The original plan was to hang around the hotel the first day, maybe go to a market, then scuba dive for 3 days in the Gili islands that are just off the coast of Lombok, then maybe go see a few waterfalls and get a sense of the rest of the island the day after before heading to Jakarta.
Breakfast at the hotel (included in our room rate):
Unfortunately, it wasn't a buffet, but a menu where you could pick and choose - not too many local options - mostly Western options.
A poor photo of mie rebus - chicken soup with some sambal - L to R, sweet soy sauce, chopped chilli, sambal terasi (made with shrimp paste). The hotel restaurant staff were very nice but were reluctant to provide me with sambal or chilli. I was surprised when it arrived without sambal to begin with, so when I asked for it they looked at me like I was asking a ridiculous question like "can you pour milk in this?" Also, many times when I would ask stuff in Bahasa (trying to practice in the safe atmosphere of the hotel), many times they didn't understand me - but it turns out it's because many didn't speak Bahasa! Either they spoke Sasak - which is a local language only used on Lombok, equivalent to Balinese in Bali - or they weren't Indonesian at all.
Some of the restaurant workers' English was great, but not all. For instance, this one server didn't understand if you asked for "2 soft poached eggs" - at that, she pointed to the menu asking if my wife wanted "2 eggs any style" which is how the menu described it. She obviously didn't understand that "any style" is a qualifier and not in itself the description. So, she ordered 2 eggs any style and the waitress went back to the kitchen, only to return to ask how she wanted it. The interesting things you see when traveling....
Anyway, at least the restaurant had a nice view!
High tide in the morning....
Other weird things that morning, we also had some freshly squeezed pineapple juice but were told that they didn't have any sliced pineapple. We knew the pineapple juice was freshly squeezed because you could hear the juicing machine and when it arrived it had a lot of foam on top with pulp. Later on we were able to get it though...
Anyway, after unpacking a bit, we decided to get a Grab taxi (kind of like Uber) to take us the 25 minutes or so to Ampenan - the closest of the 3 cities which have merged to create the current capital of Lombok, Mataram. Unfortunately, it completely skipped my mind that it was Friday (a typical day off in Muslim cultures) so the main market was basically closed and a smaller market only had a few of the vendors. I was looking for a few specific things on this trip - I wanted a cobek/ulekan - a traditional mortar/pestle used in Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore which is more like a flat dish than a deep bowl, dried versions of some of the local chillis because I'm not allowed to bring home seeds or fresh chillis due to US rules but I can bring home the dried chillis, even if they contain seeds... also, I had wanted to bring home more fresh kencur (sand ginger) since it is unavailable in the US in fresh or frozen form.
Some shots of the smaller market:
On the hunt....
We couldn't find any vendors selling mangoes or mangosteen to bring back to our hotel (damn you Friday!) but I did find someone selling kencur:
This was the rhizome vendor. Here, I'm asking her if she had any larger pieces of kencur as all she had upfront were very small ones. She did have some behind her, and put some in the pot to show me, which I bought. Then she tried selling me jahe (ginger) and lengkuas (galangal), saying that I need to get all of them. So I did a mediocre job of explaining that I don't live there but wanted to bring it home and can't get kencur but I can get the others easily so I don't need to buy them. Unpictured is a woman just off camera to the right who was asking the rhizome seller "how is this white guy speaking Bahasa?" Thank you DuoLingo! I was happily surprised how well I did in communicating - usually I find myself tongue tied for at least the first half of the trip.
I found another vendor who had some dried "cabe merah besar", literally big red chillies, but I can get those at home (or something similar) so after asking her if she had the ones I was looking for (again to more confounded looks which I always find fun) which she didn't, we left the market.
Due to my wife's ankle (and the fact that it was like 100degF outside with no shade anywhere), we didn't want to walk around Ampenan more than we had to. I had wanted to go to a local restaurant that served Ayam Taliwang - which is a grilled chicken dish that is like the official dish of lombok - but the little we saw of the city showed that most places were closed and it was hard to get a taxi in that area since so few people were out and about. So when we did finally find another taxi after standing around in the heat for 20 minutes, we decided to just go back to the hotel as we didn't know if we went to a place and found it closed if we'd be able to get another taxi to take us back.
More deserted city.....
Back at the hotel in time for lunch:
A muddled ginger drink
Ikan Bakar JK - some type of fish with raw shallot/tomato sambal with stir fried water spinach
Ayam kendari - grilled chicken with tamarind and cumin with plecing kangkung - a water spinach salad made from blanched water spinach topped with a fresh chilli sambal - this is a very common side dish to Taliwang in Lombok.
The lunch menu:
The prices, for a hotel, aren't that bad - currently about 16,500 IDR to 1 US$, especially considering the view
Hidden by haze are the volcanoes of eastern Bali - they'll be visible later on....
