Travel Day 670 – Mataram to Senggigi on Lombok, INDONESIA
Mataram as the capital city of Lombok was quite a busy town and not really the kind of place to linger, but I had something else on my agenda anyway…
Sunset at Sengiggi Beach on Lombok
My Indonesia visa was running out soon and since there was supposed to be an immigration office in Mataram, I intended to find it and see what it took to get an extension. Luckily all it took to reach Kantor Imigrasi, the immigration office, was a cheap bemo ride towards the local airport and a short walk along Jalan Udayana. But as it turned out, I was travelling already for too long to actually pay attention to the names of weekdays, and so I found myself slightly embarrassed in front of the closed office on a Saturday morning…
Since the visa plan didn’t work out in our favor and since there was not much else to be seen in Mataram, we decided to do at least some errands at the local shopping mall. While I normally hate shopping malls, in this case it was quite convenient, not only because there were some travel agencies located that we could get information from, but also because there was free wifi available…
Local Families at Sengiggi Beach
After not having had the chance the go online for a couple of days, this way we could at least use the morning efficiently while researching some cheap flight options to leave Indonesia. And so it came to no surprise that it was until well after lunch that we finally decided to leave Mataram and catch a bemo up the coast, towards the much hyped beach town Senggigi. But unfortunately due to its popularity, all hotels in Senggigi seemed to be either full, too expensive, or completely run down…
Overall it was not easy to understand why Senggigi was famous, as the beach seemed decent at most and the whole waterfront was occupied by big fancy tourist resorts. And while we finally enjoyed a stroll along a the beach during sunset time, it became quite obvious that Senggigi was probably a great getaway spot for local families and tourist groups, but not so much a backpacker destination. Only the many little street vendors on the main road made up for it and provided at least some really good local dinner options…
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