Escape from Bali

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In my attempt to escape from the crowds of honeymooners and touts of Ubud I jumped on the Perama bus to Padang Bi with the intention of chilling on the beach for a few days while I got my bearings. On the bus I got chatting to a lovely Swedish couple who are working in a free school in the south of Lombok (Indonesians normally have to pay for their children’s education, meaning the poorest children don’t stand a chance). They had been over in Bali because the girl had gotten some sort of infected wound on her leg (I’d explain more but generally I find conversations about puss a little icky…) and needed to go to hospital (yup, don’t get anything worse than a cold in Lombok otherwise it’s a long way to Denpasser) but were catching the ferry back to Lombok that afternoon, would I like to join them? Yup.

The ferry ride was 5hours, to cover about 35 miles - I think I could have swum it faster. But then I wouldn’t have gotten 5hours of Indonesian language lessons in return for teaching the locals poker. Ah - bringing gambling to a devote community J. In Lombok they had a friend picking them (us) up, the local taxi cartel was not happy about this and (after much frantic arguing in Indonesian) would only let us leave the car park after we paid a fine almost the equivalent to getting a taxi. Word to the wise, if you pre-organise a pick up at the port walk towards the town and meet them away from the mini mafia. It would have been scary but it’s hard to take a man with a bum bag seriously.

Anyways, they dropped me at Kuta Lombok, which is about as different from Kuta Bali as you can get. The town consists of one road of Warungs (food places) and Souvenir shops (they’re waiting for the tourist boom to kick off). After the madness of Bali it was nice to get to somewhere a bit more chilled, though the main reason people come to Kuta is to surf. Not so good if you don’t surf, but great if you want to eat dinner with a different surfer every night! I got hooked on a brilliant little restaurant called Sonia’s where you can get fantastic fresh fish and rice for about £1. The owner was so nice on the 1st night that I went there everyday. Everyday I turned up alone, every day she sat me next to another single surfer - I joked that she should set up a dating agency and she nodded vigourusly - ‘yes, yes, you should get married’. I don’t think she got the joke!

Kuta was definitely a change of pace, but still not paradise - the rubbish problem that is endemic throughout Indonesia thanks to their status of 3rd most corrupt country in the world is especially acute in Lombok. Also, there are roving bands of street urchins all selling homemade bracelets. Be warned, buy from one you will be pressured to buy from them all - at one point I resembled the pied piper with about 19 of them following me. They are fantastic to talk to though, they can rattle off pretty much every player in the Premiership and European Cup (think that’s right) and if you ask them their name they will proudly announce things like ‘Ronaldo’, ‘Rooney’ or (my favourite) ‘Billabong!’.

My money in Kuta ran out and as they have no ATM’s I took it as a sign to pack up and head for the Gili Islands. Gili means Island in Indonesian, so really I was heading for Island Islands. The drive up through Lombok takes you through some spectacular scenery, huge mountain ranges and lush rainforests filled with monkeys.
The passenger ferry over to Gili Trawanga, the largest and loudest of the three islands is an adventure in itself. The boat is a long traditional wooden vessel which holds 25 people. Once the 25 people got on they then started loading it up with wooden joists, bags of cement and crates of beer and pretty much everything else you can imagine. No one has ever explained the basic laws of physics to these boatmen who happily piled this stuff into the back righthand corner of the boat. The result of which was if you sat on one side of the boat your hair would dangle into the water, on the other you had to grip on with dear life to stop yourself from falling off. And so we set off to sea!

Once on the island I got myself happily settled into a little room just off from the main strip and made friends with the American and Bit in the rooms next to me. They were recovering from only having gotten to bed at dawn and looked a little worse for ware but were hungry as hell so we went out and got some lunch.

