After departing Gili T only 24 hours since I had arrived, I hopped on the local charter boat (a $2 fare) to Bangsal harbour in Lombok. Noa and I planned to meet here to take a two hour car ride to Tetebatu, an elevated tropical jungle in the heart of the island south of the Rinjani volcano. The drive was quite beautiful and I saw my first monkeys of the trip, albeit one tried to lunge at me and bite me when I was minding my business. I screamed and hid behind the taxi driver.
We arrived in Tetebatu at around 6 or 7, only to find out that our booking hadn’t actually gone through on the hostel’s end even though we had paid. After some pretty ruthless back and forth with the hostel owner, we came out victorious and managed to secure a bungalow (sorry to the guy who wanted to extend that we kicked out). The bickering was definitely worth it as the stay was amazing.
At about 9 am we headed on a 4 hour walking tour that we had arranged with one of the local staff members at the hostel. We walked through rice fields, visited waterfalls, ate Indonesian snacks at a local warung and saw black monkeys in the forest. Tetebatu reminds me a lot of Ubud except it’s bigger, quieter and cheaper.
Sadly we were only able to stay in Tetebatu for one night, although I think it was actually relatively satisfactory. Noa and I both had separate bookings in Kuta, which was about an hour and a half drive down south from Tetebatu. We didn’t do very much in Kuta, mainly just drove to beaches and relaxed with a few other girls we met in our hostels. Here’s a bunch of photos.
I extended my stay in Kuta by one night, so was in Lombok four about 4 nights after which I returned to Blind Dog Inn in Sanur to prepare for my flight to Bangkok. Trying to get back to Lombok was a bit of a nightmare and took 10 hours - 1.5 hour drive to the harbour, 3 hours waiting for the ferry, 3.5 hours on the ferry, and then 2 hours driving from Padang Bay down to Sanur. What a joy 🙃
Currently on my flight to Thailand, so that’s 1/4 of my trip destinations done! I have no idea what I’m doing in Thailand with Vincent - we only know that we’re going to Bangkok, Koh Samui and Koh Phi Phi, and have to take a flight out from Phuket. We’ve got about a week after Phi Phi where we have nothing planned, so guess we’ll see.
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