Blogs from Lombok, Indonesia, Asia - page 14

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

Next up was Gili Trawangan, this is a very small island off the coast of Lombok, Gili literally means Small Island, but this collection of 3 islands tends to be known just as the Gili’s. Gili T is the biggest and has a reputation for being the most party island of the three. The island is only tiny, about 3km by 2km, all perfect white sand and coral reefs and no cars, sounds dreadful! Getting to Gili T involved the most expensive boat yet! About 40 quid each and it was a bit of a minefield. These boats have varying safety records, some do sink and the Lombok straight is a rough and dangerous bit of water, so we splashed the cash for the most reputable we could find. This paid off though as we had ... read more

Finally...we bring you the Rinjani story....better late than never (its very time consuming you know and we have been far to busy having fun!) While we were on the Gili islands we seen lots of agents offering the chance to climb a volcano called Gunung Rinjani on Lombok, and after a little while we sort of started to think that it might be something good to do. It’s not often you get the chance to climb a volcano and later in the trip we’re doing the Inca Trail trek and maybe this could provide us with a bit of practice, and much needed exercise! We jumped on the internet and did a bit of research, you know the simple, sensible stuff. How high, how far and how difficult is it? Well it turns out that its ... read more

Getting from Gili Air to Sengigi on Lombok was another pretty straight forward local boat. At the other end we were supposed to be getting on a bus to Sengigi when someone looked at our ticket and said to follow him. He then told us to put our stuff in a horse carriage and tried to take us to the bus, Now we are becoming wiser travelers we busted him on this, got our bags back and walked the 1km to the bus! On arrival in Sengigi we were dropped at a tourist info point and for once we just went along with them and let them book us a hotel. It was ok and served a purpose as we were only staying one night before we plan to climb up mount Rinjani the day after.After ... read more

03.12.2011 bis 06.12.2011 Samstag bis Dienstag, Lombok Wir müssen zeitig raus. Um sieben Uhr Morgens werden wir von einem Van vom Hotel abgeholt und zum Fährhafen gebracht von wo aus uns eine Fähre in etwa fünf Stunden nach Lombok bringen soll. Alles verläuft ungewohnt reibungslos. Am Hafen können wir die Wartezeit mit den anderen Touristen in einem kleinen Café verbringen wo sich schnell herum spricht, das jeder beim Buchen des Trips übers Ohr gehauen wurde. Ein Pärchen aus England, mit denen wir die meiste Zeit auf dem Schiff verbringen, hat pro Person mehr bezahlt als wir beide zusammen. Aber das soll der Stimmung keinen Abbruch tun. Die Sonne scheint. Der Fahrtwind ist angenehm kühl und es gibt viel Platz auf der komfortablen Fähre. Sogar eine Art Liegewiese mit Kissen und Decken ist vorhanden. Gelassen schauen wir ... read more