We decided to get up early today. Shock, horror. Edd wanted to go surfing, so we had to be up and breakfasted before midday, at least, for it to be worthwhile. We decided to eat at the cheap place we'd found and have an early lunch. (No, it was not brunch, there was no champagne involved and vegetable noodles are not breakfast). The food was good, and cheap - 15 000 Rupiah kind of cheap (70p).

We ate up and got on the road, we'd packed our lifetime supply of biscuits, 1 litre bottle of water, 500 ml bottle of water with ice tea concentrate, a medium sized packed of BBQ flavoured crisps and a roll of mentos mixed fruit sweets. We'd learnt from our previous trip to beach number 14 (on the map) that you had to go prepared, so we were leaving no stone unturned. If there was a natural disaster, we'd at least have a large supply of biscuits to keep us going for a while.
We paid the 10 000 Rupiah to park (rip off) and found a good spot under a tree, so that the seat didn't burn our bums when we went home later. We used a piece of concrete to balance the bike peg on - there were bikes lined up like dominoes and one falling over could cause a devastating effect. We were not going to be the instigators of such a disaster.

We walked between some bamboo 'shops / restaurants' and were approached by a guy wanting to know if we wanted to hire surfboards. Board - I corrected him. Just one. I took our backpack of emergency supplies while Edd chose a medium sized board for us both to have a go on; I continued down the beach while he caught up, carrying our entertainment for the day. We thought that a large amount of mustard coloured seaweed had washed up into the breakers, as there was gunky yellow stuff floating around the waves as they crashed. Upon further inspection, however, we discovered that it was in fact bubbles, not seaweed, that protruded from the surface of the water. We weren't sure why there were gunky yellow sections in the sea, but we weren't going to risk surfing in toxic waste, so walked down to the far end, where the water was clean.

I had packed a t-shirt to surf in, already anticipating my bikini moving in all directions, except where it needed to be. Edd put on his swim trunks that were too big, but not as big as the pair he'd brought with us on our travels. He started to swim out and I got my little pink, useless camera out, in an attempt to take some photos. He'd done this before, many, many, many moons ago. He was still ahead of me though. His surfing attempt only saw a couple of face plants, a few sand rashes and 3 successful stands straight up.

My go was a lot more interesting: it included me swimming horizontally and getting pulverised with a wave, a bit like being in a washing machine on the spin cycle, losing my bottoms round my ankles, drinking sea water, which cleaned out my sinuses and 2 successful waves where I managed to get up on my knees. The board was too heavy for me though, so Edd put the rubbish back up camera back in the back pack and swam out with me, him carrying the board and me tailing behind trying to not get annihilated by waves.

This was a more successful strategy and I managed to catch another 2 waves, only getting up on my knees though - the full stand up meant that if I fell, it would be a longer way down. This was not an appealing thought, so I erred on the side of caution.

I had had enough and gave the board back to Edd, swimming with him, while he surfed. This was much more enjoyable; I was glad we only got 1 board. He needed a rest, having surfed for over an hour already, so we made our way back to shore and soaked up some rays for a little while. The biscuits were devoured and the water was luke warm, but not intolerable.

He went out for another surf half an hour later, this one too, lasted an hour long and ended as there were no waves coming through. I joined him for one last swim in the Indonesian sea and 2 minutes after getting back into the water, surf-able waves came through by the dozen - he was not a happy bunny.

We got out, dried off and then headed back the way we'd come 4 hours earlier. He washed the board off, as it was full of sand, and handed it back. Our bike was still in the shade, which mean that our bottoms were safe from scorching, and we headed back to our guest house, half an hour away.

The trip back found us asking the unanswerable questions in life, like 'why did the chickens cross the road' and making sarcastic remarks like 'thank you government for tarring this piece of road, it is a convenient place for me to dry my seeds on.' There was one all-encompassing rule when it came to Asia and its traffic: everything goes.

We passed the miners again and decided we actually needed to find out what they were digging up. If Lombok wasn't ruined by tourism in the next 20 years, it definitely would be ruined by mining - we could already see the devastating impact it was having on the landscape. Unfortunate and unstoppable.

We got back to La Bangkat, parked the moped we'd named 'Road Runner,' as the hooter made the same 'meep meep' sound as the Disney character and dumped our stuff on the balcony, getting straight into the swimming pool after a quick rinse off.

We resumed positions next to the pool and Edd had the bright idea of trying to check into our flights online, due to depart the next morning. I searched my email for the ticket confirmation and came up empty-handed; I then searched Edd's email for the ticket confirmation and found nothing, again. Slight panic set in and he logged onto his online banking, to see if the payment had gone through, while I went through our email's trash and spam files. Nothing from my side, but luckily Edd's account had been debited, so we had paid for the flights, even if we couldn't find the tickets to prove it.

He'd found out who he'd booked the flights with, upon checking his banking, and logged into his Tiket account, resending the flight confirmation to his email address. Crisis averted. I needed a gin after that massive panic, Edd went off to the shop to get some tonic.

He came back with 3 tonics in-hand; we'd decided to go to our favourite restaurant on the hill for dinner, but make big, sneaky G&T in a 1 litre water bottle to take with us. We didn't really want to take the bottle to Singapore, as we didn't have that much left anyway and we had the lifetime supply of biscuits to try and put somewhere as well, so it wasn't like we had huge amounts of space to as it was.

We showered, packed our bags in preparation for our departure and then sat on our little balcony, G&T in hand. We really liked this guest house (homestay), even if the internet was horrendous and the guy that 'cleaned' the rooms every day never changed the dustbin in the toilet, nor did he replace any toilet rolls.

We set off for the restaurant on the hill at 6pm; we didn't want to have a late night as we had to be up early-isn the next morning. It was only a 10 minute ride and we parked the Road Runner under the undercover bike parking, took our shoes off at the door and chose a table in the corner of the restaurant, over looking the sea. (It was too windy to sit outside).

There was only 1 other table in the restaurant and they were already eating, so we knew our food wouldn't take that long to arrive. We ordered starters again, with a bowl of fries; they had a very limited menu and the main courses weren't nearly as appealing a the starters. We had: prawns in a tomato and garlic sauce, calamari frittis and prawn spring rolls. The food was delicious, again, and we ate it along with our 'bottle of water.' Wink wink, nudge nudge.

We drove home at 7.45pm, and being the party animals that we so avidly are, went to bed at 8.15pm. Club duvet was the best place to be, especially when DJ pillow was playing.