Bali to Lombok

Playing with boys on swan rocking horses.

Transport Lombok style.

Monkey in the forest.

A rice paddy - spot the eels and frogs.

Full grown rice.

Terraced rice paddy fields.

Calling the holy eel.

We finished our circuit of Bali, back in the main city, Denpasar. On the way from Lovina, on the north coast we visited a centre for disabled people. People who are handicapped at birth are given a home in the centre. They get education and training in a range of skills. All speak English well and many make handicrafts or paint. They cooked lunch for all our party then showed us round the centre after giving us a presentation of their daily lives and activities – including scuba diving!. The whole atmosphere of the centre is happy and welcoming and we all felt we had made some new friends. The last stop was a beautiful  temple on a small island just off the coast.

Our new friends at the centre.

The bear made a friend too!

Off to Lombok.

Temple on an island

Our next stop was Lombok, another Indonesian island, about 30 miles to the east of Bali. Most people in Lombok are muslims and wherever we went we heard the call for people to pray sung from the tall minarettes found all over the island. Muslims have to pray 5 times a day and the first call is at 4.30 am, the people get up very early in Lombok!

Our boat arrived on a beach as there was no quay for it to moor to. The luggage had to be passed forwards and we had to jump off the front of the boat.

Our first stop on the way up the mountain, where we were staying, was another Hindu temple built for the royal family of Lombok hundreds of years ago. There was a temple for people of all religions to worship in within the main temple area and we asked the priest to make the eel appear in one of the ponds to bring us all good luck. The priest broke some duck eggs in the water and, after a lot of calling, a huge eel appeared, we were all lucky! On up the mountain, another dormant volcano, we saw our first wild monkeys. The trees are full of fruit and as few people live in the national park at the top of the mountain there are lots of monkeys. The rice paddies are on steep slopes and have to be terraced, with fast streams flowing between the fields. There are fish, frogs and eels in the wet paddies and as the crops ripen and the fields dry out people collect them to eat. We saw families threshing the rice after it had been harvested to get the grains from the stalks. The grain is then winnowed to get the husks from the grains and make it ready for cooking. There is no bread in countries like this where it is too hot to grow wheat. This means no toast for breakfast – just rice! It is too hot for potatoes to grow as well, so no chips for tea – just rice. There are plenty of spices like chillies, peppers, nutmeg, and mace, these are cooked with the rice and chicken to make interesting meals.