#tetebatu

Lombok: Chasing waterfalls, more rice fields, monkey forest, Bandi found a police car and a tiny python, fried tempeh and potato for dinner at the bungalows

Lombok: Walking around the rice paddies of Tetebatu, absolutely breathtaking views (ft. Bandi the jungle boy)

The reception guys introduced me to Bandi the jungle boy who would be my guide. He said he would help me move my scooter up to the reception and I thought “great, I’ll take the bottle of water from under the seat” except we didn’t go that way, we headed up into the rice terraces climbing up grassy steps and taking planks of wood to cross streams. He took me to a great viewpoint where I could see all the rice terraces below, and a waterfall in the distance. I asked Bandi to take some photos of me here but they didn’t look that good unfortunately – he needs some work on his photography skills! He was great at smoking though, he chain smoked 3 cigarettes during our walk through the terraces to Serang Walet waterfall and told me in his broken English about what happened to his leg. He had a huge scar on his leg, maybe a skin graft, from where he’d been drunk on rice wine riding his scooter at night and crashed. At the waterfall I paid the entrance fee and we started to walk through and reached a cave full of water, Bandi said I can take off my shoes here so we can continue. Something had been miscommunicated here… I’d said I didn’t want to swim and just wanted to view the waterfalls at the start of the tour so hadn’t brought anything with me to change into. He said there was no other way to the waterfall except swimming through this cave to it, so we turned around and left but they wouldn’t return the entrance fee even though he was friends with the guy working on the gate. I was a bit annoyed he’d even bring me there, knowing that I didn’t want to swim and swimming was the only way to get there, and then not get back the entrance fee for me. He then tried to rope me into going to his friend’s coffee shop for a break but they didn’t have any cold drinks available. I asked him where I could buy a cold bottle of water, again he’d said we’d move the bike and then went off in the complete opposite direction so I hadn’t been able to get my water bottle. He found a little shop so I could buy a big one and then he insisted on carrying it for me until I had drunk about half of it. Our next stop was at Air Terjun, another waterfall, with some sketchy steep ladders to access it. We then walked back through some more rice terraces and the monkey forest but we didn’t see any monkeys unfortunately. We must’ve walked about 5km or more, as in the monkey forest I pinged the directions and it was about 2km to get back to the bungalows.

pink moon (2026) tetebatu, lombok, indonesia

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