Actually, it’s called Senggigi. Sounds nothing like Goggle, or Google or whatever Richard kept calling it, but I gave up telling him what the place was really called, so Goggle it shall now be known.
Anyway, Goggle / Senggigi was our second destination, this time located on the North West coast of Lombok. We were ultimately heading to Gili Air (more on that one the next post) but decided we didn’t really want to make the whole trip in one go so opted for a few days in Senggigi.
The internet would tell you that Senggigi is a relaxed beach town, that’s less busy and a bit less popular than some other beach destinations on Lombok, but a good place to enjoy a bit of R&R, even if it’s a bit ‘sleepy’.
Our Homestay was pretty decent and located a little off the main street, so nice and quiet and peaceful.
However, like we learnt in South America, what the blogs tell you and show you with their carefully choreographed photos and what reality is can be two quite different things! And we’d say Senggigi is one of those places! It is more or less one main street, with actually quite a lot of traffic buzzing up and down it all day. Not quite our description of ‘sleepy’. And the beach, whilst actually quite nice around the headland area (assuming you can get there as the security of the ‘posh’ hotel situated next to it usher you over a low wall to walk outside of ‘their’ piece of grass!!), the main part of the beach did have a fair bit of litter on it and slightly annoying hawkers trying to sell you yet another sarong you don’t want! And that’s before the ‘ghost resort’, which was obviously pretty swanky in its heyday but is no more.
Fancy a dip?
Anyway, we’d booked 3 nights here and within about 10 mins of walking down the street decided Senggigi wasn’t really ‘us’ and so made up our minds to depart a day early!!
It’s not that Senggigi was horrible, it just wasn’t for us. There were clearly still some nice resort hotels, where, if your idea of a holiday is chilling by the pool sipping cocktails and watching the sea view (and possibly even walking 30m to take a dip in the sea), you’d be getting a good deal. However, we are more ‘doers’ then ‘relaxers’ on our trips, and so there wasn’t really enough for us ‘to do’ for two full days.
So we only had one full day on Senggigi in the end, which was plenty for us, and we spent it mosying along the main stretch from our end of town to the other and then waking back along the beach and round the little headland. Turned out to take us most of the afternoon, after we had a lie-in as I’d caught plane flu on the way over and wasn’t feeling brilliant.
Fingers crossed that Gili Air suits us better!
Sloth Journeys 