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.

So finally, we were there. I had admit it, it was the biggest resort in this island, so far.

It was a big foyer but a bit gloomy. I guessed time did something to everything including to an expensive hotel. We were escorted to our rooms. They had plenty. They provided hammock on terrance or sleeping bench on veranda just to chill yourself down after a snorkeling or diving activities. Nice. The room was also nice, without FOX Crime unfortunately. Fresh complementary fruits and an invitation to a bikini beach party. So far so good, until you saw the bathroom. It was awkwardly  designed. The shower, the toilet, the basin, the wardrobe were weirdly separated, on top of that, very poor lighting. Guess, this was what you will get from an antique hotel. They just failed my expectation.

 

The night view were okay. After we had a tiring walk on the east coast of this island and booked an appointment to snorkel tomorrow we decided to get our dinner and walk around the resort. It was very quiet since all the visitors were on the bars. We were just too sea sick to get another bottle of beer. So we went around the pool and the resort. It was not bad. But it was not astonishing as I heard of it before.

In the middle of the night, I had to say, I was very disappointed with the service. They did not provide two blankets. So I had to suffer from a cold AC winds while my friend was tucking in her blanket. 😦 Thankfully the breakfast was nice. Yup, indeed, 90% of the resident were foreign tourist, bule. We stayed there two nights only. We spotted some new modern villas were being build there. If this villa did not improve its quality, I guessed they had to just let go their so-called valued guests.

It was indeed a great stay. But it was just a hotel with its degraded name. But, it was a hell of a white sand beach all over. That’s the most important thing. Till we meet again, Gili Trawangan! 🙂