Senggigi and Eastern Gilli’s – Lombok

Spent from 17th June until the 9th July here and on the gilis. So, a good chunk of the holiday wandering around, climbing mountains, getting drunk and chilling on the beach. That’s in addition to other activities. There’s certainly no storage of things to occupy your time here on Lombok and the gili’s.

By the gili’s, I mean Gili Trawanga, Gili Air and Gili Meno. I visited all these islands, although only Gili Meno briefly when I swam over from Gili Air. Had a glass of water then swam back. In the dark, that turned out to be not such a good idea.

Lombok island had different stop overs for me and I’ll look at these in the order that I visited them.

Senggigi

After I got off the ferry from Bali, Sengigi was the 1st choice to stop. The port, Bang Sal, looked very functional and didn’t have much appeal when I read about it. Even less when I actually visited.

In the past, Sengigi was the number one resort on Lombok. That must have been some time ago, because now it is empty and boring a lot of the time, at least when I visited. There didn’t seem to be very much in way of visitors. It still has all the hotels, bars and restaurants, which gives it a Morecambe-esque feel to it.

Most of the foreign types were expats, mainly from Aus, who now lived in the locality. One approached me at the convenience store, he didn’t seem very lucid. Looked at me in a confused way and asked a lot of questions. I visited Sengigi again on a separate visit to extend my visa, I got talking to another Aussie. He was a bit more compos mentis, able to understand jokes and such like. He’d run a business locally which had got shut down by COVID. We chatted about various stuff. He gave me the low-down on where to go for a drink in the locality and some other local gen.

The best place I found was called Le Chill Bar. They had nice bean bags, good food and decent music, a chill vibe and the staff were friendly.

Whilst I was eating dinner there on my first night, this turtle came up the beach and started laying it’s eggs on the beach around 10yards from my table!

Another slight upside was the accommodation; very cheap and located on the side of a hill ridge overlooking the bay. The sunsets were spectacular and at night you got to look across the bobbing lights of the boats out on the water of Senggigi bay.

It was very quite.

Breakfast was alright. Indonesian’s aren’t big on breakfast, and it shows. You’ll be lucky to get an egg, some fruit, toast and a coffee. Add to that some juice, if it’s a posh homestay. Over the whole six weeks, I only had two variations on this theme.

After having breakfast whilst in Sengigi, I was usually sorting things out, trips or whatever during the day. The best thing was the hire scooter. Hired at first through the homestay owner, it was inexpensive. About £3.50 a day, plus a bit of petrol. For that, you get to go right the way around Lombok at your own pace, which is what I did.

The bars in Sengigi were really not worth visiting. I went to 2. The Happy Cafe and somewhere called Willy’s. Happy Café had a live band on, which made it look busy. It was busy, but the prices were high and the band wasn’t very good. Felt a bit like being at Margate. Willy‘s was undoubtedly better. They were more of a local type of expat crowd which gave it a familiar air. They put a load of random Youtube music videos on, which was fun. People just walked in and put whatever they wanted on. I put ‘Drops of Jupiter‘ on. Seemed to get a few cheers from the punters. I know people like that track. I would drop in there but I wouldn’t make a point of going in there and expecting to be entertained in any way.

Day at Nipah Beach

Senggigi’s best beach is called Nipah Beach and is actually about 8 miles up the road. Took about 25 minutes or so on the scooter.

If I had time during the day, I would go up there for a swim or to just relax on the beach.

It was a nice clean beach with a mixture of tourists and locals with some shops and Warung, (local restaurants) on the sea front. If you had some goggles or a snorkel, there was fish and the occasional turtle to be seen in the waters of the bay.

Nipah beach is a great place for a swim.

One of the local scooter drivers offered to picture me here. There are a few bays on the coast road, when I first visited, I wasn’t sure which turning to take. Here, I was just turning the bike around having missed the turning and one of the locals started talking to me.

Pretty friendly is usual. Sometimes it’s to sell you something, a lot of the time, it’s just curiosity about you and your circumstances, where you’ve been in Indonesia, how long you plan to stay, do you like it etc. Where you from? They used to say ‘David Beckham’ when I said UK when I worked in China. Not so much nowadays…

I guess he’s getting a bit old now…

Eastern Gilli’s

After I’d had enough of Senggigi, I was recommended a trip down to what’s called the ‘Eastern gilli’s’.

