Senggigi Bargaining

i wasnt going to let the incident at the airport spoil my trip.

and we actually felt better once we approached the island. high above the clouds,as the plane went over the northen part of lombok, the summit of the mighty Gunung Rinjani peaked out above the clouds. it was definitely an awe inspiring sight. the other chance to be as high as that on the island is to go to the summit itself.

i was getting my inspiration back again.

we arrived at the airport at about 6pm and was greeted by the island's beautiful sunset. i already start to like the place.

we got our bags and got into the taxi. i sort of know where we would be spending the night. so i just told the driver 'kantor perama' which is this big travel agent. but the place we were heading was actually across it, our accomodation for the night. lina cottages a double with aircon but no hot shower for 70 000 RP. about SGD12.50. we were going to just stay for the night and move on after that so i didnt mind staying in the basic place. it was actually quite clean. and convenient being right in the middle of the city.

we headed out to walk around senggigi. before that we enquired at the reception for the next leg of our trip and then at perama. each of them gave a price of 1 million RP and 1.5 million RP per person. so we walked down senggigi main st and chanced upon a shop. i have seen their site online before. they first quoted us USD140 a person, thats about 1.2 million RP i think.

They told us we could bargain..and so i tried. i gave them a price of 980 000 RP which i thought was a good deal coz it covered everything and much better deal than another quote i had got online before i arrived here.

they actually looked a bit puzzled. punched a few figures and showed the calculator to us, with the figure 900 000 RP. everything included. that just showed that i was lousy at bargaining, and the people here are actually quite honest.


and so that was how we got on with the rinjani trekking club. we were to meet again at 6am the next morning for our climb to the crater rim.

TBC