- Left – 8.00am
- 17th May 2015
- Miles rode – 74 (118km)
Waking up to the sound of my alarm clock was a shock but I was ready to move on. By 10am I was on the ferry to Lombok, a four hour crossing to what I hoped was a more remote island than Bali.
As we docked I could see Lombok was different, the port was in a village and there weren’t many cars on the road, it took an hour to get to Kuta on empty roads, the odd car and motorbike slowly and steadily moved towards their destination, crazy Bali was far behind me. Kuta is a small fishing village that’s starting to embrace tourism since the opening of the airport a few years ago, it feels like many places that haven’t been found by mass tourism, just travellers looking for something more. Unfortunately the beach isn’t that clean and I asked the locals why they left their rubbish everywhere, all but one lady looked at me as though I was mad. I talked to her for ages discussing the aesthetic and pollution implications and that western tourists will spend more money with her if she keeps the beach clean, she seemed to be the only person who understood this. I brought a beer and some food as she swept her beach hut cafe clean.
I checked into a small guesthouse which had bamboo huts. Sleeping out with nature is always the best.
Kuta feels like it’s on the cusp of turning from ‘cool off the beaten track’ Indonesian beach village to ‘about to see the developers move in’.
