Cruising and sailing from Lombok to Bali.

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Sept/Oct. 1997
After Bima we day hopped, each anchorage not good enough to stay more than overnight – in one bay we dropped our anchor, looked around, decided it was an iffy anchorage with nothing to recommend it, so we immediately pulled anchor and sailed all night to find a better one. It was about a week before we got to another decent anchorage at Bangsal on the West coast of Lombok, behind the Gill Islands (it's a bit silly - "Gill" means island in the local language). It was blowing like stink, but we had a good secure anchorage where we could leave the boat while we hired a van and driver to tour the island.

Getting to Lombok and a good anchorage came just in time. I was getting a bit cranky about the cruising conditions here - either too much wind or not enough wind and from every possible direction; unfavorable currents that never seem to switch to favorable; and rolly anchorages with no great swimming or diving. And up until Lombok, the islands have all been dry, dry - no vegetation, rather dusty and drab, very little in the markets, so we'd been subsisting almost exclusively on boat stores. This is their dry season, but looking at these islands it's hard to imagine it being much better in their "wet" with almost no trees or brush. Yet we know that they will farm lots of rice in the rainy season, so these dry islands probably green up really quickly once the rains come again.

Along with Phil and Helen on NED KELLY, and another yacht, we hired a driver for a tour of Lombok. The "tour director" was pretty lousy, but we got to see quite a bit of western Lombok. First we went through the monkey forest, where we fed the monkeys - this was really quite nice - the monkeys are used to people coming by and feeding them peanuts and they're surprisingly gentle as they take them out of your hand. We went to another weaving factory, which we really didn't want to do, but our driver just went there, and we later realized that he got a kickback from the factory manager. We went to two temples [PHOTO] - Peter wasn't thrilled about the first temple, really aggravated when we went to the second one (street vendors, a "guide" you have to pay to take you through, more people with their hands out), though I found them both interesting. We had words with our driver again when he brought us to a hotel for lunch that we had heard was not good at all - Peter just announced that we weren't going to eat there, so get going. We figure that the hotel paid the drivers a kickback, because there were a lot of tour vans there (we met some yachties on a different tour who ate there that day, and they said they got a bit ill from the food. Peter called it right this time). All in all, we liked what we saw of Lombok, except for the begging, but we were very unhappy with our tour guide.

Two days later Helen and Phil, Peter and I went back to Mataram/Cakranegara/Ampenon, the main city in Lombok (used to be three cities, but they've grown so they're really one city - a bit like New York and its five boroughs), to go to the famous Sweta market. It's an experience. The market is huge, and sells everything you could possibly want - food, clothing, handicrafts, hardware, etc., etc. If Peter weren't such a creep about my buying local crafts, I would have gotten some of their lovely things, but all I got were a couple dresses. Once we arrived in Bali I could have kicked myself (or Peter) - the stuff is twice as expensive and not nearly as good quality. But among the things that are sold in this market are lots and lots of tiny dried fish and fish paste (in this huge market we saw maybe two small tuna for sale; the rest are tiny dried fish, ranging in size from guppies to small goldfish - we do mean tiny). After the first rainstorm in several months fell just before we got to the market, the smell of fish was overpowering. The dresses we bought stunk of rotten fish, we smelled of rotten fish. There were sections of the market that we just couldn't stand to be in, the fish smell was so bad. But it certainly was interesting.

We left Lombok on October 5, headed across the strait for Bali, stopping at Lembongan Island because we had heard that we could stay there and get a ferry to Bali. Although that information was incorrect, and no ferry was found, it was such a nice place that we stayed a few days anyway. When we sailed in we were a bit apprehensive about finding a safe anchorage - the swell rolling into the three bays was uncomfortable, the surfers were riding waves into shore, we really weren't too sure what was going on. But a local told us to pick up a mooring, and two hours later the swell died down and we had a marvelous anchorage in the clearest, prettiest water we've seen in Indonesia. We went ashore and were even more delighted. The tourist places here are very small, but there are eateries catering to the day-tripping surfers. The majority of people who come here come from Bali for the day on two large boats - their impact on the island is small because the people don't even go ashore, and the food was the best we'd had so far.

