My first day out in Lombok was a cultural and historic day in Lombok’s capital city Mataram. Today’s guide was Alan. He arrived with a 17 year old student of tourism in tow.
First stop was the impressive State Museum of West Nusa Tenggara. As would be the theme of the day, Alan handed us off to what would be our best guide of the day. I do wonder whether the guides are there to also expedite each stop as it did feel kind of rushed. It's definitely worth a visit when in Lombok, plenty of good information with English descriptive plates.
Our second stop was at the local market at Cakranegara. Upstairs was filled with food vendors, fresh fruit, nuts, alive fish and lots of not so fresh chickens. Nothing too exotic so no bats or snakes here, but the smell around the not so much fresh meat was a bit of a shock to my smell receptors.
Downstairs were much safer wares likes shoes, fabrics and assorted trinkets. We walked through the whole place fairly quickly, though the locals were happy to smile and pose for the camera.
Just over the road was the Meru Temple. A hindu temple, owned privately, where our guide walked us around. His English was very hard to understand, though it wasn't hard to hear the contempt in his voice as he tried to get a reaction from the information he gave me. The place itself wasn’t very impressive on the temple tourism scale. The disappointing visit came to a head when he demanded a donation for his time. I told him Alan would help him out, as was part of the tour package. I wasn't a fan of being held to ransom.
The second temple was round the corner, Jagatnatha Temple Mayura. A much more pleasant temple, open to the public (which makes a difference to the quality I find). It was a very short visit as our guide told us we couldn't go see the actual temple building, not even walk in the vicinity it seems. Nevertheless, there was a lovely artificial lake to look at.
We jumped in the car and headed over to Taman Narmada. Part temple, part park, part swimming pool and adventure spot. It was actually quite nice, it was also nice not being herded around buy a local guide.
The last stop was inclusive temple Lingsar. Inclusive in that all religious are welcome to pray alongside each other. This was also the busiest temple of them all. Requests for financial tips were plentiful, but attendees were very much friendlier.
I had dinner at upmarket Square Restaurant just north of my hotel where I indulged in the beef carpaccio, grilled prawn risotto and a delicious panna cotta. It literally blew my mind.
On my return to the hotel I popped up to the bar and found myself the only customer to the live band “The Calling”, who subsequently looked to me for song requests. I settled on Hotel California by the Eagles , Paint it Black by Rolling Stones and Angel by Jimi Hendrix, and it was bloody good.
