I’d first heard of Lombok watching videos about Bali and saw a number of videos comparing Lombok to Bali. The sentiment was that Lombok was how Bali had been 20-30 years ago. This sounded interesting as many people were saying that Bali was now overcrowded and spoiled with terrible traffic, and suffered very badly from overtourism.
On Lombok they said you could still experience a tropical island with beautiful beaches, quiet roads and a laid back island feel. A taxi driver later told me, you go to Bali to party and go to Lombok to chill.
So when I considered visiting Indonesia it was always Lombok I thought of first, and when I went to Indonesia it was Lombok I first visited.
The island is slightly smaller than Bali at less than 50 miles across. Some parts of the island you may have heard of are the Gili Islands in the north west, Sengiggi on the north west coast, the huge Mount Rinjani volcano in the north east, the main city of Mataram in the west, and the beaches of the south around Kuta.
For my trip I had 6 nights on the island and I chose to visit the south around Kuta. See the photos in the phototrips section. There will more coming about this in a video shortly I will link below. If you want to see the whole of the island I think you would need three weeks or more.
Getting to Lombok from Europe was quite straightforward by flying through Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. It is about a three and a half hour flight from KL and worth getting a window seat for.
The flight passes over the chain of islands of Indonesia and you can look down at these exotic islands passing below you so far from Europe. Getting close to Lombok you may see the peak of Mount Rinjani if it is not hidden in the clouds.
Customs was quite slow but I had been prepared for this and then out into the scrum of taxi drivers vying to give you a ride. I had prebooked my taxi, so I just had to find my guy with a sign with my name on.
It was night time by the time we left the airport and only half an hour drive to the south of the island. There was quite a bit of traffic on the road but it was moving at a good pace. I was surprised to see many scooters without lights on, which seemed kind of risky from a european point of view.
If you are heading to the north west of the island it might take longer as the airport is slightly to the south but I wouldn’t think it would take more than an hour or so.
I did my best to eat local while I was on Lombok, and found Nasi Goreng, Nasi Campur and Soto Ajam quite easily. Indonesian dishes with a number of different types of food around rice. Many of them came with an egg on top, which seemed novel at first, but after 5 meals with egg on I was starting to look for food without eggs as I don’t eat them very often.
I had stayed in a budget hotel in Kuala Lumpur and I decided to stay a bit more upmarket on Lombok. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn’t think I’d be getting back there for many years, if at all. Compared to UK prices, hotel rooms were very reasonable, even higher end ones.
I travelled solo in Lombok and didn’t have any issues. People were friendly and quite happy to talk to a lone Brit.
Lombok was all it had been promised, and after a few days I started to relax after months of work. Chilling in the pool, walking on the beach, and eating good food. I was sad to leave but the trip had more to come, in the next location – Bali.