Lombok Rocks by John Borthwick
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Oberoi Lombok
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Lombok, a haven of calm compared to the hullabaloo of southern Bali, has relatively few tourists and no thumping party scene — although the dreaded karaoke virus is spreading. Its main tourism enclave, on the west coast around Senggigi Beach, has a strip of international standard resorts, all low key and tasteful, but for some travellers even this is "too developed”. They escape to an even farther shore, the Gili Islands.
A short ferry ride from Bangsal harbour on northwest Lombok, the three Gili Islands — Air, Meno and Trewangan — are an escapologist's dream. The first time I visited the Gilis, 12 years ago, a simple room with bed and mozzie net cost $10 a night, including breakfast. Bliss at a bargain price, even if the room’s single, 25-watt light was so dim that I had to replace it with the 75-watt bulb that I carried for just such occasions.
This time we sample the decidedly more upmarket Vila Ombak on Gili Trewangan. At ten times the price I paid in 1996, it also offers ten times the facilities — pool, bar, honeymoon suites, air-conditioning and an absolute beachfront restaurant. In the latter, needless to say, the menu has come a long way from those typical ‘90’s offerings of gado-gado, jaffles and mango smoothies.
Beyond fresh seafood and deep cocktails, the Gili Islands main promise is still simply the moon and stars, sandy beaches, plenty of snorkelling and good scuba diving. Women travellers seem particularly comfortable on these islands. In two hours you can walk right around the she-oak and coral-strewn shoreline of Trewangan — at 340 hectares, this is the "big island" of the trio. Time your arrival on the western side to coincide with sunset across Lombok Strait, then sink a well-earned beer as the sun is swallowed by Bali's sacred volcano, mount Gunung Agung.
Back on mainland Lombok, it's worth hiring a car and driver to see this large, 80-km wide island. There are white sand and black sand beaches, coconut plantations, tribes of roadside monkeys, village markets, densely forested ranges and the volcanic, 3726-metre Mt Rinjani. Paddy fields are everywhere, of course; one writer nicely likened Lombok’s brilliant, baize paddy terraces to “a flight of billiard tables.”
Lombok differs markedly from Hindu Bali. Ninety percent of its of 2.7 million people are Moslem, with their own distinctive, easy-going "Sasak" culture. Many of them still travel by cidomo — a canopied cart pulled by a diminutive Timor pony. "Very small, but very strong horse," a driver assures me. No doubt, but either through compassion or impatience I somehow take the taxi.
We find a hotel within a hotel, the luxurious Pool Villa Club annexe of the Sengiggi Beach Hotel. Our two-storey villa, one of 16 linked by a beautiful, blue, serpentine pool, is just metres from Sengiggi Beach and its front stalls view across the Strait to Gunung Agung and those flamboyant sunsets. What’s there to do here? "Sengiggi is the perfect place for reading books and making babies", a hotel manager once observed.
Penujak village in central southern Lombok specialises in wood-fired, earthenware pottery of export quality. As soon as I step from the car, a group of giggling schoolgirls ambushes me, each one selling little bird-shaped clay whistles. Just what I don’t need — but how can one say yes to one child and no to five others? So I buy six.
Nearby Sukarara village has a weaving centre that specialises in traditional ikat and songkat weaves — all done on back looms by young women. The intricately woven Sasak motifs, usually of birds, flowers and granaries, are passed from mother to daughter. According to tradition, if a girl does not learn to weave her matrilineal designs she cannot marry.
Someone invites us to a wedding party. It has been going on for a week already we are told, with another week to go. We eat sticky rice and banana fritters, drink rich, strong Lombok coffee, listen to some exuberant local kuchimol music and then wander off, never actually spotting the bride and groom.
Lombok's far southern coastline is like a beautiful, convoluted computer graphic. The fractal curves of its beaches form a lace of headlands, coves and lagoons. Offshore, an indigo sea is whitewashed with surf. The very best place to see it all from is the lofty hilltop restaurant Ashtari, run by an Australian expat, Gaz and his family. Delicious food, astonishing views.
Lombok’s second most famous shore shares its name with Bali's most famous one, but this Kuta Beach has no bungy plungers, pub crawl buses and very few prowling watch wallahs — so far. Having been off the tourist map for much of this decade (following communal riots in Mataram in 2000), Lombok is now back in the frame. Quality new hotels are being built, construction has begun on an international airport south of Mataram, developers are flogging villa sub-divisions to foreigners, and a Dubai company has purchased 1250 ha in the Kuta-Mandlika area for a mega-development, perhaps Lombok’s version of Bali’s Nusa Dua enclave. In short, the tsunami of change is about to hit these sleepy Sasak shores.
Just south of Kuta at Mandalika Beach we spend a few days at the exotic Novotel Lombok resort. Crimson bougainvillea cascade over its ochre walls and beehive-shaped roofs. Our private pool villa is a haven after spending all day exploring the villages and beaches of the far south, including the luminous Tanjung Aan point and its azure bays.
Lombok's capital Mataram is a low-rise, low-key place with more cidomo carts than any remarkable virtues or vices. There are several Hindu temples (western Lombok was once ruled by Bali), including Pura Narmada Water Palace built by a Balinese king around 1805, supposedly as a fountain of youth.
Lombok may lack the elaborate ritual culture of Bali but there are always surprises as you travel it. A house may even run you off the road, as I once discovered. Deep in the interior as we drove through a village we were confronted by a "house moving" party, literally. Forty men and boys had simply picked up the village’s large communal meetinghouse and, chanting vigorously, were carrying the large wood and thatch building 150 metres up the road to its new site.
One of the best aspects of Lombok is its Sasak people. They are unobtrusive but friendly, and the chance to mix with them is always fun. I was once invited into an evening-school English class to say a few words. "Tell us about Australian culture, please," asked the teacher. I attempted to describe our multiplicity of origins and lifestyles. She summarized my ever-expanding answer with the prefect Lombok metaphor, "So Australia is a gado-gado culture?"