KUTA, LOMBOK

Thursday, 25 June 2009

Tashi arranged a transfer for us via friends Kabul and his younger brother, a policeman who we picked up at Suvela to give Kabul company on the return journey. Kabul was an English teacher at a secondary school where he worked three days a week, job sharing in view of the shortage of work in Lombok. Both spoke good English and both , as we are continually finding, were good travelling companions, both in terms of conversation and humour and willingness to stop whenever we wanted to take photographs. They located an BCA ATM at Aikmel where we joined the main east west road, or was it Masbagik? Other than that our only stop was at a typical old style Sasak village at Sade near Kuta, which you made a donation in order to enter and was a big disappointment for there was no sign of craft working only lots of houses selling textiles. We had seen far more authentic versions which were still living and working in the traditional home based style.

We went to Surfers' Inn which had one of the best write ups in the LP and took the last remaining room - air conditioned with hot water, for 24$ a night including tax and breakfast. Joan was down beat on her first view of the room but had not heard the reluctance to show it to us before it had been remade following departure this morning of the previous occupants. It was fine, in a nice setting around a very clean fairly large pool, with coconut trees mainly picked to eliminate the jokey but very real hazard of falling coconuts.

Here we intend to stay for five nights leaving on our Perama transfer to Kuta Bali at 6.30am on Saturday 27 June, which will leave two days of holiday in Kuta Bali since the plane for London does not leave until 7.20pm on Monday.The Inn is virtually full every night with Surfers, mainly from Australia and New Zealand but also France, Switzerland and Sweden to our knowledge. So we are out of the mainstream here and only a few are travellers. They leave with their surfboards held on special fitments on motorbikes for reef surf in the area. The main attractions seem to be Grupuk where they issue tickets for the right to use their surf and additionally have to hire fishing boats to take them out to the reefs, and, Sega where they paddle out to onshore reefs with even bigger surf. Big waves are expected tomorrow following a storm a few days ago way off in the Indian Ocean. Surfers' Inn take movies of them at play on the reefs.

We spoke at length to the Swiss girl next to us who had been travelling and surfing her way around Thailand and Indonesia and is now back in Bali to extend her visa. Her job with UBS was associated with the backup and consolidation of Commodity Trades mainly in Coffee a Tea. She spoke sadly about the vibes in Phi Phi Thailand following the tsunami, indicating it had changed to a place dedicated to drinking and partying, she made it sound like Majorca in season, and even our and her favourite , previously tranquil Long Beach had not survived.An Indonesian assistant at the Inn told us of his experiences of surfing and the considerable dangers associated with reef surf at low tide when the depth of water would only be a couple of feet but the conditions produced the biggest surf. He had been injured several times and had been trapped when the bungee attacking his board to his foot caught in the reef. He feared the eventual outcome would be a visit to what he called the Futures Home or cemetery. He also talked about the Gold Rush in the South West of Lombok, where individuals sought their fortune by mining, crushing the rock and then panning to recover the gold, the downside being that over a hundred people had lost their lives in collapses in the eighteen months of the boom. Some had made big fortunes, though by Indonesian standards that may not mean much - though it was obviously his dream. Remember that the average Indonesian who has a job earns 40$ a month, most exist on government hand outs of staple food like rice and vegetables.
The first night we had the BBQ food Tuna steak and prawn at the Inn, the food was OK but it was brought inside to us, thus obviating the 'forced' mixing of guests. The second we ventured a dip in the pool and eventually got Joan out, then to the Internet
and finally to the Lombok Lounge, an LP recommended restaurant which just five days ago opened in its new more central location, in a fine new wooden building, near the Real Estate sales office where we come for the Internet. There we had 0.5kg of Tiger Prawns in a garlic sauce with vegetables, Enak as they say here for 15$. He said he came from southern Sumatra and offered to make Rendang curry tomorrow which he would serve the day after, my mouth is watering in anticipation. But it was unfortunately to no avail, though we did enjoy jumbo prawns instead.

