Lembongan Island: Part 2

As soon as I got off the boat and walked around the fishing village near the pier, I got this weird feeling like I was returned to the 80's. Not the western 80's with the side ponytails hairstyle for women and mohawks for men. But the Indonesian 80's. The greens, the houses, the children playing on the small streets. If you get inside an inhabitant's house, some of which rent rooms for visitors, you'll see women sweeping the yard with a sapu lidi (a sort of Indonesian style rake) and old-fashioned bedrooms and bathrooms with old furniture.

Anyway, I didn't do any research before leaving since the idea of going to Lembongan came from Pam just a few hours before we actually had to leave (it's really her style...). But I knew that the island was small and I thought it was best to rent a motorcycle first, then go around to find a good site to hang around for 2 or 3 days, and get an accommodation somewhere near.

Typical motorbike in Nusa Lembongan

So we got one motorbike not far from the pier, which later on appeared to be a real crappy motorbike. I hurt my right arm riding it for only an hour and I hurt the whole shoulders by the time I had to go back to Bali. But then I looked around and it seemed that almost all of the motorcycles in Lembongan are as crooked as the one I rented. Most of them don't have license plates on both front and back parts and they hardly function, really. Mine stopped in the middle of the forest when I was not with Pam and I literally freaked out! Some foreigners with their rented scooters passed me by and though they knew that I was in trouble with the motorbike, nobody stopped to help. Until there was this man coming with a bike looking even more broken than mine stopped before me and helped me start up my motorbike. He tried without any success. Another older man stopped too and both of them tried to get my motorbike to start. After half an hour full of sweat, it finally worked!!! I thanked both of them, especially the old man since he was actually the one who managed to fix it, and asked them what I could offer as a return. They said it was okay. It was only normal to help someone in trouble in the middle of a forest that had no such thing like a mechanic shop in near distance.

Very nice. However, being skeptical as any big city girl would, I kept thinking what the catch was. But for the moment I left them and felt thankful and grateful that I didn't have to get stranded in a forest alone in a new island I just explored for a few hours.