When I grandly announced to my family at dinner recently that I was moving to Lombok for hopefully the rest of my life, they barely raised their interest from the left over fruit-cake and custard we had begun to eat for desert. My sister responded with “About bloody time”, my nephew added “No surprise” and my niece simply demanded I live on a beach with lots of “hunky surfers”. My decision to move to Indonesia seemed more of a revelation to me than those who knew me. I guess after twenty five years of ever increasing lengths of stay it was a natural progression to finally try and do it, and I suppose if things don'’t work out I would at least be happy in the knowledge I had the courage to pursue my dreams.
This dream had been becoming more vivid in recent years as I struggled in the grey fog of western drudgery. I find living in Australia incredibly sterile as well, and everything runs on time, and everything is so clean and manicured, and to be perfectly honest I feel one’s worth as an individual there is judged to be directly proportional to the make or model of the car he or she drives or the address in which it is parked. Yep, bugger it, I’m selling my 1982 Datsun and I’m off.
Now, I don’t believe the realization of my dream would have come about so soon if it weren’t for a good beating I had recently received in Cambodia. I’ll spare you the gory detail, but it was from this incident and the accompanying plates and screws I had placed in my arm, that I needed a few weeks of complete rest to give my shattered bones time to heal. I had often passed through Lombok on my overland trips from Sumatra or on my way to the Gilli Islands, but other than that no real time had been spent there so I decided I would go and stay in Kuta for just under a month and just see how little a person could actually accomplish if they really tried. As it happens I found there the perfect place to take my desired sloth to levels perhaps never before seen. With a thousand DVD’s, a library, room service and beer Made’s and Gemma’s Mimpi Manis offered the perfect environment for my lazy recovery. But more than that, it was from here I discovered the charm and joy of southern Lombok. I call the effect it had on me the Goldilocks effect, everything felt just right. I shan’t ramble on about the place as a young women might ramble on about her first love, but I will say one thing “GO”!!! Just go.
So yes, I am soon to be a Lombokian and that thought brings with it a calmness and presence of being I haven’t felt in a very long time, probably not since an experience I had in Thailand in the late eighties which I will refrain from going into too much detail about here.
Cheers
Hammockman
Thu Dec 30, 2010 11:34 am
