Bali and Lombok

We have been through Bali and Lombok Islands in Indonesia. What to say without sounding negative – they can both boast of immense natural beauty, and in a way it was a big relief to get to a place where you can make yourself understood and are able to eat things are you familiar with. But I have to call it as I see it, and it’s no longer the tropical paradise it might have once been. In a way I think places like these can become victims of their own success. Tourists come, which provides commercial opportunities for the locals, which in turn makes the tourists happy as they have somewhere to stay and something to eat. But you can get too much of a good thing, and most of Bali has been massively overdeveloped. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it’s definitely not the chilled out sun beach and surf experience it once might have been. Would I come back? I think not, prefer to go back to Fiji.





This cultural side has been interesting though, Bali is the only Hindu island in Indonesia (Lombok, Sumatra and Java are Muslim, and Flores, Sumbawa and Timor are Christian). The architecture of the temples is impressive and reminds me a lot of what I saw in Nepal. Here is one temple that has been carved out of rock about a millennium or so ago: