Lombok - Honeymoon Trip - Activities (City Tour)

Salam all,

I've been procrastinating to blog for quite some time. My husband has advice me to write as if people is looking for info. So I should keep it simple and precise. 

We stay in Lombok for 5 days 4 nights. Arrive on Wednesday & return to Malaysia on Sunday. Air Asia direct flight to Lombok only available on these days - Sunday, Wednesday & Friday. The flight already took us around 3 hours & the hotel took around 1.5 hours from airport. So we only left 3 days to explore Lombok. Here in summary :-

Day 1 - Arrival - Arrive at Hotel around 2.00 pm (Lombok time is same with Malaysia)
Day 2 - City Tour
Day 3 - Massage at Puri Mas Spa Resort
Day 4 - Mataram Mall
Day 5 - Return back to KL - Return flight is on 12.15 pm

In this post, I will focus on the City Tour. This tour is arrange by the hotel & it cost us RP 435,000 (around RM 120). Among the places that we went in this City Tour are :-

i) Chinese Cemetery & Temple (This one you can skip as it is the same like in Malaysia)
ii) Fishing Village
iii) Craft Village
iv) Sasak Village
v) Kuta Beach

Fishing Village

Fishing Village - Not much activity done during our visit

Craft Village

Craft Village - How they craft their furniture & household items

Craft Village - The end product

Craft Village - Embroidery

Craft Village - The locals believe if the ladies don't know how to do this, they can't be wed

There are actually a video of me donning the sulam (embroidery) captured by my husband. However, the video is in my husband's playbook & now the playbook can't be switch on. Hopefully we can discover how to retrieve some pictures & videos from there. 

Sasak Village - Outside

Sasak Village - Inside

I think my most favorite is visiting Sasak Village and understanding their culture. Sasak people speak Bahasa Sasak, and only some of them can speak Bahasa Indonesia. Their house is made out of clay (tanah liat). In this house, girls will be sleeping inside while guys will be sleeping outside. (There are days that the husband & wife can sleep together)

To wed a girl, the guy need to take away the girl for a few days. When they return back, the guy will meet the girl's family. Then there will be ceremony to celebrate the wedding. This is the main reason why Lombok men take away so many Malay ladies to elope in the previous years. It is in their culture to do so. It just that they don't return back to discuss with the girl's family. 

The main economy of Sasak people is mainly agriculture. You can see a lot of paddy field in Lombok. So there are still a lot of green scenery to view there. 

Paddy field

Sasak Village - Kitchen

Sasak Village - Shared shower. All the villagers take shower here

Sasak Village - This is where they put all the paddy

Sasak People - This auntie want to take picture with us before we leave

Last but not least, a visit to Kuta Beach Lombok. (Yes Lombok also have Kuta Beach. Not only in Bali). During our visit, they were preparing for Bau Nyale Festival. Read about it here and here. But we don't manage to join the festival as we already return back to Malaysia.

There are many other activities that you can do in Lombok such as mountain climbing at Mount Rinjani & snorkeling at 3 Gilis (Gili Air, Gili Meno & Gili Trawangan). However, we skip that and explore the city. If you want to go to Bali, there's also a boat transfer from Bali to Lombok.

If we have the opportunity to go there again, we would love to go for snorkeling at the famous 3 Gili Islands. Hope you can benefit from this entry.  :)