In Reply to: Bike posted by Nat and Matt on Thursday, 4. June 2009 at 09:38 Bali Time:
I was in Kuta Lombok last year.
I paid Rp 40,000 per night including breakfast for a room in a Losmen facing the beach. The beach in front of the Losmen was pretty, but devoid of swimmers. I was soon to find out why. After five minutes in the water, I had been bitten three times by sea lice. This was my first and last swim at Kuta Lombok.
I decided to try motorcycling instead. I had taken my Australian full face helmet, International Drivers License, motorcycle gloves, jeans, motocross jersey and elastic sided boots for this purpose. For Rp 35,000 per day without bargaining I had a set of wheels in the form of a semi-automatic Honda scooter. I was not even offered the usual ice cream bucket type helmet by the hirer.
I took off in an easterly direction finding a series of deserted bays and the Novotel Kuta. I did not feel hot riding around Lombok with all my motorcycling gear. Unlike Bali, there were no signs to guide riders and my GPS receiver was unable to help as I did not have any small scale maps of the area. The local farmers use the roads, particularly intersections to spread out their crops to dry.
There are no petrol stations in the area and I had to purchase petrol in one litre bottles from warungs on the side of the road.
All the others in my losmen were surfers from the UK, Switzerland, Japan and the US. Every morning, if it was not raining, they would ride their motorcycles with the surfboards attached to sides on hooks to Gerupuk, a small village which does not have a beach but does have a few warungs and losmen set up for surfers. The real attraction of Gerupuk for the surfers was a fleet of outrigger canoes fitted with outboard motors. These canoes towed the surfers out beyond the break so they could surf in.
Due to Cyclone Nicholas off the north coast of Australia, there were heavy storms through the eastern islands of Indonesia in February. When it rained through the day, the surfers hung around the losmen.
I sat on the porch reading magazines and newspaper supplements.
After four nights in Kuta Lombok, it was time to return to Bali. For Rp 90,000 each, a group of Czech surfers and myself hired a bemo to the ferry terminal at Lembar.