000 each, a group of Czech surfers and myself hired a bemo to Lembar. When we reached Lembar, the touts told us that all the ferries had been cancelled. I spoke in Indonesian to the harbour master (Syahbandar). He confirmed that the ferries were not operating due to bad weather. He said that there had been waves six metres high in the Lombok Strait and that he could not say when ferry services would resume.
The Czech surfers and myself then hired a bemo to Mataram Airport for Rp 170,000 to try to fly to Bali that day. We tried all the airlines but there was not a vacant seat to bali that day. An agent hanging around the airport tried to get us to pay him Rp 350,000 for a one way ticket for the following day. When I approached the IAD Airlines counter and asked the price of a one way ticket, the agent intervened and spoke to the woman behind the counter in the Sasak language. The woman replied that the price was Rp 339,000. I waited until the agent had gone away and asked again. This time the price had miraculously dropped to Rp 309,000 one way.
I caught a taxi to the Herta Yoga Hotel in Mataram and stayed the night for Rp 85,000 in an airconditioned room. That night the electricity failed and the caretaker distributed candles.
Next day I checked in at the IAD Airlines counter. I was asked to sit on the baggage scales with my carry on baggage on my lap. The attendant explained that the heavier passengers are asked to sit at the rear of the plane to assist take off!
I tried the restaurant in the departure lounge. I was handed an English language menu and then asked by the kitchen staff to translate the menu into Indonesian.
With the assistance of the heavier passengers, the IAD Airlines Fokker F50 took off for Mataram. The British tourist sitting next to me had paid an agent Rp 550,000 for the same trip. The plane only took 21 minutes to fly to Denpasar.
To sum up, my impression of Lombok is that it is a bit like Bali in the 80s as far as traffic and tourist development goes. My personal opinion is:
* Senggigi - the tourist boom is long over
* Gilli Trawangan - the tourist boom is happening now
* Kuta, Lombok - waiting for the tourist boom, still a surfie place.
Arriving in Bali, I purchased a taxi voucher for Rp 45,000 and tried to catch a taxi to Central Kuta. The taxi driver started reciting his script in English that I would have to pay him extra as my hotel was in Legian. I went along with the script and replied in English that my hotel was only seventy metres from Bemo Corner and thus in Kuta. The driver said in English that if a hotel was on Jalan Legian, then it was in Legian. At this stage, I was bored with the script and told him in Indonesian that I had often travelled to Bali. At this point the driver shut up and drove in silence.
It was now time to do a small amount of shopping in Kuta. The elastic sided boots came in useful negotiating the broken footpaths of Kuta. I priced a genuine 4Gb Ipod Nano at the basement level of Matahari Department Store in Kuta Square. It was the same price as Oz. However, accessories for Ipods were cheaper especially at Electric Land on the top floor of the Discovery Mall.
I had lunch at the Limbang Café and was joined by a contradiction in terms - a happy farmer! He was a farmer from Beverley, WA. He had just finished a good harvest and was getting $A440 per tonne for his wheat. He was also trying to use up his 1,000,000 QFF. We sunk several bintangs and together solved all the problems of the WA livestock and cropping industries. The more bintangs we consumed, the more brilliant were our solutions.
I used an internet café in Jalan Legian in an attempt to change my existing Jetstar fight. When I tried to actually change the date of the flight, the website threw a wobbly. Jetstar are aware of the bugs in their website as I had spoken to them about this same bug two weeks previously. The young lady working at the internet café, said that her salary was Rp 500,000 per month. She said that she was from Lovina and had come to Kuta as the wages were a lot higher than Lovina.
I had my last meal in Bali at Mades Warung on Jalan Pantai Kuta. It was a Nasi Campur Spesial for Rp 45,000. The warung was a good place for people watching and to use up the rest of my film on happenings on the street outside.
After throwing out my sunblock and putting all my books in the carry on bag, my luggage only weighed sixteen kilograms. I had to go through four security checks before I got onto a plane including a pat down check. On the second last check all liquids in large bottles were confiscated from carry on luggage including duty free alcohol. I lost my litre of water at this check. As I was expecting that, so I did not mind.
One tourist who was not expecting to lose his duty free alcohol purchased from the Denpasar Airport Duty Free Shop. He tried to consume it on the spot, before going through the security barrier.
The Jetstar flight left fifteen minutes late and touched down at 7.05 am in Sydney. The babies on board stayed mercifully silent.
Customs went through all my bags and gave me the green light. They noticed that I had ten DVDs and CDs, but did not mind.