Lombok, akhirnya!!!!!

Wednesday morning, just spent the early morning watching the waves roll in on the beach. This is day 3 in Indonesia, on the island of Lombok. It started Monday night when I flew into Bali. There I was met by a family friend, Suraya, a fun, tough, independent Balinese woman who is business partners with my aunt in Seattle. She is 39, though you'd never know there is a difference in our ages. She had SMS'd me earlier saying, "I hope you're only bringing one bag, because we're taking a moto to the ferry terminal!" so, I scaled down my packing to almost nothing. Was actually quite a liberating feeling!

Met Sur at the airport, and we "naik moto" to have dinner and meet her friend in Denpasar. Can I just say I am in makanan (food) heaven! Every meal I've had here has been nothing short of amazing! Gado-gado for dinner, sweet rice, tea, fresh fruit for breakfast... absolutely delicious! Really different from food in Malaysia. Anyway, from there we hopped on the moto and headed off into the cool Balinese night air. We rode about 70 km to the terminal, which resulted in a sore bum for me... but traveling through the night like that, you experience the sounds and smells of a new place like no other. The flowers, the food, even the smoke of cooking fires. It's really magical.

I guess I was under the impression that the ferry ride was an hour or something. Mistaken impression that is... We got to the terminal and queued up with all the other locals who who were on bikes. Teenagers, a handful of other westerners, and families of three, four, and five all sharing single motorbike. Beautiful sleepy kids running around mom and dad as we all waited to board the ferry. Sur and I quickly found a place at the top of the boat and staked out a hard wooden bench to sleep on. A mom and her kids came and squeezed in by us, and, feeling guilty for taking up so much room, I moved down and let them have some of my space. When I turned onto my side, she nestled her two year old behind my knees. It was cold and windy up there, and I welcomed the extra body heat. The night was long, punctuated with periodic splashes of cold water on the face, blowing down from "atas" (the roof, up above). There were two men sleeping under the bench, and there was a funny moment when one of the guys was looking for his shoes and realized he'd pushed them overboard in his sleep!

At about 5 am, all the men on the deck with us got up and began washing in the sink to our left. I was drifting in and out of sleep, until I heard a strong, unmistakable voice beginning to sing the early morning prayer calls. I looked behind to see about 20-30 men being led in morning prayers by an older traditionally dressed muslim man. Aboard a ferry, at 5am, it is truly an amazing sight and sound.

After about 5 hours, the sun started to come up and all the cold and wet was worth it, as I saw the island, the fishing boats, and the port bathed in the early morning sunlight. We squeezed down below deck to get the moto, and made our way out onto Lombok. My first surprise was the ubiquitous horse drawn carts here, still used daily for transporting people, and goods to the market. The villages were alive with people starting their day. Kids going to school, women cleaning and cooking, men doing whatever it is they do... ;-) Sur drove me to a little corner stall where a woman was busily aking sweet rices for breakfast. It consisted of black, brown, and white sticky rice, then a cooked rice cake, coconut, and a sweet syrup over the top, neatly wrapped in a banana leaf. Amazing... delicious... We were in Mataram, Lombok's main city, where traffic lights are still rare, and people generally ignore the ones that are there...

After arriving at Surs place, neatly tucked back about a 10 minute walk from the beach, I slept for five hours before being awoken to have lunch with Sur and her aunt... then there was an afternoon walk down the beach, dinner of spring rolls and tofu from one of Surs favorite food stalls, and tea at Sur's friends place. Anya is french but has lived here in Lombok for 12 years, shes married to a local man and they have 2 kids. They have a woodworking business and their house is beautiful. Anya speaks flawless bahasa AND english, and had some reat suggestions for my thesis research. We'd have talked all night, but Sur was about to pass out from exhaustion, having not had the chance to rest that I did earlier...

And that is the trip so far... I'm so happy to be finally visiting Indonesia. I'll be headed back across to Bali in a few days, but rght now, I'm really enjoying the slow pace of Lombok... Everyone is so friendly, and there is so much opportunity for speaking Bahasa... which I'm just loving...