Villa Ombak. Checked.

It was my first visit to one of my beautiful country exotic islands, Gili Trawangan. I took a tour, semi backpacking. We travelled from Java to Lombok by bus. It was my first visit to an island on the eastern part of Indonesia. FYI, Indonesia has 17, 508 islands with 5 large islands of Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Celebes and West Papua. Gili Trawangan is among the lesser Sunda islands in West Nusa Tenggara islands range. When we had lunch on the beach, munching to some local food, one of the guides said the most obnoxious sentence I ever heard on an island. He said; “Villa Ombak is the best hotel in here. It is where the bule stays.” Well, bule is just a nickname locals gave to foreign tourists who have golden hair and white-colored skin. Usually, when we played under the sun for a long period of time, our black-colored hair would turn to a bit reddish. That was when our parents start saying that our hair turned to bule in color. So, when our ancestors (or whoever invented that term) saw blonde tourists, they must have been lack of vocabularies that they named those people, bule. Anyway, as I said earlier, it was so obnoxious. I refused to admit that there was a place in which only bule people can stay. And I made a pact to myself to visit this place, Villa Ombak.

So, last January, I went to Lombok with my friend. On our itinerary, I wrote with bold, Villa Ombak. It was my first time visiting this island by myself. I knew already that Villa Ombak was located on the left side of the harbor … or … that site where the boats stopped. With our hugh backpack on our back, it was a pain staking effort to walk there. Well, I knew it was on the left side, but I had no idea how far it was from the dock to the villa. We just tried our best, then in the middle of the road, we stopped a Cidomo. Cidomo is the local transportation. It is almost like a carriage in a very modest way. You will know what I mean, when you ride it. Surprisingly, we cannot bargain with the driver or rider or … mas-mas, in local dialect. We were so upset because he put 40, 000 IDR for just one trip to the villa. Man! That’s a robbery! That was a price for a nite stay in a shanty room in this island.

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this is my first tap on my wordpress. what does it mean? well, it simply means aside from typing i will be tapping aswell.