It does not take end in the rainy season in Lombok, though the storm is yet to interrupt. The air, heavy with moisture, collects withduring my elbow pits and rests givenfor my top lip like milk. Even the breeze is dense and sticky. A horse and cart rattles down the narrow road then a scuffed moped, its driver resting using a cushion of unplucked chickens. Is this fact small, self-sufficient volcanic island really becoming, as its embryonic tourist board suggests, the new Bali?
Twenty minutes away by air, Bali is bursting. In 2012 the continent is targeting 7 million foreign tourists – traffic jams block the streets, hotel complexes happen to be built over paddy fields, visitors tweet in regards to the pollution. But Lombok, one in all 27 provinces inside the Indonesian archipelago remains, or else untouched, then certainly unbruised. In 1966 50, 000 people died of famine upon the island ; one hopes the slow infusion of foreign wealth will prevent that happening again. Over time the island is primed for tourism annually, but it is really only now, as plans to have an international airport and also a $600m project helping put 10, 000 luxury villas on Lombok's southern coast take shape, the industry is showing real growth – boutique hotels spread tastefully all around the coast.
From a 13-hour flight, my boyfriend and I use the three-hour connection from Singapore to Lombok, where we queue for $25 tourist visas and emerge exhausted straight into the dusty wetness of your busy dusk. It is a two-hour journey to Sekatong Bay, where Cocotinos recently became the very first hotel to open upon the island's east coast. We drive through Mataram, the island's capital, then out with the villages, where covered platforms line the roads and work as parasols for Lombok's weary workers. From shelves on every roadside house children sell mismatched glass bottles of moped fuel and packets of nuts. The hotel's rickety pier strikes with the dark sea as a fallen Christmas tree, by candlelight we eat our first nasi goreng, a fried rice dish that is served for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Daily later, we travel west to Senggigi, the closest thing Lombok has into your holiday resort. Every drive here is inside the shadow of Mount Rinjani, an active volcano that tourists can camp on to photograph the sunrise and honeymoon energetically. We pass paddy fields where women stand in conical hats, casually thrashing the rice while their babies run naked through puddles. Given by a distance I see a glint of silver in the highway – once we approach I realise it is a blanket scattered with tiny drying fish. It's as a sequined jacket discarded after a celebration.
Senggigi is really a concrete collection of karaoke bars and red-chested men. This really is what Lombok might appear as if when the island wasn't 80% Muslim – the Hindu culture in Bali is much more welcoming to those seeking all-day happy hours and bikini competitions, though it's Lombok's modesty that locals hope will make sure which it does not crumble beneath the weight of tourists. We stay at one in all Senggigi's mid-priced hotels, Qinci Villas, wherein the tide can be seen in up to now it splashes diners inside the restaurant. Hawkers shout up coming from the beach, selling their local pearls and sarongs at " special sunset prices ". Restaurants the hill provide a taxi service coming from the hotels, which we use to visit Warung Manega, a seafood restaurant sat snugly upon the shore. They barbecue fish over coconut husks and serve it accompanied by colanders of rice and salads of water spinach – an enormous platter of squid, king prawns and fish costs around 100, 000 rupiah, below £8. Tip : if, inside your excitement at selecting the most important prawn you've got ever seen, you drop it inside the sand, rinse with Bintang beer. It'll still taste better than most dinners you've got enjoyed.
The posher hotels, we learned that night, cost more because they are built further far from the mosques – mosques that broadcast their call to prayer very loudly from 4. 30am until breakfast. A blogger upon the island recalls a recent story during which a hotel owner " dared to suggest into your local village meeting that perhaps they might turn the volume down slightly upon the prayer chant. The police subsequently arrested him. " The blogger continued : " He received death threats and his villas were looted. To date nobody is arrested to the destruction to property. Lombok is really a whole different kettle of fish from Bali. "
Jeeva Klui A way of calm at Jeeva Klui.
