Advertisement
Now we are going to just basically go on and on and on about how great Gili Trawangan is. It is like heaven, paradise. I'm not sure if the contrast between here and Kuta makes it all the better but this place is lush.
We got to spend 6 days in Paradise. We met some people who had arrived and ended up spending their whole time in Indonesia here. We found people who had come and never left and now work and live here. It's so nice and chilled with beautiful beaches.
The Journey Before we reached Paradise we had to go through hell. We basically decided to save moeny to do the journey ourselves. We had heard awful things about the ferry journey and we weren't really looking forward to it. The ferry was awful. It was dirty, all the locals had taken all the seats and filled them with their bags so I got to sit nice and comfortably on my rucksack for 5 hours. Joy. Sarah found a seat and then abandoned it when stuff started biting her. They put a Nicholas Cage movie on, truly awful what was he thinking. We ended up sitting
Ferry Ride
The ferry ride from hell. Most of the transport seems to be from hell I know. It was smelly, had biting insects and the locals took up seats with their bags and left us sitting on the floor. outside even though the sun was beating down it was far better and there was a nice creeze going on. It was quite quiet until all the locals came out. We also got rained on. We met some people whose ferry ride included a vomiting man and sick running around the boat. Nice. Once we reached the other side we couldn't find any transport so had to pay loads for bemo and we had to spend the night in Sengiggi.
The Island So you can walk all the way around the island in just under 2 hours. So we have been told. Unfortunately we are lazy bums and never got any further than the main stretch. 😞 There are no cars or mopeds so there isn't the annoying call of "taxi" and beeping horns every two minutes. The only mode of transport are boats (for between islands and mainland), bicycles, your feet and some cutely decorated horses. It makes life much more peaceful and calm. I rode a bike once and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was hanging on for dear life as I rattled over the very pit filled roads and the horse drawn carts
Ozzies
This one is for Rachael. adopt a "I'm bigger than you" attitude so basically it is get the hell out of the way or die by horse. Hard to do when you have NO control over the bike. I stuck to the good old feet after that.
The party scene rotates between the Irish bar, dive shop and Rudy's. Luckily for Sarah's we arrived on a party night - Mon, Wed & Fri. The music was pounding dance, which I could only ever enjoy if I was stupidly drunk and even then probably not. The rest of the time the island is quite relaxed and there is a cinema so you can go and watch the movie they show nightly or there are cute little huts with cushions and you can pixk which movie you want to watch in your own private booth.
Happy Birthday to Sarah We arrived on the island on Sarah's birthday. We went for dinner at Tir Na Nog the Irish bar - very exciting to have good english food incl. mashed potato but seriously those Irish get everywhere. They serve heinz baked beans here, drool! So Sarah is now a mature woman of 22 although not so mature
when we got her drunk that night. She seemed fine for a well but one too many Arak drinks (local rice wine) and she was stumbling home yelling abuse at the locals in Italian and English. This island is tiny and has the attitude of "eastenders" so everyone knows your business. The next day there was plenty of pointing at Sarah and I remember you from last night. I bet the drunk.
Diving But instead of relaxing on the beach we learnt to scuba dive. We spent the first day on the island (my birthday) swatting up on the first few chapters of our new padi text book and watching silly people on the videos. The next day was spent exploring the underwater world of the swimming pool, with only the odd bit of fluff to watch drift past. Finally got out into the open ocean on the third day, we did a dive called stingray drifting along the shelf just off the beach, floating past lots of brightly coloured tropical fish. On our second dive we saw a green turtle munching away on something or other quite oblivious to us. Unfortunatly Alex caught a cold and wasn't allowed
Birthday girl
The one card of the year! to carry on with the course so she's gonna complete it in Malaysia. I went on the last two dives to shark point and gili air wall really good with crystal clear visability.
After 6 gogeous days we left the island. Sniff sniff. I'd definitely go back it has been the best place so far and Sarah and I don't even really like beaches.
We went back to Bali for a brief while and then we went to Ubud the cultural centre. We watched a performance of Ramyana. They call it a dance but really it involved a lot of head wiggling and very expressive eyes. Scary. We also went to the museum and reverted back to childhood where we painted masks. Sorry that should be we watched an artist paint our masks for us, he was a perfectionist. If you missed a spot he'd jump all over my mask and correct it. Turns out he was an artist whose work they showed at the museum so that would explain it. We went back to Bali for one more night and to catch our flight to Malaysia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.137s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0538s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Jo B
non-member comment
ever so slightly jealous
Hiiii! Those beaches are gorgeous, so wish I was there. Although I don't envy that ferry ride in the slightest. The concentration on Weekes' face whilst painting the mask amuses me muchly. Lots of love Jo xxxxxx