Senggigi

We arrived at Senggigi from the Gili islands by boat and hired a private car for transport, there's so many people trying to rip you off so try and get a bluebird taxi on the meter, they are easy enough to spot. Lombok has a beautiful coastline and tropics feel, cliffs and long stretches of beaches and palm trees as far as the eye can see. Craving some western food we went to a place called the Cowshed that evening for steak and beers.

Due to it being much quieter than Bali and the roads infrastructure pretty decent I managed to finally persuade Bailey to hire a scooter to explore. Neither of us has any experience on a scooter and after a shaky start (careering from one side of the road to the other, losing a flip flop and giving everyone observing this a heart attack for our safety) we were off! Being on the back of a scooter is more frightening than I expected and I was happy to crawl along at 20mph and have every car overtake us. We explored a couple of beaches with amazing soft black sand and not another soul around.

We attended a cooking class at , they were so accommodating as they don't usually run classes on a Saturday but put an extra one on just for us two as Friday was fully booked. We both loved the experience and learnt so much, my arm was aching from grinding spices in the pestle and mortar but the flavours were definitely worth it. Can't wait to try and recreate these dishes at home especially the corn fritters with some ice cold beers. I made chicken satay and a banana leaf fish curry dish and Bailey the corn fritters and chicken curry. The staff and setting were perfect and they even provided transport.Read more