GypseasOnTheRoad
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OUR LOMBOK, INDONESIA TRAVEL GUIDE 🇮🇩
🕑 Added 2024-01-04 06:37:01 +0000 UTCWe just spent two weeks on the beautiful island of Lombok - a quieter cousin of Bali but still with enough to see, eat and do to keep you occupied. We really feel like it’s that sweet spot right now between being too remote/deas with not enough around to do and too busy, commercialized and overpopulated.
Pros of Lombok compared to Bali
- Slightly cheaper food and accommodation yet still some good options and variety to choose from
- No traffic and it feels much safer and easier to ride a scooter around
- Beautiful white sand beaches (unlike Balis mostly dark sand volcanic beaches) with crystal clear blue water and great snorkeling
- Quieter spots - empty beaches to yourself
- Way better surf than Bali
- More tropical jungle - less development
Cons of Lombok compared to Bali
- Less shopping and goods around to purchase
- You have to take an additional flight or ferry to get there from Bali
- Massages are about double the cost of in Bali ($15 aud per hour vs $8)
- Some things are more expensive because it is a more remote island - things like transport to/from the airport and ferry will cost you $20-30 aud each way
- Not a party or nightlife scene
- No beach clubs - only small beach earrings with local food, drinks and juices - great spots to hang out but not that fancy beach club vibe like Bali - think: squat toilets lol
Best time to visit: like Bali, Lombok has a wet season and a dry season - the best time to visit for guaranteed blue skies is the dry season around June - November. The best time for low season, cheaper accom rates and better surfing is the wet season from November - March. Tourism peaks on July which means more crowds
Best place to stay: everyone who visits the south stays in Kuta (which is nothing like Kuta in Bali). You can stay anywhere in town and you pretty much need to rent a scooter to get around. You can rent one for $5-7 aud per day depending on how long you rent it for (the longer the cheaper). We stayed at all of these hotels and liked all of them:
- Palm Green Hotel - individual bungalows, a variety of breakfast options included, a pool and greenery around. We enjoyed staying here but it is owned by locals and you can feel that in these of attention to detail (like some bath towels were rank, wifi didn’t work great in some rooms and the efficiency of the air conditioning varied in each room)
- Twinys hotel - this place almost had a hostel vibe because it’s small and social but the private bungalows are awesome. A nice pool, an all-day cheap restaurant, included breakfast, fast wifi and a rock climbing wall over the pool. (Photo 1)
- Dream co-work hotel - this place is perfect if you need to work while you’re there - wi-fi is super quick and they have a communal co-work space. Great restaurant all day and they do serve breakfast and coffee but it isn’t included. The pool was our favourite out of the 3 with comfy daybeds (photo 2) and the rooms are nice bungalows with outdoor bathrooms but we found the air con worked a little too well and they got freezing at night (first world problems we know)
Best beaches:
- Tunjung Aan is a great beach a 25 minute scooter ride from Kuta. It has amazing surf with a left and right breaking reef break and warungs on the beach where you can rent a board and catch a boat out to the break for $12 aud - it was our favourite place to surf! It has plenty of warungs to chill on a chair in the sand and get a $3 aud meal and cheap drinks. Our favouritees were the Pink Swing warung or the Sunshine Warung (photo 4)
- Pink Beach - this famous beach has a pink tint to the sand (photo 3) - though it’s mostly noticeable if you pick up the sand and see lots of pink bits of coral in it. It looks more white sand to the naked eye but no complaints on that! It’s a bit of a mission to travel to on scooter but we’ll worth it. There is no food and drink options on the beach other than one very average warung so bring your own snacks and cold drinks. We were the only ones there for a couple of hours in the morning - get there early to snag a spot under a tree for some shade. It’s about 1.25 hours scooter from Kuta
- Mawi beach - this beach has some good shortboard surf and a warung and is a 30-40 min scoot from Kuta. It’s a pretty quiet beach with beautiful sand but really only worth the trip if you’re a surfer or have a lot of time to explore.
Daily budget:
- Scooter rental: $5-7 aud ($3-4 usd) per day
- Warung meal: $3 aud ($2 usd)
- Western-style restaurant meal: $7-10 aud ($4-5 usd)
- Soy latte: $5 aud ($3.25 usd)
- Private room/bungalow: $50-100 aud ($30-60 usd) per night - this is during low season though
You can see the entire budget breakdown in our Lombok Travel guide YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/kANoVGDdTnc?si=Zzu72r2lEWiPqbMg
You can see our Top Lombok Beaches YouTube video here: https://youtu.be/W669bOJJzAY?si=kmowFQ3Eg95HV-_-
You can see our favourite restaurants in Lombok in our YouTube video: https://youtu.be/d8hlpd3hMeY?si=D9i6xwgaV3eKAoXN
For more info, You can see our Lombok vlog YouTubevideo here: https://youtu.be/QLQ6qAXNmOs?si=Ik2USEUpWPpOMrkE
We’ve also posted an extended Patreon version here that you can find under “exclusive vlogs”
Let us know if you are interested in more travel guides of the 12 countries we visited in 2023 and we’ll post more! We definitely recommend adding Lombok to your bucketlist especially if you are a longboard surfer or you love to travel to Bali but feel like it’s getting too busy now.
