July 23rd : Lombok

How many ways can I type “we hung out on the beach, I read another Dragonlance book, we had snacks for tea”? I mean we also swam a bit?

On our last full day in Lombok, our main activity was a flower arranging course. This was mostly “how to cut and fold palm leaves in interesting patterns”. When I was a kid, my parents and I went to a music night at my school. I was pretty little- maybe eight? Nine? I don’t remember much at all from those days (or even when I was twenty, if I’m being honest) but this is a particular memory. The orchestra (symphony?) was playing peter and the wolf, but there was a “meet the musicians” feature as well. I met a violinist, she let me handle her bow (which was very nice of her) and draw it across the strings. She did all the fingering, and together we played twinkle twinkle little star. I went back to my parents convinced that I had played violin, and it wasn’t that hard, you just had to move the bow back and forth. It was only much later, reflecting on that, when I realized that the musician had done the fingering, and in fact I was not a violin virtuoso prodigy.

Anyway, this was just like that. We did a lot of work cutting and splitting, but our teacher was doing even more. He prepped all the palm leaves, and fixed our errors, and told us what to do. I still came out of the experience feeling like I had done something cool though, made something with my hands (and help, now that I am more capable of reflecting on my own skills in the moment).

Low tide at the resort sees a bunch of tidepools form. They’re different from SF tidepools (which are usually stone basins); these are grasses and piles of coral that form the pools.

I think there’s a free-access rule to the beach. Whether law or not, a lot of locals come to the beach, to fish or gather sea resources, or just have fun hanging out. I watched a starfish make very slow progress over the sandy bottom of a pool, while local kids splashed and played. It was lovely.

At the end of the day, after dinner (I had the steak; it was quite good, and the most expensive thing on the menu, at $30 - Indonesia has a very favorable USD conversion rate right now) we returned to find that our room had been decorated even further with flowers, towel animals, and candles. It was pretty great.