Nusa Lembongan and Gili Trewangan

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Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging on this trip! It seems hard to find the time to get online and blog but I'll try to catch you all up on what we've been upto now.

So from Ulu Watu we went to Nusa Lembongan. We got the seriously over-priced taxi from Thomas' Homestay to Sanur and stayed one night in Sanur. The beach there is supposed to be a real tourist resort but it didn't seem all that beautiful. Most of the holiday makers looked to be Balinese - maybe they like to go there and stay away from all the westerners in Kuta! Anyway, we booked our ticket for the boat to Nusa Lembongan for the following morning and then stayed in a nice place called the Watering Hole.

The next morning we caught the boat to Nusa Lembongan. The boat journey was awful and I felt very sick! The boat was only very small and the sea was pretty rough. The island is small, with a bridge attaching it to a neighbouring island. The island's main industry is seaweed, which is collected all day every day by the locals in boats or just off the beach. Everyone in the family seems to be involved regardless of how young or old they are. We met some people off the boat who said they had a place to stay and took us there on their scooters. The place was called Wahyu and was pretty nice. We met a nice guy called Andy on the boat and he stayed at the same place. We managed to catch the sunset on the first night which was beautiful.

We rented bicycles the next day and rode around the island. Unfortunately, Alex's bike had no brakes and both the bikes had very limited gears so both up hill and down hill were tricky - and it is quite a hilly little island! We found the bridge and went over to the next door island and rode to the jumping point at a gorgeous blue lagoon. Since no one else was around to jump ahead of us, we decided not to jump!

One morning on NL, we got up early and went to a yoga class at The Secret Garden bungalows which was very relaxing. Then we spent the day at The Beach Club which is a resort the other side of the island in a little bay. It was really nice, although unfortunately a bit cloudy that day, so we just sat on the big comfy chairs and read our books.

We spent four nights on NL and then, thankfully, the boat journey back to Bali mainland was much better than the journey out. We stayed another night in Sanur and had some ever-so-spicy Gado-Gado on the beach. We then had an email from our friend Vic who we met in Kuta who told us that he would be on the Gili Islands soon, so we booked the fast boat to Gili Trewangan.

Gili Trewangan was awesome! We loved the island so much we stayed for 12 nights in total which is much longer than we originally planned. We stayed in a bamboo bungalow, just big enough for a couple of beds, with an open-air toilet and shower at the back. We had to kill a few naughty cockroaches each night but we loved our little shack anyway! GT is a very popular backpacker destination. It has an absolutely gorgeous beach where we spent sunathing at pretty much every day. The main strip has bars and restaurants along it - but there are no cars or scooters! Only bicycles and horse-and-carts. We met up with Vic and spent most of the time with him. We also met a couple, Frankie and Rhiannon, and spent time with them aswell. We went for a bicycle ride round the island which is fairly pointless because the path disappears into deep sand every few minutes. We also sent snorkelling which is really good - because we saw a turtle! One evening we all drank a shake and took a 'trip' to the sunset for a few hours. There are 3 main bars on the island and they each have a party night every week. We were unfortunately destined not to party hard because we both suffered from 'Bali belly' a lot on the island so had to keep it tame. One afternoon it rained for hours and we took refuge in the cinema to watch a movie. It wasn't quite the Odeon.....

All in all, island life was fab! Tune in again for news about our trip back to Bali and then to Java.

Lots of Love
Naomi and Alex
xx

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Photos

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Nusa Lembongan

Nusa Lembongan
Nusa Lembongan

Nusa Lembongan
Alex with her bicycle