Bali Transit Interval: Lombok

Included in our package trip to the Gili Islands was a return flight from Lombok Airport to Bali Denpasar. So we left Gili via a small speedboat, which was like an hour late and my mom was flipping out. The speedboat was the scariest shit ever. It was going so fast and it was so small that it felt like we were going to go flying out of the boat every time it bounced off the top of a wave, which was like every nanosecond. After that my handsarm were sore from gripping.

When we got to the harbor in Lombok after about a 15-20 minute boat ride, we were picked up by a couple dudes in a car and they drove us to the airport. We didn't realize it beforehand, but it was about a 90 minute drive from there to the airport, so it was kind of a drag.

But they made it into kind of a tour.

First we stopped at a little stand to get some water and take pictures of the scenery.

  Cow.

There were a couple other scenic areas that we could have stopped at, but we were kind of feeling rushed, due to the tardiness of the morning boatman, so we didn't bother. I was tired of taking pictures of scenery by then, anyway.

Another stop we made, which I didn't feel right taking photos of, was a jewelry shop with local pearls and such. I pretty much hate pearls, unless they're an abnormal pearl color, like blue, and they're alone on a pendant. I'm no Marge Simpson. My mom seems to like them more than I do, but this place was incredibly expensive, especially compared with how much cheaper everything else was, so we didn't even consider buying anything. We mostly just allowed the stop so we could use the bathroom.

A productive stop, however, was at a little weaving village. Here's a picture of said village.
 

In this village, the saying goes that if a girl can't weave well, she's not yet ready to get married. The lady that brought us around said it was a cooperative, so everybody spends a ton of time weaving shit, just making patterns out of their noggins, and then they bring it over to the shop and everyone shares the profits. She also showed us how the weaving is done.

They offered to let us try, but we were still feeling pressed for time, and it looked like it would take a while to get set up at the loom, so we had to decline. We did each end up buying something, thought, because it seemed a shame not to. The quality of the work was really good, and they were charging a lot for it by Balinese standards, but considering how much work probably goes into each item and how much it'd be back home, it was still a deal. I spent about $30 on a really nice green and gold table runner. Currently, having no table, I'm using it to hang across the top of my tall bookshelf. It's nice. My mom bought something similar, I think.

So we finally got to Lombok airport, which was kind of confusing. Indonesia charges airport fees, but instead of including them in the ticket price, they make you pay at the airport and get a receipt before you're let into the gate area. But there's not enough signage to let you know you have to do this, so inevitably a lot of people proceed to the gate and have to go all the way back and find some cashier area where they're doing this and then go back again. And then there's more security at the gate and you can't leave and there's no bathroom. That seems like a really bad idea, especially considering our half-hour flight was delayed about a half hour. Jeez.

But anyway, the last leg of the trip was Ubud, and that was a lot of fun, so I'll start talking about that next time.