Wow GILI ISLANDS - this is by far my favourite place so far, partly because I have wanted to visit for so many years and partly inspired by a very cool article Tim emailed me yonks ago back when I was in the very early stages of planning my adventure. It is GORGEOUS, and so so so SO chilled you feel a million miles away from real life back home.

The Gili Islands are 3 islands off Lombok and are summed up by saying paradise. After the traumas Lena and I had getting from Kuala Lumpur to Gili Trawangan as soon we arrived we both just nodded our satisfaction and delighted smiles to each other. The journey began in KL airport when I met Lena (after having got a massive craving for burger king so had wolfed down a whopper and fries) from her flight from london. After walking round in circles in KL airport trying to find our transfer bus to our hotel we were so desperate for a beer it was crazy. Finally arrived at this ok ish hotel and made our way straight to the bar and downed a couple of Bintangs before checking out the buffet dinner and nearly being sick on the spot at how stale everything looked.

Woke up early next morning to get our flight from KL to Bali. We being English (well me anyway and her virtually German) queued politely only to find the check in desk was a free for all for malaysian/indonesian men who clearly thought because we were female it was ok to push in front of us - constantly!! After sighing heavily and getting nowhere we gave as good as we got and finally checked in - after being charged a small fortune for having overweight bags - something I forgot to mention in last note, my bag weighs a tonne!! Both in quite bad moods by this point, tired, hungry, annoyed by men etc we downed a black McDonalds coffee and laughed it off. Got on plane and to lena's annoyance man next to her kept tapping his foot, she assuming he didn't speak english said loudly to me for god sake can you get him to stop tapping.....as if i could do something about this personally!! The man's wife turned round in perfect english and said to her husband 'honey can you stop tapping your feet you are irritating the lady'. I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, luckily he found it hilarious and just laughed at Lena!

So we get through, all fine then arrive in Bali to a very cute airport and bought visas etc, were met by 2 guys who had our tickets to Lombok. We had 45 mins til plane departed so ram like sweaty idiots to get there......no one else is running....we get to check in and not only do they weigh our bags but Lena and I had to be weighed!!! Hilarious!!! Straight after this my bag split and I announced to Lena I might cry soon - she said please don't so I didn't!! So after trying hard not to look at what we weighed etc we went to departure lounge and chilled. An hour later no one has called our plane, and all announcements are in indonesian so we had no idea if we had missed it or not. We took it in turns to ask this airline worker if it had left only to be told quite firmly to sit down each time accompanied with a loud tut! So we sat, and we sat, and we sat some more. Nearly 2 hours later we start boarding by which point Lena and I were almost insane after 2 hours of awful panpipe music!!!

Our plane was tiny and the journey was seriously scary flight - not to mention the fact we had scared ourselves stupid reading reports on how often indonesian planes crash!!! We survived and were picked up by a massive air con jeep and driven to the harbour to catch our speed boat and as soon as we arrived on the island the rest became history. It was and still is perfect.

Our accomodation is perfect and right in the centre of everything :-)

SO Gili Trawangan is perfect. So far we have spent every single day on the gorgeous beaches trying not to burn - it is a min of 37 per day, seriously hot. Then once we got our tans in shape we hit the dive school. It was Lena's birthday on the 10th and by chance the dive school were having the last part of the month that night - it was hilarious literaly all the travellers on the island rocked up to this party and danced all night long. The bar man (Raphael) from our bungalows said to us you have to dance - if you can't dance all night we have medicine which will make you dance!!!! So typical of this island, everywhere you go theer are signs for magic mushrooms etc and people asking if you want a smoke etc. Anyway party was great very amusing especially watching all those who clearly had taken mushrooms and lots of them.

The next day the diving began. Lena started her open water course with the instructor who she had met dancing at the party the night before, and I went fun diving. My first dive and it was awesome. I saw a metre & half long white tip reef shark - amazing - though do admit my heart raced pretty fst. Next came the turtles, angel fish, box fish, puffers, trigger fish, trumpet fish plus loads of new ones to me. Was fantastic. I was meant to go diving a lot the last few days of being sick after eating what I thought was frsesh snapper I have been lazing on the beach. Tomorrow I begin again and am very excited. Where we dive tomorrow is meant to be amazing.

We've met some really cool people through the dive school, from all over the world. Including one guy who has been named the spaceman who frquently dives to 85/90m per dive! Crazy...

I'm signed up for a PADI underwater photography speciality course for next week - will be great, they have a professional french photographer on the island this week who is teaching it so I will learn from a pro - very pleased with this news. Lena is due to finish her course tomorrow and it is my birthday next week so we have a few more party nights set up in advance. In typical Caroline fashion, I have planted us on an island which stopped having real parties the day we arrived because of Ramadam!!! We are working on getting round this though.

People were a bit concerned after hearing about the earthquake in Samatra but all rumours of a tsunami warning in indonesia were soon quashed and the laid back atmosphere returned quickly. Thank god.

So on the whole I am LOVING Gili Trawangan - everything is great, the locals are so frendly and full of advice and tips and gossip etc, and I have met a number of people heading to Oz who I hope to bump into again later in the year.

Hope everyone at home is well, keep emailing me with all the gossip - it is great to receive emails!!!!