Gili Trawangan & Senggigi (Lombok)

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Aaaaaaaaaaah, how annoying - the computers here are so slow that I was just saving a blog and it took so long it timed out and wiped what I'd written - second time lucky!

So we woke up at ridiculous o'clock (5.30am) and we were picked up by a bus that took us to a boat (to Lombok) where we got on another bus that took us to another boat that took us to Gili Trawangan (GT). All in all a 13 hour journey - start to finish. However, I think this could have been almost halfed if we hadn't been ushered into friends' restaurants for breakfast and generally waiting around unnecessarily. We were lucky enough to watch an absolutely stunning sunset though on the final lap of the trip.

There are three Gili islands altogether - Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan, the latter being the largest and considered the 'party island'.

Absolutely shattered from all the travelling we booked ourselves into the first hotel available as this was high season and can be quite difficult to get a room sometimes. Due to this we had to pay top whack at a scandalous RP125,000 per night (about 6.50 GBP, which you may think is cheap, but when you're used to paying RP60,000 it's a big difference! On GT there are basically 3 modes of transport - your feet, bicycle or for longer journeys there are horse and trams. No cars and no motorbikes, which was a pleasant change from the hustle and bustle of Kuta. We were on the central strip about 5 minutes walk from 'downtown'. Now, I use this in the loosest sense of the word as downtown consists of several dive shops, a handful of hotels and 3 bars. The road that connects them all is just a simple dirt track - it's like going back in history a 100 years!!! However, a 100 years ago I'm not sure that they would be advertising magic mushrooms at every other place - something that I was happy not to experience, especially when I saw a couple of blokes having the mushroom shake and the look on the faces!

On one of the mornings we were on GT we got up at 5.30am to watch the sunrise and to possibly see dolphins, they weren't showing that day but was worth the effort of getting up as the sky was the most amazing colours of blue/ orange/ red and yellow - the photos don't really do it justice!

We stayed on the island for 5 days, and just relaxed (as we were in desperate need of that!), read books and did a spot of snorkelling, although there was a hell of a current and so consisted of getting in the water at the top, drifting for 5 miutes and then getting out again. There was a bit of coral a lot of fish and also saw a turtle.

Whilst we were there there was a Full Moon Party, which was suprisingly busy and enjoyed it much more than the one we went to in Koh Panghan, Thailand. We saw a couple of Dutch guys that we had first met in Vietnam and then last saw in Cambodia, so we had a few beers with them on a couple of the evenings.

Before we knew it we were leaving the island and heading back to Lombok. We decided to stay in Senggigi for a couple of nights just to break the return journey up a bit. Senggigi is one of the main tourist towns in Lombok, but is very quiet and has a lot of touts trying to flog you stuff (even you're very own cash card, but that's another story!). In the evenings there are quite a few bars where you can go and watch live bands, but that was pretty much the only attraction there. Two days and it was back to Bali, heading to Ubud this time....

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