The islanders' primary income is from seaweed farming, and it is fascinating [PHOTO]. They set out large nets on the shallow bottom and on the reefs - a small piece of seaweed is tied every foot or so onto this net as a seedling. They harvest the seaweed, set it out to dry (from a dark green it fades to red and then white as it dries). Needless to say it's hard work governed by the tides - they are out there before sunrise if low tide is early in the morning. The whole place smells of seaweed - it's not fragrant, but not offensive. Nobody begged here, the people were smiling and friendly, welcoming us to their island. The few tourist stalls were low-key, no aggressive pushing. This seemed to be a purely Hindu island; we neither saw nor heard a Moslem mosque, and each house had its shrine in the back yard (a few had lots of shrines - sometimes four and five with their small daily offering of rice, flowers and joss stick). And people had the time to talk to us. We just loved the place, and if we had been able to find fuel and a ferry over to Bali we might never have gone there on the 'Melon. But we were running low on everything, so on Wednesday, October 8, over we went to Bali, the "must see" tourist destination in Indonesia.

We understand 'tourist destination', and we don't like it. Wherever Western tourists congregate you will find ticky-tacky souvenirs, aggressive hawkers, prices twice as high as anywhere else, and a concerted effort by practically everybody to extract as much money as possible from the white-skinned suckers. And Bali fits that description with the added kicker that Indonesians are aggressive hawkers everywhere, so in Bali they're really awful. We went to Kuta, which seems to be the primary tourist town on Bali. Wall to wall shops (which we had been warned of but we still wanted to see), and the most aggressive street vendors we have ever seen. Lots of young men with boxes of wrist watches - they start bargaining at $10, who knows how cheap they'll go; men with "silver" bangle bracelets; and baseball hats. They're obviously put on the street by one operation - these people all have a uniform of yellow T-shirts - you can't miss them. But they don't leave you alone, especially the bracelet hawkers - one fellow followed us for close to a kilometer trying to sell his bracelets. They start out at $5.00 or $10.00 each. If you are dumb enough to talk to them (courtesy does not work) they will just follow you around, shoving the box of bracelets in your face, getting lower and lower in their prices. They got as low as 13 bracelets for $1.00 to $3.00, so you can imagine how much silver there is in these bracelets. Oh, did Peter get angry - he finally stole the guy's package of bracelets, telling him he had made them a gift to Peter since Peter had told him he didn't want to buy them. That got a ten-minute argument. But so far no beggars here, so that's one good thing.

Even though the shops and stuff were interesting in Kuta, we were all so glad to get away from the street vendors. It's exhausting.

But we finally got good food. Not the Burger Kings, Wendy's, Arby's, KFC that are available in Kuta, or Dunkin' Donuts (lordy, all this American junk food makes me shiver); but finally some good Indonesian value-for-the-money food. (What food we'd had before had been priced about the same, but was much lower quality). Food was a disappointment in the eastern part of Indonesia - we haven't been particularly adventurous with the street vendors - everything looks so unsanitary! I had been expecting some interesting and exotic food, but it has generally been boring and limited in variety. Not until we got to Lembogan Island, did we finally get decent food, and now again in Bali. The quality is getting better as we head west. But the islands are also getting wetter and lusher as we head west, so perhaps the poor food quality is a result of the lack of fresh produce.

There are western-style supermarkets in Bali, with refrigerated meat and decent quality food that isn't two years older than its use-by date. So we bite the bullet and accept that if we want Western-style conveniences and quality we'll have to put up with the ticky-tacky tourist stuff that goes with it.

We are now late in the season, and are going to have to work hard and make tracks for Singapore. Our late start from Darwin really has screwed us up, though if we hadn't been so late we wouldn't be cruising with NED KELLY, who are two of the best cruising companions we've met in a long, long time. So good news/bad news, as usual.