Senggigi Part II

Pool at SENTOSA Hotel

Day 67 – Senggigi, Lombok (09/10/2015)

“My wise words are words that are wise.” – Caleb’s wise words of the day

We enjoyed our breakfast and then we had to pack…again. It’s crazy how we didn’t stay in one room for more than one night for so long now. We hate it. The younger British couple was planning on going into Senggigi, so we shared a taxi with them. Our new place is called Family Garden Homestay. It’s not as nice, no pool, no A/C but the location is much better, it’s right in the center of Senggigi.

Our plan for today was to go swimming at a hotel. Some days ago when we were walking along Senggigi beach, we passed a big hotel with an incredibly big and amazing looking pool and apparently non-hotel-guests can pay IDR 60’000 per person, to use there pool and garden. We told the British couple about it and they said that they might come too. We went for lunch (yummy quesadillas) at Banana Tree, where we got two free glasses of water. Free! I’m already excited if someone doesn’t cheat but getting something for free is just awesome! 🙂

Then it was finally time for swimming. We went to SENTOSA hotel, paid 120’000, got two towels and got comfortable on our sun loungers. With the entrance fee you get a free orange juice, which we enjoyed in the pool. Unfortunately we were quite out of luck, about ten minutes after we got there, the weather started to get bad…for the first time since we’re in Indonesia and it had to be on the day we pay to use a pool. To make it worth spending the money, we stayed. We were playing “Millionaire 2015” (we got addicted), I was reading and napping. When we went into the pool again it started raining. After being in such a heat for weeks now, it was so exciting to feel the rain on our skin.

On the way back to the homestay, Caleb wanted to get a coffee, which he got at one of those convenience stores. And you know what else we got? Snickers! You might think “why is she writing such a detail down. No one cares about that” but let me tell you, for us it wasn’t a detail, it was the first time we had chocolate since we left Switzerland and we enjoyed it like we haven’t eaten anything for days.

The plan for tonight was going to The Cowshed with Alex and Anna, the British couple. We agreed on meeting there at 7:30 pm. It was quite far away and we didn’t have a scooter, so we asked at the homestay if it’s possible to just have one for about three hours. We got one for IDR 25’000, which was cheaper than a taxi would have been. When we got there, we got a nice surprise, the other British couple came too. I almost felt a bit like back in the days when I was on rotation. It’s so great when you meet cool people, seriously one of the best things that happen when you’re travelling. The Cowshed is such a cool restaurant. It’s in a big barn, the owner is Australian, the menu is full of meat and when you read it, it feels like you’re in America. All the meat is imported from Java, which is apparently much better and the food really was delicious. We had garlic bread as a starter and it was amazing. It was real bread!  After that we had burgers with fries, which was great too and for dessert I had a super yummy, fresh strawberry milkshake and Caleb had a doughnut with vanilla ice cream that tasted heavenly. The fresh fish that we had on Gili Air is no longer our most expensive meal, tonight we paid IDR 300’000 (CHF 21), which was a bit shocking at first but it was worth it.