'Express' to Lombok

  Padangbai, Bali, Indonesia
Monday, August 31, 2009

Padang bai was our port to Lombok (the next island to Bali). We’d arrived looking for a room and fortunately a place that Wim had recommended to us had a cancellation so we didn’t have to sleep on the beach..

The Topi Inn has a Dutch owner and has quite a cosmopolitan feel while still feeling very traditional

Topi Inn common room

Indonesian (all wood, bamboo and grass build) with a more eclectic menu than we’ve become used to. We booked an extra night to catch up on our planning for the next leg and to update the blog. Anton, our landlord, turned out to be really friendly, interesting and exceptionally helpful with recommendations of where we might go next and places to stay.

Topi Inn room

On our day in Padang bai we walked over a headland to the Blue Lagoon beach and went snorkelling – very difficult because of the waves and shallow waters over the coral and Sarah managed to scrape her knee so not in our top ten snorkel sites for sure. And the usual hoard of beach towel to beach towel salesmen to boot; not somewhere we’d rush back to.

We’d arrived with the aim of going straight on for several days on the Gilli Isles off Lombok but after various folks that had already been there telling us it was way too busy and expensive, we decided on an interim stop in Sengiggi at a place Anton recommended before deciding where to go next.

A new fast ferry service to Lombar, the Suranadi Express, was starting on the day we wanted to travel. Three times the price of the regular slow ferry but supposedly a one hour as opposed to a four hour trip so we’d get there early in the afternoon. We bit the bullet and booked a ticket fromTopi Inn and they included a transfer for us to the pier. One of the travel agents posters did give us some concern though: "Arrival some day".

Arrival 'some day'

Ay 10:30am our transfer arrived, two teenage lads on motorcycles. With each of us riding pillion with all of our our luggage (quite light loads for Asia) they drove us all of 75 metres to the pier! We were on time for the 11am sailing …… we only wish that the ferry was as it was nowhere in sight. At 12:30 it sailed into view and at 1pm we were on board. You’d expect some level of urgency to get it on its way but oh no, as it was their new boat they spent the next 45 minutes taking pictures of it at the dock. Eventually the crew boarded and we were on our way …… for about 5 metres until it grounded! With all of the delays the tide was now too low. We shuggled about for another 30 minutes, digging up great clouds of silt with the propellers before eventually scraping into a deeper channel. The advertised one hour journey then began and continued for the next two and a half hours. We finally arrived on Lombik around 4:30 pm. We really are starting to see Scotland’s ferry services in a new light.

After another 2 hours on two shuttle busses we finally arrived in Senggigi after dark to start looking for a room for the night.