At Qinci, mosquitos slap juicily against the mirror, there won't be televisions to watch once the storm finally breaks and also the air conditioning spits an oddly urinary smell with the vents. We're happy to shift on round the coast, past stands selling grilled jagung bakar (corn upon the cob) and also a bar where a covers band improves U2 songs by slurring the lyrics into your stream of pure emotion, to Jeeva Klui, a boutique hotel that shimmers with calm. Each morning we obtain a lift straight into the local market – upon the way, we're reminded that to point along with your left hand can cause offence, and I kinda feel as foreign as snow, a sense that returns whenever I meet locals, my hulking white body towering above their 5ft heights.
At the marketplace, women sit upon the floor rebalancing their bananas and komak beans inside the shade associated with an umbrella. Chillis (the Indonesian translation of Lombok) cascade from baskets, topless boys hack coconuts into neat skull-shaped hunks, rice and salt are weighed by hand and, in a very very vast dark warehouse, meat is presented red and semi-alive on heaving trestle tables. The island grows everything it, and each village has its speciality : one produces tofu from its bean curd, another makes dried shrimp paste, another is famous ready for its salted shark. All can be found here, alongside cages of live cocks, being sold not-so-secretly for fights. We walk past the cidomos (the tiny horses and carts) and via a fisherman's village, where thatched shacks squat metres far from the ocean and narrow boats (jukung) are tethered after they've delivered their red snapper.
Gili Eco Villas Gili Eco Villas upon the island of Gili Trawangan. Photograph : Christopher Leggett
The tiny Gili islands are visible direct from shore, with Gili Trawangan (the foremost developed) a preferred backpackers' destination. We skid across the ocean within a rickety speedboat and hail a cidomo upon the jetty. There aren't any cars or fresh water upon the Gili islands, but in order to make up for it there will be lots of Australian teenagers singing Katy Perry songs. Our dwarfish horse totters us drunkenly to Gili Eco Villas, a collection of houses on the far end in the island in which the tiny rooms contain not much more compared to a mosquito-netted bed. Upon the beach, snorkellers and divers coo over coral, so we watch clouds gather given by a bar on stilts within water. Once the storm comes, It's so strong it cuts the electricity, so we sit at midnight with a wall-less roof and watch lightning rip along the ocean. The surface bathroom is alive with frogs and also the mirrors steam up with thick tropical heat. After we get hungry, we pick with the forest, pausing within a wet huddle between flashes, and eat nasi goreng with a bamboo canopy.
Each morning, everything is sodden, and everyone is asleep. Back upon the west coast of Lombok, another stormy night inside the eccentric Puri Mas hotel means We're tied towards the balldancing-themed bar, where a neighborhood band persuades my boyfriend to hitch them in hours of Elvis covers.
Tugu Lombok, our sixth hotel, looks adore it was carved by talented giants. Spectacular and beautifully grand, with colourful traces of Dutch colonialism, it features ancient statues of Hindu gods scattered among the daylight loungers, and the ocean is clear enough to discover blue fish nodding past your knees. We're woken by birdsong and pad into the surface bathroom which consists of huge copper bath.
We spend one last night along the bay at the well-known Oberoi. The island's first luxury hotel is really a temple of elegant excess, where a waiter watches sunbathers discreetly, sweeping over with sorbet on banana leaves once they begin to sweat. The air is cleaner here, the money evident. Cycling away from the gates past the corrugated iron shacks that constitute nearby villages, I kinda feel like my comparative wealth is visible as a guilty blush. I'd heard stories about Indonesians further inland throwing rocks at tourists, however we encounter only curiosity from the ladies resting by an open road and excitement direct from uniformed schoolchildren who run alongside our car, thumbs raised. Our final meal, a rijsttafel – an Indonesian feast – is served over the stream within a candlelit hut. From the pool an orchestra of local children pluck traditional (if atonal) songs while women dance slowly.
Upon the solution to the airport we stop in Pusuk Forest, where grey monkeys swarm by my feet for peanuts. The wider ones swipe the nuts far from small ones, who lurk, hoodie-like, from the car. Once we drive away, I am convinced I see one swear.
Essentials
Audley's Indonesia specialists (01993 838110 ; audleytravel. com) can tailor make an itinerary to Lombok to incorporate a mix of the hotels Eva stayed in. Fifteen days including flights with Singapore Airlines from London or Manchester cost from £1, 995 per person dependant on two sharing
