Frances’ leg was clearing up enough that we arranged transport on the public ferry out to Nusa Lembongan. Being a non-diver, I was only vaguely interested in visiting Lembongan because the Lonely Planet did not indicate there was much to do besides dive. Lembongan is a small island (3km x 4km) about 20km from the mainland with a population of about 3000. It is surrounded by coral reefs with more biodiversity than the Great Barrier Reef. The only real industry here is seaweed farming, which you see laying out everywhere to dry. Everyone says that the dried seaweed is sold to cosmetic companies, but my hunch is they also sell it to Lay’s for their awful tasting Seaweed flavored potato chips.
But I digress.
Nusa Lembongan has one cemetery, one doctor, and one police man who only does administrative work. There is no fast food, no garbage collection, and no proper retail or grocery shops,. It is one of the first places I have been that I can truly say is untouched by tourism. The only tourism on the island is about 10 dive shops and they all seem.as unobtrusive to the locals as possible. I saw firsthand how primitive it is here, as one of the girls was asked to arrange a lecture room with 40 people with electricity and a wall for projecting and came up empty.
We planned on spending 2 nights on Lembongan, and then moving on. But the diving was superb and we quickly fell in with some super hospitable French expats so right now our departure date is TBD.
Stay tuned. Or don’t, because internet is fairly hard to come across and even harder to bring myself to actually logon.
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