We had to be ready at 8am for our walk, but were running a tad behind - the result of not having his mum around, to crack the whip on us any more. We ordered breakfast at 7.45am and only received it at 8am. Oh well. It turned out we had our own guide and the couple we’d had dinner with the night before had someone else escorting them, so it wasn’t like we were holding up the masses. We ate our breakfast and I attempted to drink the cup of tar that had been presented to me; there was little creamer could do to alleviate the situation, so I left it as is, to ferment or pave a sidewalk or something.
 
Our guide was a young, 19 year old girl (hence the woman guide referencing the night before, with the booking man). Apparently it was a program that was being run, to give young women a job in the tourism industry in the area; it seemed quite good, but Edd and I wondered how much of the money we had actually gone to the person doing the work.
 
She was sweet and friendly and spoke reasonably good English, although some of our questions had to be explained, so teacher me came out a few times. We started off by walked up hill, to the local, strictly traditional village. The houses were only allowed to be made of bamboo, although stone houses were allowed in some of the other village communities; each house consisted of 1 room, where everything happened except the bathroom bits - there was a public bathroom for that.
 
Edd and I had seen the same types of houses in Sapa, Vietnam, although the houses there had a couple of rooms that didn’t really have doors between them, just floating walls; what shocked Edd and I the most though, was that there were a few families staying in 1 house in Lombok. The house we were taken into, had 3 families in it, with only 2 double beds and then a few mattresses that were piled neatly on the floor in a corner. She told us that she, herself slept in a stone house, but on the floor on a mattress, with other families staying with her too.
 
Our guide was not married, nor did she have a boyrfirend. She said that the girls used to get married very young, but the government stepped in and announced that it was to be frowned upon, so girls started getting married later and later, up to 26 years old (which is ancient in the other parts of Asia we’d been to). The girls met a boy, they ‘dated’ for 3 days and then the boyfriends family went to the girlfriends family and announced that their daughter would be staying with the husbands family now, they were married. They then spent one day on ‘honeymoon’ on a special bed in the house, only used for that one day as a bed, the rest of the time it was a storage area. Everyone else ensured that they did not go into the house during that day, as it was a private affair. The girls didn’t wear rings or massive earrings to indicate they were now married, instead they had to have their teeth filed, which was massively painful, but tradition. The women from the traditional village had the kind of teeth horror movies are made of. Like Count Dracula’s vampire fangs on steroids. It didn’t help that they also ate fruit that stained their teeth red, so it looked like they’d just come back from an early morning kill.
 
There were goats, cows and chickens everywhere and dogs in annoying abundance. She showed us soy beans growing in the wild, as well as palm trees runner beans, and pumpkin plants to name but a few of the many fruits and vegetables available to them; she even joked that the market was in their back garden. Edd and I were amazed at the wild poinsettias that were growing in abundance everywhere, she knew it was also called the Christmas plant and said that their ancestors had used it to identify whether it was going to be the rainy season or the dry season, depending on the colour of the leaves. The little flowers looked like pouting lips and she pulled one off and pouted with it held next to her cheek - she was endearing.
 
The hike also took us through enormous rice plantations: harvested, seedling patches and growing fields; Edd and I attempted to take pictures with my backup camera; our red toughy had given up on us and we sent it back with his folks to England for repairs, luckily it's still under warranty. The replacement however left a lot to be desired and we had clearly been spoiled with the original.
 
We had a coconut on the side of the road, but couldn't finish, as there was far too much to drink inside it! We then walked to the first waterfall and took a few snapshots; the couple we had had dinner with the night before were already there. They left for the second waterfall and we stopped and had a rest, eating a few biscuits for man fuel, as we weren't going to have lunch until we managed to get to the second waterfall.
 
It was only another 40 minutes trek away, and we got to our final destination, which was both beautiful and enormous. I insisted on eating, before we went for a swim and our guide whipped out our lunch from her backpack, which included bananas for dessert. We ate up and and it took Edd some convincing to get me to change into my costume; the waterfall was completely surrounded by cliffs and trees, therefore the sun did not penetrate to where we were, which made it incredibly cold. I reluctantly changed and got into the river with him; it was nothing like the waterfalls we had been to in Kanchanaburi. We were instructed to not go directly underneath the main part of the waterfall, as it was dangerous and we could die. Noted. I managed to get about half way in and decided against going any further: it was far too cold and unpleasant. Edd went in for a quick swim and then climbed out with me; we put our clothes back on and then start another one hour hike back to our guesthouse. The 4 hour hike was turning into 5 hours, but we had spent a considerable amount of time resting.
 
Our guide announced that there were many stairs, going up, and we were going to do them slowly; she suggested that I count how many there were, as she had no idea. We spotted a family of gibbons on our way up, stair 155 to be exact. We watched them for a while and attempted to take a few pictures with the crummy camera we had with us. We carried on, up, and in the end there were 208 stairs in total; we were relieved to be at the top.

It is only a short walk back to our room and wend we said goodbye to our woman guide, before parting ways. We then went upstairs, where we spent the rest of the afternoon either blogging or having an nap, basically recovering from our 5 hour walk. At 4:30pm we got up and had a shower; we decided we needed to get in touch with the rest of the world and walked down to the restaurant we'd had dinner at the night before, to use their Wi-Fi. We sat there for over three hours contacting people in Australia, England and South Africa. The time differences between them were entertaining, as some people were in bed, while others were having lunch and we had just had dinner.
 
We made our way back to our room and packed, as we were leaving at 8.30am the following day. The resident cat had decided that it quite liked me and took up occupation on my lap while I packed; Edd had said that If I put her out when I went to bed and she sat outside the door crying, she’d get booted. From then on out, her name was Boots. She'd already managed to figure out how to get out of the room, without either as having to let her out the door, so it was crisis averted. Edd unscrew the lightbulb from a wire that was dangling on the outside of the wall; it turned out it did not have a switch, so stayed on all day and all night. This was an issue as the walls were made of weaved bamboo and therefore it seemed like the middle of the day during the night, especially because it was right by my head. We went to bed in darkness, delightful.

 During the night, Boots had come back the same sneaky in which she had left and walked around our bed crying; Edd immediately said 'I told you so,' but I discovered she was inside the room with us, not at the door. I pulled the mosquito netting apart to let her in; she snuggled between my legs on top of the duvet and stayed there, a total blanket hog, the whole night. I was officially in kitty heaven.