5/24/10 (ubud)

Ubud – Padang Bai – Lembar – Senggigi

We left our home stay early in the morning to catch our 7am Perama bus to Padang Bai. The ride to Padang Bai was pretty quiet as most people went back to sleep. When we arrived at Padang Bai we were told that we needed to wait an hour before we could board the ferry. After an hour we were directed to the loading dock but the ferry hadn’t arrived. We waited another hour before we saw a glimpse of the ferry coming. I guess they don’t call it the slow boat for nothing. We could’ve opted for the fast boat, which takes over an hour but it was $100 more. Once we boarded the ferry it chugged along to Lombok for four hours. I hadn’t realized till Jon told me that Lombok was only 35 km from Bali so you can imagine how slow the ferry was going. There were very basic seating on the ferry and it also transported big cargo trucks. There were mats you can rent to sleep on and snacks/drinks to purchase. Once we arrived in Lembar we hopped on a Perama bus to Senggigi. There weren’t that many people so we were able to spread out on the bus since there was no air-conditioning.

Once we arrived in Senggig we were exhausted and hungry since we hadn’t eaten anything all day except for some crackers. But we couldn’t relax yet. We hadn’t booked a place to stay so Jon walked around town scoping out hotels while I made a few phone calls. We found a hotel, Mascot Beach Resort, near the Perama station that offered decent accommodations for a reasonable price. There were some very nice hotels but we were trying to stay within a good budget. The rooms were a bit run down but it offered air-conditioning and hot water and it was right at the beach. It was a nice luxury to have some a/c since our home stay in Ubud only had a ceiling fan.

After we settled in our room we walked down the main street for some dinner. We found a nice little restaurant called Angels. Then we dropped off our laundry at a scuba dive shop that also offers laundry service. Even though we didn’t do much except sit on a bus or ferry we were beat and ready for a good night sleep.