After the soaring highs and tedious lows of the Gili's, we moved on to see a bit more of Lombok island.
By the time we came to move, my cold was coming along nicely and Si was also falling foul of the something we'd eaten. So the immediate plan was find somewhere nice to stay (which the oracle of Lonely Planet assured us was a place called Senggigi) and then Get Better.
Senggigi is quite a nice place, the beach is lovely and there are ample tourist restaurants. We found a nice and not-too-pricey bar called "The Office" right in the beachfront at the north end of town and quickly became regulars ("Hello! You come here again").
After a day of rest we were both thoroughly bored and decided that, given the roads in Senggigi were much quieter than those on Bali, it was time to throw caution, legality and the little matter of not being even slightly insured into the wind, and hire a scooter.
It was only a matter of time really, everyone rides them here - it's not uncommon to see families of four all riding along on one, or three schoolgirls piling on to one and cheerfully taking their chances with the cars and trucks and million other people all on scooters.
To save money we opted for one scooter between the two of us and - having established in San Fran that he's the biggest control freak (in both senses of the word "big") - Si took the helm and I perched on the back helpfully shouting suggestions. To be fair, given that his only training was going three times round a carpark (and thus never actually turning left) he was really quite accomplished.
With our giddy tourist grins, long limbs and tiny scooter, we cut a fine figure as we raced along at 30 kph through the beautiful Lombok countryside. We wound north along the gorgeous coastal road from Senggigi, then turned right to head south through a monkey forest and into a small town (where terror abounded in the form of many many other scooterers). Then we hit the coast again and turned back north for home, catching both a sunset and a massive rainstorm along the way. All of that and we managed to avoid any policemen; which was lucky because they would have demanded a bribe greater than the cost of hiring the scooter to keep quiet about catching us driving around without a proper licence (apparently "but everyone else does it" isn't considered a legally defensible position in Lombok). And Si's training proved adequate as he never had to turn left once.
The next day we went on a tour of noteworthy Lombok sites. For anyone reading this after a google search then we went with the nice guys in the little house over the road and a little further in from the arts market in Senggigi. And we haggled them down to 400 K for the day.
We saw various nice sites on our tour, which was basically a glorified taxi ride with driver and a guy called Easy (sp?) who could speak pretty good English. Easy was great and answered all our questions. As seasoned travellers we've really honed our skills in finding out the most vital information as efficiently as possible and so having someone like this is really useful. Such questions include things like "how do people know who owns which chicken?" - prompted by the enormous number of seemingly wild chickens we'd seen on the Gili Islands. He said "uh, well, they just know their own chickens". I think Si was a bit dissapointed that there wasn't some kind of secret chicken code of conduct.
The day was lovely, we saw a pottery cooperative (where we were encouraged to buy pottery) and a weaving cooperative (where - yes - we were encouraged to buy woven materials) and a traditional Sasak village (where we were encouraged to buy anything that wasn't tied down). We did buy some cool pottery and, vulnerable as I was in the weaving place - surrounded by utterly beautiful textiles that all all shouted "buy me, buy me" - I bought some weaving. Unfortunately for the lovely people in the pretty Sasak village we didn't have much money left by the time we got there, but we did tip to our young and somewhat impromptu guide.
After a generous lunch break we started the second leg of our bespoke tour - temples. I've become a bit of a sucker for Hindu temples since getting to Indonesia and I wasn't disappointed here. One of our visits was to the oldest temple in Lombok, this temple is unique in that it is built for all faiths to worship in. In the courtyard we were shown Hindu and Buddist offerings as well as Muslim and Muslim animist offerings (we were told that candles would be placed by Christians). My inner hippy was very very happy here. It was one of those quiet little corners you find every now and then which make you think that Life the Universe and Everything will probably turn out alright in the end.
The last temple was on a little rock jutting out to sea. It was a perfect package of happy families, incense, flowers and bell ringing all wrapped up in the quiet lapping of waves and late afternoon sun setting over Bali. Lovely!
And that - oh so briefly - was that for Lombok! The next day we hopped on a plane and shouted "onward to Sumatra, and the northern hemisphere!"