Return to Kuala Lumpur

On Tuesday, December 30, we left the Oberoi Hotel in Lombok and returned back to Kuala Lumpur.  We had a wonderful stay at the Oberoi.  The Ocean View villas are fantastic, the food in the restaurant was excellent and the staff throughout the hotel was among the best I have ever seen.  The public areas and grounds are immaculate, the rooms are amazing, and the views gorgeous.  It seemed to us that the ratio of staff to guests was almost 1-to-1 and all the staff were very friendly.  The only downside to the hotel was that the beach area was not the best in that it was very shallow water for quite some distance out into the water and there were a lot of rocks and coral in the water.  However, in light of all the other superlative features of the hotel I rank it among the very top hotels I've stayed at.

The hour and a half drive back to the Lombok airport was exotic, for a Midwesterner: motorbikes and horse carts everywhere on the roads with our driver passing the vehicle ahead of us on the right while another motorbike (and sometimes another car, truck or horse cart) was coming at us in the other lane.  I flinched on more than a few of the passes On this drive we saw a lot of farmers working in the rice fields; some plowing with water buffalos and some plowing with motorized hand plows similar to the one pictured below.






 There were also a lot of people stooped over planting rice by hand.  I would have liked to have stopped and taken pictures but with no shoulder and heavy traffic it would have been hard to pull over and we didn't want to risk not getting to the airport on time.  When we did get to the airport, one of the Oberoi drivers came in with us and got us in the right line at the Air Asia counter before heading back to the hotel.

Our three hour Air Asia flight back to Kuala Lumpur was on time and without incident.  I confess that when I took my seat  I did a close read of the safety placard (which I normally never do) and verified that there was in fact a life vest under my seat.  I decided to do that because they announced that taking them from the plane was a criminal offense punishable by three years in prison and a large fine.  I figured if they felt the need to make such an announcement it must happen with some regularity.  In any event, our flight was uneventful.  However, Justin said he thought people would break out clapping when the plane safely landed.

Even though we had only been in Lombok for four nights, the contrast when we returned to Kuala Lumpur was startling.  From two lanes with hordes of motorbikes and horsecarts in Lombok to six lane freeways in Kuala Lumpur back to Amy's house.  At one point I thought our driver in KL was going particularly fast and when I looked over his shoulder at the speedometer I saw that he was going 180 km/hour (108 mph)!