Friday, November 01, 2019

Day 1 - Lombok's Pink and Sandy Beaches

I'm getting thirsty for the marvellous
I'm getting hungry for the best
I'm getting thirsty for the meaningful
Like Mermaids - Lisa Ekdahl

So last long weekend, I went to Lombok with my mom, brother, an aunt and uncle. It was pretty nice spending time with them. I left Singapore Friday night. There are direct flights from Singapore to Mataram (the capital city of the West Nusa Tenggara province and is located in the Lombok island), however the timing didn't work for me. I ended up taking Garuda Indonesia with a transit in Jakarta. I arrived late at night at around 11 pm and the next flight was at 05:45 AM. Since it'd be a waste of time to go home and get back to the airport again, I opted to stay at the capsule hotel in the airport. It's called Digital Airport hotel and it's at terminal 3. I thought it was quite a brilliant idea that they have this. That being said I was a little apprehensive about staying there. I'm not one who's curious about trying a capsule hotel, but as the universe wanted it, I got to experience one and the experience wasn't that good. The capsule itself was okay. It was pretty spacious and there's a TV and a bottle of water. I got the upper bunk capsule and it's not that convenient to get up. They also provided slippers and a locker. What I didn't like was the noise. That night it was particularly full and I was just so surprised that there's so many people going in and out even after midnight. There were repeated sounds of the door to the toilet section being opened, the sound of lockers being opened and closed. I also heard someone snoring, so it's really not quiet and for me who don't sleep easily, it's all too annoying. So much so that I decided to just really get up earlier and took a shower. Shower area wasn't that clean, but soap and towel was provided. Overall I don't want to do this again. Well unless I really need too and have no other choice.

Anyways so then I met my family at the gate. The flight was uneventful. I feel Garuda's quality is dropping, like their meals are not really good now. At Lombok airport we found our driver / guide and we proceeded with the plan for the day. The Lombok island is considerably smaller than Java, but it still took a long time to drive around even without traffic jam and good road condition. We were driving to a beach which I couldn't remember the name to take a private boat which would take us to different beaches by the Lombok island. Day 1 was my favorite day of the whole trip though I think my family would have their own different opinion. The beaches we were going to go were called the pink beaches. They have a few of them and they just called it pink beach 1, 2, and so on. Approaching the first pink beach, we stopped by a small floating platform near the beach where there were 4 nets submerged. In one of the nets, there were lobster. These weren't farmed. They were from the water below. We could buy the lobster and get it cooked at another beach, but the family weren't interested. The lobster weren't very big and I heard it could take another year for it to grow bigger. I like the colours.

Then we were dropped at the first pink beach. Honestly I like it very much because it's pretty and no one else was there. You have to appreciate the rarity of having a beach for yourself. The sand was very soft and easy to walk on. It's beautiful with the beautiful water and sand.

The sand has reddish particles on it which make people call it the pink beach. This red colour comes from the eroded washed up dead red corals. One of our boat guy found one for my aunt. She asked if she could take it home, I don't know if she really did. I did find some really nice washed up dead coral and was really tempted to take one, but I thought its purpose might be better served being there rather than be stored somewhere with me.

On the way to the second beach, we stopped by a place where we saw some foreign tourists snorkeling. I was expecting to snorkel in this trip, but ended up not doing it. One of our boat guy was taking out bread to feed the fish and it was quite funny seeing how fast the fishes swam from deeper water to the bread. On the second beach, we had lunch. Lunch and dinner were included in this trip we booked and all of them had really big portion. I was surprised at the variety of dishes presented to us for lunch. This second beach is the only beach with people living and working in it. It's accessible from the mainland. I saw 2 foreign girl tourists arriving by motorcycle and you just got to admire their tenacity for doing that. In fact we saw quite a few foreigners riding motorbikes around. I guess it's that safe to drive in Lombok? I don't know. I guess the Indonesians renting these out also don't really care about the tourists' skill. So anyways there were a few other tourists here eating lunch too. The island doesn't have fresh water so I heard fresh water have to be delivered by boat. When we were in Lombok, the dry season was in full swing that most of the trees were bare and it was really hot. In my whole entire life, I experienced sunburn for the first time ever that day. I didn't know it could happen to me. Now I'm a bit worried I could get skin cancer :( Anyways, there's kinda a small hill by the beach and I'm glad we walked up even though it's so hot because the view below was unexpected. The water was just gorgeous. By the way the water was so clear in most places that you could see through a lot.

My brother walked up the other higher side of the hill. I didn't because it was too hot. I don't know if the view was good too. After that we went to the next beach. When we arrived at the third beach, there's already a Chinese couple there, but they left soon after. It's really something to have a beach for yourself. I love the beautiful blue water and soft sand. Then after that we went to another beach which the guide simply called sandy beach. When we passed by this beach in the morning, it was submerged, but by late afternoon it's in the low tide and a substantial area was dry and you can walk on it. We saw a lot of starfish, big ones. Unfortunately I don't know what type they are. There's also a number of sea urchins in groups. I don't think the locals harvest this though. Maybe they don't think it's worth the trouble. By the way we did pass around a lot of round buoys in rows and were told that those are to farm pearls.

Walking around this last beach and seeing the different things is perhaps my favorite part of the entire trip. I love it so much. After that we made our way back to the pier and off to dinner. For pictures from day 1, please go here.

:) eKa @ 10:35:00 PM •