Gili T is definitely a resort - every type of food is available, there is an Irish bar and some great little shacks set up at one restaurant where you can watch a pirated dvd while you eat your food. It’s true what they say, pirated dvds are not as good - watching wolverine before they’ve edited out the wires and put in all the special effects is a little weird but if you pretend that you are a movie exec it kinda works!
The first evening we walked to the far corner of the island to watch the sunset behind Bali which was a little cloudy but still pretty cool. Some clever Charlie has opened up a reggae bar (shack) at the perfect place so you can enjoy a cool Bintang and a bit of Bob while the sun sets, though they only have one cd so you have to leave fairly quickly before ‘no woman, no crime’ becomes imbedded in your phyche.

It was on Gili T that I did my first ever snorkelling. Wow! At once I became an explorer, searching for lost cities, or a spaceman floating through the atmosphere of a strange new world. Hours of fun! Once you get used to the breathing (I.e. sounding like Darth Vader) you and having fish swimming with you, you realise that the reef there is incredible. You only have to swim maybe 20m out into the warm ocean and you are surrounded by underwater flowers and more fish than on finding nemo. There were turtles close enough to touch and fish every colour of the rainbow, strange alien plants and reef that looks like tentacles or sponges or mushrooms or giant roses. Oh and the big purple star fish flopped over rocks and shells. Then possibly one of the most magical things that has ever happened to me - a shoal of little tiny white fishes, a couple of hundred at least, started circling round me; and if I put my hand out they would all instantaneously divert their pattern to continue circling without touching. I could have stayed and watched for hours.

Gili T is definitely developing itself as a party island, every other night one of the big bars puts on drink promotions and loud music and everyone goes and dances. Fun for a while but I think I’m getting old as I never made it past 1am… After 5 days of basically holidaying I got word from my friend Andy back in England that he would be arriving in Jakarta in 4 days time. This left me with a few days to fill so I thought I’d go and check out Gili Air, which is basically a much quieter version of Gili T - which meant I could get a beach bungalow with a hammock and some palm trees for about £7, not too shabby.


After the Gilis I stopped in Mataram for a few days as I needed to stock up on toiletries and get my washing done etc.
I had booked transport from Gili Air to Mataram Mall which involved getting the boat over to the main land where I would then get a mini bus to Mataram. I hate to sound too negative about the Indonesian people but some of them make it very hard work to sound nice. Getting off the boat you are immediately descended on by about 20 touts, all of which tell you that the only way you can get to your minibus is if you get in their transport and drive for hours. It’s only 400m up the blooming road. But they yell and they lie and they generally just make you want to sit on the floor and bang your fists. Never mind, manage to walk the long and treacherous trek to the bus without falling ill/breaking a leg/ being devoured by wild animals/ getting lost/ getting heat stoke or any of the other possible pit falls that the drivers would have you believe. Then you have to find your bus - the tickets you get are colour coded, the buses have no distinguishing features. As far as I can tell, you have to group yourself with all other tourists with the same colour ticket and then whichever bus you stand close to becomes the bus to where you’re going. Simple…
The bus driver was a right **** (insert your own expletive) and chose to drop me off somewhere that was definitely not Mataram Mall (I had seen Mataram Mall on the drive up to the Gilis), instead dropping me near some relatives hotel which charges extortionate rates. I had had enough. I went back to the driver and told him that he had to take me to the Mall, we argued, he said I hadn’t booked to the Mall, I showed him my ticket, he tried to charge me more money (more that the whole ticked had cost me), I refused, he yelled I sat on the steps of the bus and refused to move until he took me. End result, I got to the Mall and he didn’t get a penny. Plus I got a round of applause from the other people on the bus. Left feeling a little proud of myself J
The next few days were quite weird, I was the only white person for miles around - people in the Mall stopped and took pictures and pointed me out to their kids, which just feels weird! Anyone who could speak English wanted to come up and practise without trying to sell me something, which was great. And I found it virtually impossible to cross the road. There are no crossings or traffic lights in Lombok, and if there was I doubt anyone would pay them much attention, so the only way to cross the road is to wait for a break in the traffic. Which works except everyone kept slowing down to gawp at me so any gaps closed up before I could cross. Argh!

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