Blogs from Gili Meno, Lombok, Indonesia, Asia

There are three Gili islands which technically belong with Lombok rather than Bali. They all have distinctly different characters. Gili Trewangen, the largest of the islands, is a party destination. Gili Air was the first of the islands to be settled and is still busy but apparently has more of a local and backpacker flavour. Gili Meno, the smallest of the islands and our chosen destination, lends itself to tranquil Robinson Crusoe getaways. Our journey to the island was somewhat awful though. There are numerous fast boat companies that offer transfers from the mainland to Gili Trewangen and to Gili Air. The coast around Gili Meno must be too shallow for speed boats to moor, so you need to disembark at Gili Trewangen and catch another boat to Gili Meno. We had known about this and ... read more

Ah the Gilis. Once isolated desert islands and now a tourist hot spot like no other. They were first occupied a hundred years ago by Suluwasi fisherman and the tourists started arriving in the 1980's, Jane's sister Catherine among them. There are three Gilis ('small islands' in the Sasak language) hanging off the North West coast of Lombok: Gili T. ('Trawangan') is the party island culturally linked to Kuta in South Bali. It was for a different generation. Gili Air is the closest to Lombok and is quickly following Gili T. with resorts around all its shore. Lastly, little Gili Meno sits between the other two. It is less than 2km long and is the least developed of the three. We choose it for that reason and also because it seemed to offer the best snorkelling ... read more

We could not stay at Mahamaya forever, and so we spent our next 5 days on Gili Meno on the "busier" side of the island, at Tropical Hideaways, a sweet little cluster of bungalows with a pretty garden and a pool. The only way to get there in one go without sweltering in the heat was to hire a horse buggy (there are no cars or mopeds on the island, and no roads, only narrow dirt trails. We had been looking forward to riding one, but of course, I had managed to forget how allergic Øyvind is to horses, and he had forgotten to remind me, so by the end of the 5-minute ride he was ready to lie down and close his puffy eyes... This is a perfect chance to put Gili Meno in perspective. ... read more

THE GILI ISLANDS The next stage of our journey was one I’d been looking forward to. The Gili Islands – Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno & Gili Air – are just north-west of Lombok, a 1.5 hour speedboat journey from Bali. These three small islands (Gili literally means “small island”) are where people go to get a taste of the Robinson Crusoe experience. Traveller’s tip: there are a few companies who offer transport to the Gilis. Do not book directly on their website as you’ll end up paying much more - up to 1.4m rupiah for a return ticket. We paid 500k for a return, including transfers to and from Ubud. Check around lots of travel agents in Bali as they offer big discounts. We did a lot of haggling, but I have heard of people getting ... read more

Gili Meno We landed on this peaceful island after a 10 minute boat ride and took a room opposite the pier at Rustys for one night so we could go in search of our perfect piece of beach paradise for the next few days. This island is very chilled - no town - just a restaurant, shop, bar and dive business by the pier – all owned by Rusty I think and his yapping bossy wife. The pier is really only a tiny ticket window, you climb into the boat from the waters edge. As we walked the sandy track round the island for 1.5 hours we passed bungalows and villas scattered along perfect stretches of white silky sand beaches. We found what we were looking for - bungalow right on the beach accompanied by a ... read more