Bali to Lombok to Gili and Back

hi mom!
hows it going? sorry for being out of touch, we have been busy relaxing, while also trying to see and do lots of things. plus jin was sick for a few days so we didnt do a whole lot(she is fine now.) about a week ago, we went to Lombok. We took a shared minivan(bus, called bemo) to a town on the beach called Sengigi. It was really pretty, but not a whole lot to see or do. Lombok is really pretty, but its culture is sorely lacking compared to bali, and it is filled with thousands of absolute asshole punk kids who are about as rude and obnoxious as any idiots in the world. We rented a scooter one day and drove around to a bunch of really pretty secluded beaches and saw a bunch of tiny towns and indigenous villages that barely any tourists make it to. travel on lombok is very very difficult without your own transport as most bemos only go between towns about 15 or 20 miles apart, so if you want to go somewhere far, you have to pay for a hired car, which is very expensive(30 plus bucks a day) or argue with bemo drivers every half an hour as they try to charge you 10x more than the local price, 5 dollars each instead of 50 cents. we enjoyed our time on lombok, but were happy to leave. after that, we hopped a boat to gili trawangan, a tiny island off the west side of lombok. it only has about 2k people and no cars, roads or anything besides bars, restaurants, tourist stuff, and hotels..... its really nice and is supposed to be the next big thing in indonesia. the fast boat back to bali from there is like 35 dollars a person, so we hopped the slow ferry back to lombok for 1 dollar each, then argued with some more bemo drivers to get us to mataram, then lembar(?) where the ferry leaves back to bali, which is 4 hours and 3 dollars. on the ferry more punk kids harassed us telling us that the seats were for VIPs and we had to pay 2 dollars to sit there. after arguing with them, asking for ID, asking for a VIP ticket, none of which they had, i told them to go get the police, and obviously they never came back! woo hoo, very minor victory. By this time, jin was kinda sick, so when we got back to bali and padang bai, we chilled for the night, then the whole next day. Yesterday, Jin was feeling better, so we took another bemo to Ubud, the cultural capital of bali. we relaxed all last night, mostly cause it was raining. today we decided to be lazy, and rented a scooter for 4 dollars to drive around to all the museums and stuff in town. We went to the house of Antonio Blanco(the blanco renaissance museum), and the museum puri lukisan(fine arts museum), where we saw tons of awesome balinese art from the "young artist" collective that came after WWII. today, we also went to the Monkey forest sanctuary, which holds a couple of moss covered hindu temples surrounded by a jungle like forrest, complete with rivers, springs, and of course, tons of monkeys. Tomorrow, we are planning on takin the scooter to Tanah Lot, one of the most famous temples in bali, and maybe seeing another temple or just exploring some small towns before we come back to Ubud for the night.