We walked past the big rock which we found hid the fishing village of Kuta from the bathing beach and found a hive of activity as neighbours gathered around to help empty the long nets of small fish. The fish were dropped onto the sand from whence they were picked up by children and taken to two women who were washing them in two large bowls. At the end of the exercises the fisherman's wife walked off with the two large bowls, the major part of the catch, whilst each of the helpers took a plastic bagful for their reward. The fish in the photo are the small ones but there were also much larger fish which I assume were caught from the same boats by line.
The day after we went for a dip in the sea, literally 50 yards away along with fifty or so children. The school holidays here are June and Ramadan, which this year means September. The swim was fine although the water was a little cloudy with silver sand, but on coming out we were soon surrounded by children selling textiles and bracelets. I tend not to speak to them but Joan considers this rude, but the moment she stopped to look at one girls textiles another twenty headed in our direction. Two of the girls 12 & 13, the one in the cap and the one in a white tee-shirt, spoke amazingly fluent English and they led the onslaught but having said their grasp of English allowed them to them to answer comprehensively all of Joan's questions about life in Kuta whilst I went back to the Inn to get the cash to pay for small presents for the grandchildren.

Judy has just emailed to say that Sutton's have at last successfully replaced the lintels over his ground floor bay window, a job which has been hanging for eight months now and I feared would occupy my thoughts on return to Swansea, and that Rachel has finished her A level exams, but the worse news is that Joe has been back on crutches for the third time since injuring his knee playing Rugby. Annoying since I felt all all along that it should be treated as a serious injury. Heather emailed from Kenya to say that she and their kids would be with us for a family golden wedding get-together.

Today we intended to go for another dip in the sea but in fact spent the day sitting reading on loungers in the shade of trees, noticing yet again that leaves fall daily from evergreen trees in the tropics and that in these two countries at least the ground is being continually swept clean. Remember this is poor Asia and that most of the surfaces are simply terra-firma, but given the potential litter of leaves and daily offerings in Hindu areas the floor is kept as tidy as possible. On getting up hours later were amazed at the temperature difference in full sunlight, around 35 degrees C. So here I am back at the Internet contemplating my Rendang made with Australian beef, they do keep cows entirely for meat but it has the reputation of strong taste and toughness, no doubt due in part to the arid conditions of the dry season.

Yesterday we arranged a trip around the local beaches in a car, 20$ for about 3.5 hours with a 5$ tip for the guide. At the end he was off on his daily trip to Senggigi (two hours north) where he hoped to pick up passengers wanting a transfer, ideally to Kuta Lombok. The beaches here are indeed fabulous and all the talk is of massive Dubai investment to cash in on the tourist potential. We went first to Grupuk, a fishing village, see photo, with off shore reefs as mentioned earlier.
Then to the famed bay of Tanjung Ann nearer Kuta which will be the centre of development, it was beautiful with rocks with a geological pavement which would be limestone in Britain but here it is of black volcanic rock and so flat and extensive that it could be taken for concrete.
Next we went west of Kuta to Mawin Beach which is arguably the finest of all, though some of this relates to its isolation and potholed road access so that at present just a few couples had it to themselves.Finally we stopped for lunch at Astari, a vegetarian restaurant with a fabulous view over the whole coastline which is run by an Australian. In the foreground of the photo is Kuta bay, then Tanjung Aan. The location, view and restaurant building were all impressive, but so was the food with an emphasis on focaccia bread sandwiches, although we ate the special of the day a vegetable curry with lentils, crunchy corn cakes, a couple of slices of focaccia (excellent by any standards - not much decent bread in Asia), and mint tea, for 9.2$ for two. Meal prices throughout this blog are on the whole for us both.

I have a list of topics I forgot to include which I will incorporate later but for the moment this will almost certainly be my final posting from Indonesia. Thanks for reading.