Another beautiful sunset on another island (we switched from the already very relaxed Gili Air to the even more calm Gili Meno today, where we are finally having our idea of a bamboo hut directly at the beach) - all very picturesque, if you don't have a night-active gecko as a permanent house guest. Ours likes to hide behind the head board of our bed and enjoys breaking out in loud 'ge-cko! ge-cko!' screams at random times during the night... quite the powerful n...

After finishing our Open Water Diver course, nothing could keep us in - rather boring - Padangbai. We wanted to see some paradise islands (completely without motorized traffic!) and left Bali by speed boat to head to the Gilis. We decided to ignore the infamous party-island Trawangan (we're to old for that stuff!) and head for chilled out Gili Meno, with a local population of a bit over 1000 people. By chance we got picked up by the finnish guy Tommi (he was on t...

For two days we've been hanging on Gili Air, recuperating from all the hard diving class work :) It's pretty basic here, with flocks of chicken and skinny cows sharing the dirt roads with us, but the food in the local warang is yummie and the snorkeling is amazing! We went out for an hour yesterday and immediately saw the first giant turtle, just mucking about. And of course hundreds of colourful fish everywhere on the reef - quite the spectacle, really! We'll ...

After successfully completing our PADI open water certificate with our last two dives (yay - we can do stuff underwater now! and morten scored 100% on the theory test - nerd!), we just had time for a superquick portion mie goreng before lugging our (still way top full) backpacks to the speedboat pier. gili air - we are on the way!

Getting up at 6.30, studying the PADI book, then 8 hours of diving class (skills in the pool, classroom and two open water dives) and then 2 hours of yoga afterwards - Morten is spent... and who can blame him? Exciting stuff though, breathing underwater and all...