When people refer to ‘the gilli’s’ and Lombok, they’re be talking about Trawangan, Air and Meno which are off the North West coast.

Whilst I was staying at the Arirang homestay, the owner recommended a visit to these Eastern gilli’s on the basis of a guest who had given them the ‘undiscovered gem‘ moniker. They reckoned the snorkeling boat trip around the islands was top notch. Lonely Planet also gave them a good rating; so I set off…

On the scooter, it took around 2 1/2 hours to get down, through the capital, Mataram with my backpack on the back!

Because my scooter didn’t have a mobile phone navigation holder, I had to pull my phone out of my pocket every now and then, make sure of where I was and whether I needed to change direction or make a turn any time soon.

When I got down to the peninsula, I hadn’t booked any accommodation. I thought I’d just have a look around. There’s no real focal point or town, best to see which place looked the best, and then book online that way. It’s not a problem to do this in June, low season and I didn’t have any problems finding and booking a place when I turned up.

It was called Kristal Garden Homestay. It had a pool and the manager was an ‘entrepreneur’, young and pretty handy with his English. He told me that the boat island trip would not go out with less than 3 people and, if I wanted, he would see if he could gather up two other stragglers from homestays in the locality. It was fairly early in the afternoon, maybe even mid-day when I arrived and there was a good possibility that this could happen. Not for today but possibly for tomorrow morning. That left me the rest of the day to get rid of. Key, the manager, suggested I give my watsapp and then give me a 1-6 list of the best sites in the area to visit (by scooter).

After going out and grabbing a smoothie and lying on a bean bag for about an hour, which is near where I took this picture, I had a look around the immediate area and beach and it did look something like what’s pictured below.

Plastic on the beach. Plenty of coral and rocks in the water which wasn’t very deep. Not really somewhere you’re going to spend any time. Still, I had a look and moved on to working through this itinerary that Key had sent me.

The list looked a little something like this

Top sites to visit around Eastern gilli’s

1 Elak-Elak Beach – This was like a restaurant on the beach. Closer to the eastern end of the peninsula. Much cleaner and more pleasant. The people gave me a fresh coconut for free, which was nice.

2 Pantai Goa Landak – This was like a headland with views out across the port of Lembar, where cruise ships docked for the night. There was a small Buddhist shrine and some litter. No-one up there when I went and it was down a 3km or so dirt track which was pretty heavy going on the bike. I couldn’t find the path up here, and clambered up through a load of jungle. The path on the way down was much easier to find, but I went back through the jungle anyhow. It was quicker to get to my bike that way!

3 Mekaki Hill – I think I went over this on the bike on the way to the next location on the list. Maybe it looked something like this…

4 Orong Bukal – Is a rocky peninsula bay area toward the south of the peninsula. It takes you all through the hills above so the drive down is pretty scenic. I had some trouble with Google Maps taking me to the wrong location, a village about 4km away from the parking space and pathway to take the hike down to Orong Bukal. And hike it is. It’s very rocky with steep undulations. It took me around an hour to get down there, after coming back I was really hot and sweaty. There were indeed great views. Here’s a picture with my guide from the village, who showed me where the place was.

5 Pantai Piling – Is basically the beach which can be reached from Orong Bukal. It would have meant an additional trek of 40 minutes or so through undergrowth, sand and rocks. I didn’t bother and went back to the bike.
6 Mareje Rice field – Up in the hills, not far from Lembar, this rice terrace has a great panorama down over the port and surrounding area.

Going around these sites took me past sunset. When I took myself and my bike back, it was time for dinner, which due to the rural setting, was provided by the homestay. I had a Nasi Goreng, which is a traditional Indonesian meal with rice, vegetables, egg and meat. There’s a few variations on it, but it’s pretty much a mainstay of eateries large and small across Indonesia. A bit like Dal Bhat in Nepal, or Tom Yum soup in Thailand.

I don’t think I had any beers. Pretty soon I was tired. Key informed me there was no other visitors looking to make the island trip, so tomorrow would be my last day in this eastern region.

Next stop, somewhere called Kuta Beach.