Island life... Day 4 on Lombok Island, Indonesia

Sometimes we feel a little bit bad about being abroad in Indonesia and spending all of our time eating, swimming, collecting shells and scootering around... but then we remember that's our favorite kind of vacation and just go with it! :)

How cool are some of these shells?!

In the past, I've always taken my shells back to Korea with me to give as prizes during classroom games, but since I won't be teaching anymore, I decided at the end of every beach place we're at, I'll make a little sign with the shells and then throw them back out onto the sand... (Keeping the ones we can't possibly part with, of course!)

 The town of Kuta, Lombok is small and quaint with about 10 restaurants lining the beach and small shacks selling local chips, drinks, and beer.  It's the ultimate beach town and fairly undiscovered by tourists since it's kinda hard to get to!  We had to take a flight from Denpassar on Lion Air ($60) and then drive 30 minutes into town in a taxi. ($10)

We met a sweet couple at our homestay who had told us to check out Seger Beach, so we took their advice and scootered ourselves over there later in the afternoon. 

We were there just in time for the sunset, which came about 30 minutes after this picture... and had the whole beach to ourselves!  

We, of course, went off the path and checked out the small little beach villages.

It's a darn good thing I've got this guy to scoot me around!  Oh, and I think it's worth noting that gas here is 50 cents a liter!  That's just over $1.00 a gallon.  (Thanks to the government for subsidizing it!)

Tomorrow morning, we're heading over to the Gili Islands off the West coast of Lombok Island.  We're planning to start at Gili Air and stay for a little while, then head over to Gili Trawagan.  We're definitely looking forward to a little more island living and possible some sea turtle sightings!

Island life... Day 3 on Lombok Island, Indonesia

We started off the day with a gorgeous scooter ride through Lombok, going west from Kuta Beach to Mauan and Maui Beach.  Sadly, I accidently deleted those photos.  ugh.  When we got back into town, we headed over to Warung Turtle....

...which is at Tanjung Aan beach... for some swimming and lunch!

... and a pineapple for 50 cents!  YES please!

 I spent most of the day searching for shells with Aaron, swimming and doing sudoku's! (Thanks for the Sudoku book Loola... I've already finished 25 puzzles!)

This just about sums up our day around here... Can't complain!  Life is slow around here... and we're loving it!

Probably won't be back in the blogging world for a week or so!  We'll be here in Lombok for one more day, then we're off to Gili Air, a teeny tiny island off the coast of Lombok Island and if the wifi is spotty here, it'll DEFINITELY be spotty there... not to mention, there's no power on the island during the day! haha.  Can't imagine how many sudoku puzzles I'll be doing there!

Bau Nyale Festival (Day 2 in Lombok)

Part of the reason we came to Kute, Lombok was because of it's seclusion!  Tourists are just barely starting to come here and there are only a few hotels in the area.  But.... we happened to be here on one of the busiest weekends of the year, for the Bau Nyale Festival.  What seemed like a little bit of a bummer turned into a really awesome cultural experience!  We hung out here, at Full Moon Cafe, for the parade to come through town... 

The police were excited I stopped to snap their photo. While it may not seem like it here, they actually thanked me. 

How awesome are these two? 

 The island is almost completely Muslim, and yes, the Muslim prayers are broadcasted over LOUD SPEAKERS 5 times a day!  Intense, I tell you!  Our homestay host actually gave us these ear plugs as part of their welcome package!  LOL

The parade was awesome! As legend has it, Princess Mandalika, who was stunningly gorgeous, was the talk of the island.  Princes were fighting over her and began to distress her after some time, so she jumped off a cliff to bring peace back to her land.

At this time of year, every year, at Kuta Beach on Lombok Island, the locals believe Princess Mandalika comes to visit them in the form or little, colorful worms which come up through the sand for 2 days each year. They believe the worms are actually strands of her hair and the locals fill the beach around 4am, to gather the worms and bringing them home to fry and eat. Ugh! The people here believe that the more worms they catch, the better their harvest will be for the year. So, the parade is made up of different groups/schools from around the island. Each group is dressed in traditional Indonesian garb and 1 girl is dressed as a princess and carried along the entire 2 km parade route!

 "Happy Bae Nyale" from Indonesia!

Island life... Day 2 on Lombok Island, Indonesia

The internet is spotty here, at best, and there's only 1 place we've found with decent wifi and I'm here now, drinking my diet coke and listening to the waves crash 15 feet away!  Not bad, eh?  Aaron and I are having the best time here.  Today we had breakfast at Mimpi Manis (the homestay where we're staying) and hung out with Bob, one of 3 cats and 2 dogs at the homestay!  We're partial to Bob because he's just plain awesome!

After breakfast, we took the scooter, which is only $5.00 a day, to Warung Turtle on TangJung Aan beach and laid out for a while. 

... and had some lunch for $2 each!  SCORE!  We couldn't resist sharing some of it with this little schmooch!

Then, we turned around and looked up at the mountain behind the beach and saw a goat herder with his umbrella at the very top.  We immediately grabbed our stuff and hiked up to where he was, and it was STUNNING! 

After spending the afternoon on the mountain and swimming down below, we went back over to Kuta Beach and had some dinner here at Full Moon Cafe! 

That's where we met Mary, one of the sweetest little girls, selling bracelets.  We fell in love with her and Aaron caved in and decided that he and I needed to buy a bracelet from her.  I picked one out and Aaron asked her if she had another one in the same color.  She didn't, but said she could make it for us in 10 minutes! (AWESOME that she was making them, and they weren't from China!) 

So, she made us matching bracelets in the same color to commemorate our time in Lomok!

and I'll leave you with two sweet cats hugging.  lol  There's a lot of love around these parts!  It's a romantic island, can you blame them?!

Tomorrow we're planning to take a bit of a scooter adventure West to Mauan and Maui Beach!