A bit of fibre today

I succumbed and went shopping today. It is really difficult when you are by yourself – the sellers only have you to focus on. There don’t seem to be many tourists looking in the stalls, though there seem to be lots around in the restaurants and bars. The market parking areas are crowded, but these bikes belong to locals.

The stalls are rather boring. They all seem to have the same merchandise: tacky (sometimes very tacky) Tshirts, batik shirts, bags and sarongs, glitzy lacy tops and bling covered shoes. Not much I liked.

I finally gave in and bought two sarongs at different stalls. The red one is silk batik done using a traditional style copper stamp, the other is cotton (or rayon, I’m not quite sure which) on which the wax motif has been applied with a more contemporary looking stamp.



Neither is “real” Indonesian batik, but I think I will be able to use them later. And they were inexpensive.

I continued walking along the beach and eventually traversed the gardens of the Besahki hotel to reach the main road. A short walk and I was at Nogo. I was really disappointed. The shop didn’t seem to have changed at all since three visits ago. I looked at both garments and fabric, but nothing appealed. By this time I was hot and bothered so I took a blue (metered) taxi back to the hotel. It cost 7800 rupiah – less than a dollar – and no bargaining needed. Way to go!