Lombok blog. To resume items from the past:

August 7, 1994.

Spent four nights and three days on Lombok, arriving July 31 in the late afternoon. Had some trouble finding a place to stay. Eventually, we cam across the Hello Homestay, a set of cinderblock rooms with no amenities of any kind, except a bed and a small toilet alcove. But there were no bedbugs, and the proprietor was friendly. Early the next morning, I got up and found a more pleasant and somewhat more expensive place (20,000 rupiah/night), reserved a room –- a cottage with a little porch, including large bed with colorful mosquito nets –- and returned to collect Yuriko and the bags. The proprietor of Hello Homestay had a kind of resigned look as we paid him his 10,000 Rp. Probably everybody leaves his airless, depressing rooms after exactly one night. Hope he can raise the scratch to improve the place someday.

The new place, just down the main (only) road in the town of Kuta, was across this road from an odd, pebbly beach, covered with little round stones about the size of pinheads. On August 1 we took a bemo about three miles east to an extraordinary fine-white sand beach curving around a shallow, clear-water inlet. Closer to a population center, as say the Bahamas are close to North America, the beach would be infested with hotels and condos, some quite expensive. Here on Lombok, no. The only other people besides us were two British girls and a sarong salesman on a bicycle. We bought a fine green-blue sarong from him for small money.

Returning from this beach on another bemo, I sat next to a little old brown woman who took an unexpected interest in my arm muscles and leg hair, inspecting them with her fingers. She snorted at the flabbiness of my arm, unimpressed.