Semarang, Lombok, and an A4 Printed Map

I have not had so many thrills in my life before my journey from Semarang to Lombok, it was fascinating and enriching. A friend of mine suddenly asked me to join him in a journey to Lombok from Semarang. It was outrageous at best, since none of us ever visited Bali or even Lombok, we had no knowledge or preparation, but there was something in crazy spontaneous idea that was too hard to resist, to tempting to ignore, I felt like I just had an epiphany. So I accepted the invitation and off we went to our first stop, namely Malang.
We went to Malang to visit a lake well known as Sendang Biru, this lake was described to be closely similar with a lake in the famous Leonardo Dicaprio’s movie, The Beach. After taking a 5 hours long economic train, followed by two hours in public transportation and one hour hiking through national park, we finally arrived to our destination, Sendang Biru. It was well paid off, the beautiful lake shown its charm, its beauty pictured in clear light blue water, and white sandy beach surrounded by magnificent tall cliff. The calm warm water gave me a sensation like floating in a Jacuzzi right in the middle of nature. Sendang Biru gives you exactly what a traveler hope for, secluded hidden private beach that you could enjoy by yourself without being disturbed by festivity and crowds.
From there, we continued our journey to Bali equipped by a printed A4 map that we had just downloaded in internet café. We took bus and then crossed the Bali strait with ferry, after that we took in land transportation to transport us from West Bali to Gilimanuk in East Bali, a port where we can take ferry to cross Lombok Strait. After 4 hours in ferry, finally we arrived to our last stop, Lombok; we spent a night in Mataram, before headed off to Gili Trawangan in the next morning.
We went to a port called Lembar and crossed in a fishing boat to Gili Trawangan. It was a very memorable short visit; we spent our short time there mainly snorkeling with cheap rented gear, watching small and big colorful fishes swimming around us. We hiked a small path lead to a generator plant in a hill where we can watch most of the beach from atop. It was surreal, Gili Trawangan has definitely many sides, but the best of them is watching sunsets, when the sun sets into mount Rinjani ‘s top, and the sky changes colors from blue to orange to red and finally crimson, it was the perfect ending for a journey.
This journey, by far the best experiments I have ever had, the thrill of not knowing, the anticipating of the unexpected is what made this particular experience unforgettable. It took us two weeks to complete our journey, but it would take our life to erase it from our heart.