Indonesia - Lombok
4. Kuta, Lombok
The plan had been to shoot through Bali and get to the less touristed island of Lombok. Unfortunatley, the best ideas rarely go to plan in Indonesia, especially when you are travelling by public transport. As the bus took 11 hours instead of 7 we found ourselves arriving yet again late at night. We found a lovely hotel to crash for the night, we woke late and made our way by bus (no surprises there) to the port of Padangbai. A couple of hours later we borded a ferry to Lombok, by this point Marky had decided that he was coming down with Malaria as he had the sniffles. We arrived late (once again) in Lombok and had no choice but to pay an exorbetant fee to get to Senggigi, which so happened to be a westernised beach resort town and not really our cup of tea - but we had little option as it was 11pm at this point. Once in Senggigi we trapsed around for a further 2 hours looking for suitable accommodation - we eventually found a reasonable guest house and put our heads down for a few hours. First thing the following morning we headed out of Senggigi aiming to get to a small coastal village called Kuta (ont the other side of the island). We finally managed to charter a bemo (an open backed mini pick up with a row of benches either side - used to transport locals) for a fraction of a fee that most other forms of transport wanted. This turned out to be the best and most comfortable form of transport we took the entire month, as "Malaria" ridden mark was able to lay his weary head in the back and chill out in the passing breeze.
The village of Kuta was just lovely, few toursits and stunning beaches with good surf. We spent 6 wonderful chilled out hammock days here. We hired a scooter (complete with surf board rack) and investigated the surrounding area where we stumbled upon the fantastic Mawan beach. We also took an excursion to the "local" ATM situated an hour and halfs bumpy ride away. This scooter was not our friend- we got a puncture, got it fixed by a local side of the road "shop" using techniques last seen pre WW1 (heating of glue/melting rubber onto inner tube). The puncture returned to haunt us over night!
The best part of staying in Kuta was renting an apartment for a few days (so much space - kitchen, bedroom, living room, veranda with beach views), the worst part was realising that months of eating out had left us completly inept at cooking; after a purple spaghetti disaster we became reliant on bolied eggs and soldiers! Once Marky had fought death and was back on the road to recovery, we made our way to the much talked about Gilis.