[PART 1] Doing Charity While Travelling in Lombok, Indonesia

Misfortunes and opportunities come in all shapes and sizes. When we booked our flight to Lombok in 2017, we did not have the slightest idea that the date of our flight would be only several weeks after multiple earthquakes struck the Indonesian island of Lombok in August 2018. However, after much thought and consideration, we went on with our plan to travel to the famous holiday destination in Indonesia. Given the recent calamity, we decided to limit our fun activities out of respect to the affected victims. We agreed to offer some help and give back to the Lombok community while travelling around the island. Our wishes were granted much earlier during our flight from Kuala Lumpur to Lombok. It turned out that AirAsia launched a relief fund for the earthquake victims in Lombok through the #ToIDwithLove campaign, to which we made a little contribution. We arrived at the Lombok International Airport at night. En route to our hotel, we had Taliwang Chicken Rice for dinner, which is Lombok’s signature dish. Taliwang Chicken Rice is a spicy roasted chicken from Lombok and its name is claimed to originate from a place called Karang Taliwang situated in Lombok’s capital, Mataram. After enjoying our dinner, we were taken to our hotel. The moment we arrived at the hotel, we could see that some blocks of the hotel buildings were closed due to cracks caused by the earthquake.

We started our second day by visiting a songket-weaving centre. Lombok is famous for its high-quality songket products. Unlike the normal songket we used to see back home in Malaysia, Lombok’s songket does not use gold or silver threads. Instead, they use colourful cotton threads that produce beautiful and unique patterns. The songket cloths were hand-woven by the Sasak women, and we were told that one of the conditions for a Sasak woman to marry is that they have to be skilled in weaving the songket. It usually takes months to complete a set of songket. Thus, the rather high price of the songket is not surprising. We were also informed that, the more complicated the songket pattern and the longer it takes to weave, the higher the price will be. At the centre, besides being able to witness the Sasak women using their skills in songket weaving, we also grabbed the opportunity to try weaving the songket ourselves.