The final journey part 2: the lost hour(s) of Lombok

We managed to return back to Singapore this morning in one piece- but barely. I'll begin of the last five days tales with a summary of our time spent on Lombok and how we literally and harmlessly lost an hour on this quiet remote paradise.

Pat and I left Singapore Friday morning in a state of exhaustion (one that continues...) after an evening enjoyed dining and chatting outside in this generally delightful climate. In spite of leaving his place less than two hours before the flight, we make our first leg to Jakarta with no hassles. Soekarno International in Jakarta is another story. After numerous trips there in the last two and a half months, I am convinced that place is the 8th circle of hell.. It's hot, lacks edible food options and terminals are poorly marked/painfully confusing. I'm glad Pat is put through this so he can see first hand the truth about this situation.

Lombok time zone is one hour ahead of Jakarta, unclear how it is actually the same time zone as Singapore. This confused me all along, I managed to reset my iPhone so I'm keeping accurate time, but something clearly got lost in this change. It's probably easy to see where this is going.

Miraciously we arrive at our hotel in Senggigi beach, Lombok, the Qunci Villas. My plug for this place: it is paradise. Perfect. Quiet, fantastic service, just enough other tourists around but very few in general. Sempurna, perfect. I repeat. And its cheap to live like a King, American couples should make the extra trip over here (forget Hawaii!!!!) to honeymoon. It's just perfect.

We find a delightful dinner in the small town and stumble upon the Happy Cafe, a bar and restaurant with live music nightly. Pat and I saddle up, sing along, and after an hour or two or three goes by I'm convinced the bar closes early and I'm not happy. Regardless, we wander home, wake up for our PERFECT breakfast overlooking the beach and what turns out to be the boat we arranged to go snorkeling on the Gili islands, another perfect little quiet paradise.

Pat admiring the breakfast burrito



We planned to leave at 9, but the hotel informed us at breakfast that it was OK to leave at 10. Sounds fine to us, we're clearly not in a rush and are thankful for fantastic service from the staff who can solve all of our problems.

Our boat which is awesome.



We set out for an hour to Gili Meno island, snorkel for a while, snag a few shots of turtles, and make our way to Gili Air for a relaxing lunch at Paradiso.. literally what our private little cabana stand is called.





After lunch we snorkel again in far shallower water and our guide gives us bread to feed the fish. Both of these situations seem like a bad idea but in the absence of regulation, why not? The fish were so close and beautiful it felt as if we were swimming along with them in a tropical aquarium.



We return home around 4:30pm which is perfect timing, or so I think, for my scheduled 5pm massage. Tough life. Massages across Asia are outrageously cheap and it seems silly not to indulge while you're here. I head over for said appointment and am told that I am ONE HOUR late and the masseuse already went home for the day. I am so devastated and finally all of the day's mistakes make sense: my thought of the bar closing early, our changed departure time.. I never changed my cell phone to reflect the new time zone. But because nothing can go wrong in paradise, as I'm walking back to the room, defeated and disappointed, I find another woman who offers me an hour massage for even cheaper than the hotel, so I got my treatment after all.

Dinner in town yet again is perfect (proving that food tastes better in paradise) and we find ourselves yet again at the Happy Cafe. This time the bartenders embrace our return, and a less rowdy crowd leads Pat and I to chat it up with them- everything from Indonesian weddings to what its like to wake up in such a beautiful place everyday to why the hell its so hard to get a US visa as an Indonesian citizen. This turns into another too late evening.. accompanied by a karaoke session (similar to our Fourth of July celebration's ending!) that we won't soon forget with Li and Henru the bartenders. A little glimpse about how we wasted away the evening.





This would've been all well and good, but we had a 7am flight to Bali.. this was the scene a few hours later when we somehow found our way ON TIME to the airport. Good thing I figured out the time change before the flight out.

Note: Pat and I are in the same clothes as the night before, you can't see here but the boarding passes are hand-written (only in Indo) and thankfully the flight had a cool 56 seats- just enough to make me not feel nauseous.





Many more pics from the island, snorkeling, Happy Cafe and adventures in Bali to come soon!