Blogs from Gilli Trawangan, Lombok, Indonesia, Asia - page 22

In a nutshell... Charming group of islands of the north-west coast of Lombok. Great place to get away from the city madness and enjoy the Lombok hospitality and warmth. Good to visit again and again... Getting Around… Other than on foot, transport on the island is provided by small little ponycarts or the Cidomos. These are wooden rickety carts drawn by a pony and the driver. The carts and ponies are adorned with many bells and local customary ribbons and can be heard before they are seen. It costs 5000 IDR per person one way during the day and twice of that after dusk. We made friends with one of the drivers and kinda of hired him during our entire stay to bring us to and from Blue Marlin Dive and our hotel at Villa ... read more

To get to paradise you have to wait a while in purgatory, Gili Trawangan is no exception. The Bangsal sea taxi terminal is a mafia run establishment, where hawkers and touts make it their mission to extort as much money from tourists as possible, the ferry coordinators make it their mission to keep the tourists in the fly ridden, sweaty, squalid terminal building as long as possible, and the hapless traveller eventually gives in and purchases something - least that's the plan. Every hawker has their own special lie: "Trawangan is full of malaria, yellow fever and dengue, only $30 for these pills", "you must buy a return ticket from me, there are no ticket offices on the island", "transport?". Eventually after losing count of "no"s and rapidly running out of "thankyou"s the gods of bangsal ... read more

We were all up early and went for a stroll along the beach after breakfast. Leaving Hotel Ray with our backpacks we were set upon by the taxi touts, as expected. We haggled and soon got one down to a reasonable price to take us to Bangsal, where we could get a boat to Gili Trawangen. Soon we were on the small overcrowded boat leaving Bangsal. Sat next to us were the 4 Belgian girls who'd been on the ferry yesterday. We wondered if they'd had the same problems with taxi drivers that we'd had. Once on Gili Trawangen we were met by Accomodation touts. This was becoming a way of life!We ignored them and settled in the nearest nice looking bar we came across. Stan and Sharon went in seach of acommodation whilst Gary, Scott ... read more

GILI ISLANDS, LOMBOK: After Sanur we headed for the Gili Islands, a remote "untouched" group of three islands off the coast of Lombok (4 hours south of the Island of Bali). Our journey entailed a two hour bus ride north of Sanur and then a five hour ferry ride to reach the islands. Due to the length of this travel day, Vanessa encountered her first "Asian toilet" and it wasn't pretty! Let's just say that it's all about aim!!! Our first stop was Gili Air, an island so tiny that Dave and I circumnavigated it in an hour and a half. Totally remote, with a smattering of cheap hotels, Gili Air has no cars or motorbikes (which is what the majority of Indonesians race around on at break neck speed) but, rather transportation is entirely on ... read more