Selamat Datang de Indonesia - Part 7 Lombok

Lombok from the Air

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The Resort


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Dolphin Tours

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Pottery & Weaving Tours

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Staff Faces

General Manager

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Head Receptionist

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Tour Organiser

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Guest Relations Manager

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Restaurant Manager

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AND LASTLY THE THINGS THAT GET WASHED UP ON THE BEACH!!!

Pool Attendant & Lifeguard

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Selamat Datang de Indonesia (Welcome to Indonesia)

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This is the last of the pics I will present on Indonesia and my new resort

Before I sign off permanently from Sawatdee I will give my ideas on Indonesia and try to answer some of the questions members have asked both on the board and in PM's. This will be in a few days as we are getting ready for a new group of visitors on Saturday

But the main question that will be asked after posting this series of pics is -

YES!! all the staff are gay (If you have to comment on the guys - and I know there will be comments - please keep it clean.)

NO!! None are available for offing by guests. Our Resort is a class establishment - not a knocking shop

YES!! The Resort is a NO SMOKING Resort with the exception of the rooms and villas. All common areas (pool, restaurants, gardens etc) are non-smoking

We are 73% booked for the next 16 months and we only accept bookings from groups - not individuals (minimum 3 rooms for minimum 7 days) Last week we had a Gay & Lesbian Tour group of 36 fun folk from France

[piston10]

As I said in a previous post, the photos are lovely and there is obviously much to attract anyone to Bali and Lombok, not least the grounds of FB's hotel.
BUT, no smoking in public, no sex available (so don't try), you can only come here if you are the sort of person who signs up for "tours", and anyway we're nearly fully booked for as long ahead as you are likely to want to come. Of course, FB has the right to run his hotel as he sees fit, but this seems to me a very aggressive bit of advertising. I find it difficult not to read it as a warning to SW members to f**k off, because I can't believe that many of us can come up to the hotel's standards in EVERY category. (It's the tour thing that means I shall never be able to go there.)

[piston10]

Furthermore, if the staff are to be so closely protected from evil-minded guests, why muddy the waters by showing the pool attendant naked, with his buttocks raised in a typical soft-porn pose, and the tours organiser with a highlighted penis? There's something I don't like about all this. A sort of 'Look what I've got, but you can't touch!'

Thank you for your comments - albeit misguided and reeking of ignorance

Firstly the staff are NOT available for sex. That is par for the course at every good hotel and resort. Nothing unusual about that.

You can have as much or as little sex as you want - just bring your own. We do not provide prostitution services nor do we provide escort or matchmaking as some other person once did. Our resort is not a go-go bar or nightclub

IF you think that the pics of the Tour Operator and the Pool Attendant are not nice then then dont look at them. If they turn you on then that is your problem

No smoking is MY choice. My first long term partner died of lung cancer due to smoking and I hate the smell and the illness associated with it. Also I am fed up with ignorant people who smoke at restaurants in Asian countries when they know God-damned well that they could not do it in their own. Also I have no regard for smokers who throw their cigarette butts in the street or in the gardens. My staff have better things to do than clean up after your filthy habit

The tour pics were put there for information only. No guest is under any obligation to sign up or pay for services he/she does not want. It was just an indication of the things that can be done during a stay to make it more enjoyable. Every good hotel has a tour desk - we are no exception

The fact that we cater only for groups is the main reason that we are booked so far in advance. It was a factor of the resort before I bought it and it is a factor of the resort now.

I have no intention of stopping something that is successful and changing it to single occupancy with the liklihood that occupancy levels would drop back to 25 to 35% as most other resorts in the area are experiencing

Also I have no intentions over the next 16 months of increasing occupancy levels as I will be renovating the rooms and villas during that time.

As far as I am concerned your attitude is one of the reasons I will no longer be posting on this board. You have a narrow minded outlook and would probably complain long and loud at any little problem encountered at any hotel

You dont like my posts? Good - there wont be any more!! Find out about Indonesia yourself. Others interested can email me privately at

farangboss@hotmail.com

Farang Boss - over and out - forever

[piston10]

No, FB, I am neither ignorant nor ill-willed. I tried to take your informal 'advertisement' at its face value.

I did not object to your smoking policy nor your policy towards the staff and sex, though your aggressive tone, repeated in your last post, made me wonder how you would treat your guests on the spot. Running the hotel as you want it is one thing; bollocking potential guests just as they are getting interested is another. I did not say I didn't like the staff photos, nor that I was turned on by them. I pointed out there was a mis-match between the stated policy and the effect these photos might have on some. The pool manager seemed to me deliberately provocative, despite the jokey heading, and I feel you are, in fact, using the the attractiveness of the staff in a disingenuous way - using them as bait, shall we say?

To be introduced to an attractive hotel and then be told (rather roughly, I thought) that you can't visit it as an individual, but only as a member of a "group", is, to put it mildly, a bit of a slap in the face - especially as some of the most interested and interesting visitors to SE Asia are people who are not likely to visit hotels as a members of "tours" of any kind. Your explanation that you are taking over a going concern that already has some of its future mapped out makes a considerable difference, but there was no way of understanding this from what you actually wrote. I made no objection to the photos that suggested things one might see or do while staying at the hotel. Your "tours desk" is a quite different matter from your stipulation about only booking "groups".

I doubt I am narrow-minded and I am not a "long and loud" professional complainer, in hotels or anywhere else. True, I did post recently when I felt a hotel in Thailand was being praised in a way that did not quite equate with my experience of it; but I was fair in pointing out its good points and my main worry was the lack of fire safety precautions. To point that out, since I had noticed it, was, I felt, more of a public duty than anything else. Of course, I don't expect the hotelier to be pleased with me.

