Blogs from Mataram, Lombok, Indonesia, Asia
May 24th 2012
I should post this story before my trip to Sibolga september 7th to 14th 2011 ago. Trans TV crew and I came to Lombok island in West Nusa Tenggara provence for filming a village in Central Lombok that is far from health facilities. We arrived in Mataram at 1 p.m. Fitri Faroziati (a Reporter) and I met Ari Diatmika (@infolombok twitter account administrator) and mr. Parhan, chief village Wajageseng at Kopang District for pre-interview about the condition of the village that we were going to go after this. It's so tired after two hours drive through the rice fields from Mataram to Central Lombok. Especially when we entering village Wajageseng. The roads looks like Swiss cheese with so many h... read more
October 29th 2011
Up and dressed before any alarms go off. Breakfast pancakes while Natalie waits for the water to come back on. walk our bags to the edge of town and wait for a bemo (local bus). We get harassed by lots of locals trying to sell us expensive lifts and telling us there are no bemos. I walk back to the GH and it turns out I miss heard owner when he said wait at the junction. I find a bus to Praya (80,000Rp) and take it to the others. As we're getting on some of the annoying/annoyed locals pull up and finally agree to take us to Mataram for a reasonable price (150,000Rp), if we cram in with another couple heading to Lembar. Natalie finds a GH and the rest of us dump our bags before ... read more
Many monkeys, several snakes and one grilled fish.
Published: March 30th 2011Asia » Indonesia » Lombok » Mataram
March 30th 2011
Hello and good afternoon (or Selamat siang in Bahasi Indonesia)! Apologies for the slightly behind schedule nature of this, my second blog, but I've been waiting for the right place to write it from...the right place being somewhere where internet access is cheap. And so, finally, at 20p an hour, I can recount my adventures of the last ten days or so... Part 1 - Many Monkeys When I last communicated, I was in Kuta on Bali. I can't remember exactly how I described it - 'lively,' probably, though Magaluf for Australians would really be more accurate. I stayed just long enough to go out a couple of times before running for the hills; specifically, I went to Ubud, a small town further inland and the traditional arts and culture capital of Bali. I spent a ... read more
Ladybugs, Spiderman and 69 turns later..........
Published: April 24th 2009Asia » Indonesia » Lombok » Mataram
April 13th 2009
"Say what??" you must be thinking about now? That subject line may make no sense whatsoever right now, but in actuality, it does; you will just have to read further in order to unravel the meaning. Today, the topic is about ladybugs, Spiderman and the turning of a knob 69 times. More specifically, the rooms in which I have stayed the past few weeks. I started off the Indonesian portion of my latest endeavor in Yogyakarta, a sizable city in Central Java, towards the southern part of the island. Yogya (don't pronounce those "Y"s think of them as "J"s instead; the city is often spelled Jogjakarta and sometimes the very ancient, Djogdjakarta) is best known for the 1200-year old temple, Borobudur, 42 KM from town, built from over two million blocks of stone and comprises nine ... read more
July 18th 2008
Today was a marvelous day. We decided to get off of our well tanned lazy behinds and actually do something besides bask in the glorious sun and go for the occasional swim/snorkel. Don't get me wrong, it is difficult to get rid of pristine tropical beaches on small islands that have no noise from cars or airplanes. However, the time had come to go off adventuring for the day. Awan, our guide and possibly a new friend had given us his very polite, low-key sales pitch several days ago and we decided to go with him. We began our journey by packing and moving out of the rice barn bungalow. We went to the "harbor", which is really just a beach where there is a break in the reef that surrounds the island. We waited for ... read more
