Thursday, 9 July 2009
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| SAILING FROM AMED TO LOMBOK ACROSS THE WALLACE LINE |
Bali, or Lombok, or both? Since the highlight of the holiday, was the four hour deep water sail in a small dugout with bamboo outriggers between the islands, from Amed to Gili Trawangan, we would have to say both. This is reinforced by the fact that both Amed and Gili Trawangan were amongst the favourite places. Trawangan would qualify as a resort with a lot to offer catering solely for tourists, whereas Amed in great contrast is still a traditional area with few tourists where the beaches for mile after mile of bays are lined with outrigger in-shore fishing boats and few tourists. One of the sights of the trip was to see many hundreds of such boats returning in the early morning to the beach powered only by their multi-coloured sails.
Lombok, anywhere coastal as far as I, know offers superb golden beaches whereas in Bali most beaches except on the south coast are black gritty sand.
Kuta Bali is best avoided, it has little to commend it unless your primary motive is shopping for designer women's clothes and jewelery, or investigating budget travel by Perama minibus. The best suggestion I read about was to take a Bluebird taxi straight from the 'Denpasar Airport' (really Kuta) direct to Munduk and acclimatise there in beautiful quiet countryside with hot days but cool mountain nights.
Places we wouldn't bother with again for choice include Kuta Bali, Pemuteran and Lovina, meaning Kalibukbuk - though nearby Lovina (Anturan) rates amongst our best stays because of chance meetings with Putu the Fisherman who organised early morning boat trips just for us, and, Putu the Restauranteur in the main street to the beach. Putu the fisherman gave us breakfast of fried banana and tea at 6am, took us to a Hindu family wedding and their families celebration shadow puppet show in the evening. The restauranteur fed us well.
Pemuteran though would be first choice for Scuba Divers due to the proximity of Pulau (island) Menjangan (Gili Trawangan would also rate tops for Scuba and snorkeling). Equally Kuta Bali and Kuta Lombok would be first choices for those into surfing, with southern Lombok offering the more exciting, challenging, dangerous reefs.
So what does this leave us recommending?
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| MUNDUK |
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| UBUD |
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| AMED |
AMED, on the east coast, by way of the mountains and Gunung (volcano) Agung, for its authenticity, calm, beaches, masseurs and people.
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| GILI TRAWANGAN |
GILI TRAWANGAN, LOMBOK, for wonderful beaches, bathing, snorkeling, scuba diving, seafood and fish restaurants.
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| MATARAM HOTEL POOL |
MATARAM the capital of Lombok for a good hotel Lombok Garden, restaurants (leaving MacDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut to one side), access to craft villages like Banyumelec (pottery), and a fine compact modern museum.
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| GUNUNG RINJANI |
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| KUTA LOMBOK |
KUTA, LOMBOK, for a view of life currently balanced between the traditional fishing and bathing of naked local school children, the tourists (who come here to the surf inside the 'tubes'), or for the natural beauty of fine bays and beaches, and a wider selection of food). A scene which will rapidly alter if the new airfield near Praya leads to the proposed tourist resort investment on the Kuta coast from the Middle East.
If there is a next time we would expand our coverage of Lombok to include for sure Senggigi on the east coast which pre-dates and has been left behind by Trawangan, visit at least the adjacent Gili Menor and Gili Air (water), plus Tetebatu in the mountainous centre of the island, and probably Praya or other towns on the interior west east road full of street markets and horse and carts (though there is no accommodation listed in the guidebook at present).
The wonderful south coast is predicted to be hit by an explosion of tourism but the centre of the island won't change overnight, though the craft villages will be hit by day trips from package tourists and end up as shams like the Sasak village, Sade, near Kuta has already done. The Lonely Planet edition issued April 2009 shows little sign of being up to date on Lombok, though was pretty good on Bali.
FLOWERS
I am very conscious that the colourful ambience and peacefulness of Bali in particular resulted from gardens full of flowers. We have a huge number of close ups of flower heads which do not appear anywhere in this Blog, but as Joan pointed out we do not know their names
Travel Tips
The travel scene in Bali/Lombok has changed out of all recognition in the past 25 years because seemingly almost everyone needs and has access to a motorbike. I have often remarked that the quality and availability of public transport is far superior in the countries without widespread car ownership, eg India, China, South and Central America. Bali and Lombok, being small islands, have made the same revolution but with motorcycles. Beware the appalling state of minor roads and pavements (especially in Lombok) which means traffic weaves from side to side to avoid potholes, although nominally they are one of the few countries still to drive like us on the right-hand side. In spite of this chaos we witnessed only a single accident in 6 weeks, when a girl fell off due to a poor road surface outside a restaurant under construction with no other vehicle in sight.
We had not intended to hire cars with drivers but in fact that, plus the firm Perama's mini bus transfers on major backpacker routes, were what we ended using to travel from place to place. The drivers were key and in general we made such arrangements after a chance meeting gave the opportunity to guage their facility with English and their feeling for what would interest different tourists.
On the downside far too many of the locations were just linear towns well spaced on the side of the main roads, often built in response to tourism, without any centre, Kuta Bali, Pemuteran, Lovina, Munduk, Amed and Kuta Lombok were all of this linear form. The exceptions being only Denpasar, Ubud, Trawangan (to a degree) and Mataram. A downside of this being the unpleasant danger of walking to restaurants in the evening along a road with dense traffic mostly motorcycles, occasionally without lights, and sometimes overtaking lorries from an inter Indonesian island ferry - remember in the tropics it suddenly gets dark at 6pm. Pavements, as in so much of traditional Asia, I rate as the 'number one hazard', the number of missing a paving stones proffering a metre drop into the surface water drains is staggering, particularly in Lombok. We call this hazard a 'Kuala Lumpur' after Joan fell into such a hole years ago just outside the iconic railway station on our first visit to that capital . Bangkok, chasing Singapore, is far better than it was when we first visited twenty years ago, in fact on the first day of two successive visits there I finished up sprawled on the pavement having softened my fall instinctively, so my rucksack cushioned the fall - not recommended for the toothpaste within but OK for almost everything else except bones.
Costs
During thirty nine nights in Bali/Lombok we spent as a pair £1829 (just over a third for B&B accommodation), mostly in cash (Rupiah) obtained from ATMs but also including 500 USD in Travellers Cheques from money changers in areas without banks, and just £182 on debit/credit card. This was our total expenditure abroad, for absolutely nothing was paid in advance, and thus covers accommodation, food, travel, purchases & presents (though these as usual were a small percentage). The spend was thus £47/per night for two, two budget backpackers would half that amount - except for the costs of partying!
Factor in the cost of the airfares (Malaysia), Annual Travel Insurance, 90 day Visas and National Express transport to the Heathrow and the all in cost rises to £3142, or £77 for two on each of 41 nights, of which two were spent on long haul planes).
(Petrol was 4500 Rupiah/litre or 27p/litre)
NB The references of people and accommodation at the end of postings are additional to those found in the Lonely Planet guidebook
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