I don't suppose you will be reconciled by this post, but I am genuinely sorry to hear that you feel I'm part of your justification for bowing out of Sawatdee Forum. My post was an honest reading of the words you wrote and I must leave it to others to decide between us.

[Wazza]

Farang Boss

It was with some delight that I opened this your latest posting as I had avidly viewed all your photographs in the previous posts and was in some suspense as regards your tease regarding the resort.The photographs of the resort and staff are beautiful and very inviting regretably the text is not. It is stated that the staff are gay but aren't there to be offed,accepted but do you truly feel that given the dynamics of two willing people that nothing at all will happen. Come on now.
I have rather warm memories of a incident when I was a green 22yr old assistant night manager being called to a room because there was no TV reception, to find the cable had come out at the wall on getting down (as they say) on all fours I was at first stroked a couple of times on the butt he then reached under and grabbed the family jewels. The rest is another story suffice to say I stayed long enough for the happy ending and went back on my day off. And we weren't allowed to get the guests either but it will happen anywhere and everywhere because we're human.
The business of confining yourself to groups is it driven by the fact that everyone is going to be paired off and monogamous and if they stray its within the group and not with the local populace or do you have a joiner policy.Is this part of closet Indonesia its only foreigners who are poofs not locals and you're going to make sure it stays like that or the appearance of that.
Would I be welcomed if a picked up a couple of Kuta Cowboys as I swung through en-route to Lombok would be lovely to put a couple of cute cats amongst the pigeons.

[pandorasbox-old]

Piston I agree with your view and reasoning.

In my travels I have found a great many hotels "spoiled" by the fact they are often overrun with tour groups. The hotel panders more to the group than the individual. I suppose that is a factor of the business.

I do wish FB well in his venture - maybe he will be the Basil Fawlty of Lombok but who will be his Sybil??

Sorry - but I am with FB on this one. I think he would be a very acute businessman (not to mention that he has a cute manager and staff) to have such a high occupancy level while other hotels are low

I have been to Lombok - most recently 5 months ago.

Lombok is like Bali was 25 years ago. A place where out of the way tourists go but it is developing fast now that Bali is not favourable any more.

Many Indonesian families holiday there

The main places tourists stay are at the town of Singgigi or at Kuta Beach (not the same as Kuta in Bali) Both are a considerable way from the airport and the main city of Mataram

I hope FB's resort is at Singgigi - at least it is only a 30 minute taxi ride to Mataram and the airport. Kuta beach is over an hour away

There is no gay life in Lombok that would suit the readers of this forum so if any single unattached gay person was to go there it would be for the scenery and activities such as snorkelling or scuba diving, mountaineering, handicrafts or just to experience rural life in a very rustic form (things that groups like doing together)

Singgigi can be a little bit cruisy at times - but it is such a small town that the guys there are wary of what the other locals would say if they found out. Besides most of the staff at all the resorts there are probably family of the guys anyway so that would be a deterrent if they were seen going to a gay white mans room

I hope FB has great success with his venture and I certainly hope he comes back to the board to post the report he promised. It sounds like he is working to create a successful boutique resort. Maybe in the future after he has had the change to renovate the hotel may be opened to single tourists. It would be a great alternative to Kuta

Unfortunately some of the comments by members (who know nothing about Lombok but feel that they know everything about hotels) may have made him leave prematurely forever

[Smiles]

" ... Sorry - but I am with FB on this one. I think he would be a very acute businessman (not to mention that he has a cute manager and staff) to have such a high occupancy level while other hotels are low . . . Unfortunately some of the comments by members (who know nothing about Lombok but feel that they know everything about hotels) may have made him leave prematurely forever ... "
In defense of Piston on this one . . . I don't read into his comments any criticism of Lomboc, or that he thinks he "knows everything" about things there.

My read was that he was a bit taken aback by the aggressive and grumpy tone in FB's last/final post above. I felt that as well.
But you should understand JoJo that, over the years, Farang Boss's posts on this Board have always had a rather authoritarian and temperamental edginess to them, no matter what the topic . . . so his tone above does not surprise me in the least.

As for him leaving the Board permanently, that's unfortunate, but I think that decision had already been made (for what reason I have no idea) before Piston posted his criticisms.

Cheers ...

I too found FB's comments a bit aggressive and un-called for. I found Piston's comments to be polite and reasonable.
However, I must thank FB for bringing this delightful place to my (our?) attention. It has gone close to the top of my list of great places in Asia I must visit. I'm even considering it for my next trip in June. If only I can find a group to go with me...
Thanks FB!

[Aunty]

I thought your comments piston 10 were astute and correct. I don't know about you but I get so tired of this kind of bullshit, more so when it comes form a gay man. I see this a lot on a local gay dating website here in NZ. Young guys who post sexually provocative pictures of themselves, and then say crap like, not looking for sex. Seeking friends only. If anyone messages me for sex I'll block them - so why post a naked pic? There is a total disconnect between what they are saying and their behaviour, revealing to you and me (although not to them, theirs is a defended blindness) a conflict between their conscious thoughts and their subconscious desires. These individuals are no different to women who wear skimpy revealing clothes and then take offence when they walk past a building site and get wolf-whistled, refusing point blank to take any responsibility for their own behaviour, being unwilling to consider how their behaviour has contributed to their experience. Rather they project that responsibility onto others.

Lombok, now let me see, where is that on my list? Oh yes there it is. Schipft. There, thatтАЩs being struck off my to-do list. And way would one want to go there anyway, itтАЩs only a stopping off point to komodo тАУ nasty nasty awful animal.