Lombok, Indonesia

Indonesia
Senggigi Beach

The Indonesian island of Lombok is located just to the east of its famous neighbor, Bali. It's close enough to visit from there as a day trip, but that would be pretty ambitious. We (I'm Glenn) gave it a week, spending Christmas 1998 there.

I had heard both pro and con about Lombok from friends who had already visited it, but I really didn't have a very good idea of what awaited me there. An Internet search only revealed a few uninformative and frankly amateurish sites. What I've produced here is a man-on-the-streets eye account of what a week there can amount to.

I'll begin with the Senggigi area, go up to the Gilis, north past the Gilis and then south over the Pusuk Pass to Mataram. I'll also take you down to around Kuta Lombok and then back for a little more of Senggigi.

	Lombok is a short flight from Bali, but we decided to take a ferry, the Mabua Express. The ferry leaves from Benoa in Bali and takes about 2 1/2 hours. It's a modern ferry and very comfortable. A one-way adult ticket on the lower deck is US$20. On the way you get great views of the volcanoes of east Bali. You will arrive at Lembar, pictured here. As you can see on the map above, Lembar isn't really close to anything. and chances are you will be taking the well-organized shuttle service to Senggigi Beach. It's about 20,000 rupiah per person.
Because we were going at Christmas, we had advanced reservations here, at Maskot Cottages. We had a large room with A/C, solar-heated hot water, and satellite TV. With an extra bed for the kids we paid US$30 per night, which I thought was reasonable. The large shady lawn pictured here is right on the beach. There is no pool, so we swam in the sea. It gets deep rather quickly here, and the visibility is so-so.
	The main road that follows the coastline is not very close to the water at Senggigi, as there is a point jutting out into the sea, dividing the beach into north and south bays. Consequently, there are few restaurants that give good sunset views with your meals, apart from those affiliated with the hotels. This place, the Bayan, had LOUD live music every night, completely audible from Maskot Cottages.
Continuing north up the main road from Maskot Cottages and the Bayan is this shopping plaza, the biggest landmark on the strip. Frankly, the rest of the businesses look rather cheerless, and I hope you don't mind that I've chosen to print this colorful picture rather than something more representative. Actually, I didn't get the impression that the businesses in this plaza were exactly booming, as there were touts with menus chasing weary tourists up and down this sidewalk every dinnertime.
	Maskot, although there are much nicer places to stay, did locate their restaurant at the end of the lawn by the beach. Even though there is a heavy chain-link fence all along to clearly demarcate the transformation of public beach to private hotel grounds for the hoards of roaming entrepreneurial salespeople, you can still get a pretty nice view of the sea. Every morning we saw the brightly colored sail of the fishing boats as we ate our complimentary continental breakfast.
And speaking of food, it was quite good in general in Lombok. One dish I enjoyed was gado-gado, pictured here. It's peanut sauce served over a bed of boiled greens, offered here with boiled egg and pieces of rice cracker. The total dinner tab for our little family of four usually came out to about 8-10,000 rupiah, including a few large bottles of Bintang or Anker beer. Bring your appetite.
	The nicest hotel at Senggigi beyond a doubt is the Sheraton. Located on the extreme north end of Senggigi beach, they have seemingly spared no expense in creating their oasis of Shangri La in a sea of poverty. At the suggestion of our trusty Japanese guide book, we had their poolside, all-you-can-eat, Asian buffet and dinner show as a splurge one night.
These dancing beauties are not about to be swallowed by some red-eyed monster as it would appear. Rather, the stage is in the middle of the pool, and the "tongue" of the monster you see is the water slide. Anyway, the guide book was right; the buffet and show are certainly worth doing when staying in Senggigi, whether you're staying at the Sheraton or not.

Here I've walked out on the point and looked back at the southern bay at Senggigi. You can't discern much, I know, as there is a heavy row of trees blocking your view of most of the hotels. Maskot Cottages, where we stayed, is right about in the center of this picture, to the right of the ribs they've put in to keep the sand from being washed away. Basically, the impression that you can carry away from this is that Senggigi has a long way to go before it rivals Waikiki. And thank God for that. On page two, I'll take you on a day trip to the Gili islands, and on page three we'll go down to the southern port of Lombok.