gili islands

We arrived in Bali and went direct to kuta, which is the main touristy area in Bali which is often described as not a very night place unless you like the nightlife, busy traffic and being hassled. We arrived into Bali late at night so with Kuta being the closest and central area we planned pre booked a discounted new hotel for 2 nights and then planned to move from kuta right after.
After a long queue through customs we finally get out the airport and taxi it to our hotel. From the moment we stepped into out hotel room, we loved it! ...Now, we'd just spent 5 days in ChiangMai in a room with a fan, no air con, but £5 each a night with a swimming pool. Pretty dam cheap and really what we wanted to be aiming to spend a night in Bali to, but in fairness we both struggled to sleep in the heat of Thailand with just a fan and it always seemed hotter inside our room than out, but James really struggled with the heat so we were looking forward to our air con in this hotel.
Firstly we spotted the bed, we had a whopping king size bed which was seriously divine but second we had super duper air con! We crashed straight away and struggled to get up! Worth every penny!!

We spent the next morning planning our trip to the Gili islands, 3 idyllic small islands just off from Lombok, next to Bali. We had options, take a really cheap slow boat which would take some silly amount of time, I'm sure she said 12 hours but lets just say at least 10! Or take a fast boat which would be an hour and a half to lombok and 30-45 mins to the biggest of the gili islands for roughly half the price more. Needless to say we chose the fast boat at roughly £17 each return. This included an hour and a half bus journey to the harbour in Bali too so the next day would be a travelling day.
We spent the rest of the day in kuta chilling on the beach and exploring. The lady we booked our boat with recommended another guest house so we tried there to check prices, thinking we'll need somewhere to stay before we fly out of Bali but ideally with air con. We were pleasantly surprised to find the air con room the same price as our wicked king sized bed hotel. Planning to come back already before we fly out! Already looking forward to it!

Kuta is very busy with traffic and tourists and tons of people selling you things and hassling you. But, the surf is amazing and the beach is miles long of soft sand, where you can watch planes land just to the side of the beach. Not idyllic, so we can see why people often don't like it, but busy and full of choice. We didn't love it there but didn't dislike it as much as we thought we would which makes us think we're much more westernised than we think.

We'd heard that there were many fast boat companies to choose from but chose the cheapest and recommended by a lovely lady at the tourism centre. Before confirming our booking we checked reviews and read about it online and were sad to see bad reviews, however we read between the lines that they don't often pick up on time, and the comfort of the boat trip often depends on how choppy the waters are and the weather. We made the brave decision to go for it, otherwise it was going to be £10-£20 each more to go with others. Me, being me worried it wouldn't be right so patiently waited the following morning beating in mind they may be late. Well, in the end, we called them because they were an hour and a half late. Finally they came, explained there'd been a mix up at the airport which the tourists on the bus confirmed and thankfully we are finally on our way! James still cool as a cucumber, me not so much! I just wanna get there now!

The crossing was fine, they gave us water and a snack and were absolutely fine. Easy peasy!

We arrive at Gili Trawangan, the biggest of the three gilis and the furthest away from Lombok known as the party island. The clear water is the idyllic mix of greens and blues and you can see fish swimming in the waters as the boat pulls up. The beach is lined with palm trees with a mix of restaurants and people. People sunbathing, waiting to get on boats, and locals with their horses and carts waiting to assist the new arrivals to their hotels. Busy but still pretty idyllic and cool. We can't wait to get off the boat and dump our bags. We're stay at Green Banana Home stay, owned by a young Italian guy called Giuseppe and ran with a local guy called Rizzer. Both really friendly and bring us drinks and pineapple on arrival giving us great first impressions.
Gili T is beautiful but also a little ruined by the amount of rubbish. It appears that the business and home owners have a plot of land and anything outside their plot and their boundaries is then some kind of no mans land or really it should be called every mans land as it appears everyone leaves their rubbish in these spots. A real shame considering the surroundings. We later read that there is an Eco tourism programme that are doing their best to educate the locals and introduce recycling and put on boats twice a week for rubbish and recycling pick ups.
There are tons of restaurants to choose from and when we walk the entire island around the edge in approx 1.5 hours we discover many more lavish and lavishly priced resorts with swimming pools and sun loungers, poolbars and beachside bungalows.
We like our little bungalow abit back from the main street and centre but a 2-3 minute walk to the beach. The only downside with our location is we are right next to a newly built mosque that wakes us around 5am each morning. Now either the brand new speaker is super duper new or wow wee they like it loud!! Lol! In fairness, it wakes us for 10 minutes but we go back to sleep easily, it was just a little startling on the first morning! :-)
We spend 3 nights in Gili T snorkelling, sunbathing, swimming, sleeping in the sun and chilling. The snorkelling was good, James saw a turtle on the first day he snorkelled but the coral wasn't as good as we've seen before. The water around a lot of the surrounding island is very shallow too do you either walk out or swim out when you can to the reef but enjoy the quick current as it takes you on your snorkelling, you don't need flippers.
The sunset on Gili T was pretty impressive and we sat in a restaurant along the beach to enjoy it. We walked the whole way around Gili T in about an hour and 45mins, maybe less as we stopped for a coconut for James which was expertly cut up by a local and checked out restaurants along the way. So as you can see its a pretty small island!
We left gili t by one of the slow boats and headed to Gili Meno, said to be the most quiet of the 3 islands. We'd booked a bungalow, just 2 mins walk to the beach. It was lovely, the beach was empty and had a beach restaurant to enjoy food with your feet in the sand. We stayed 3 nights and read, snorkled, slept and pretty much did the same as on Gili T but with hardly anyone around.
We were recommended to go to a reggae bar for dinner a 15 minute walk away so one evening set off without torch to walk and find it. There were about 15 locals and couple with musical instruments playing and singing reggae and then modern songs. When we sat down we realised they had a book for the diners to choose songs for them to sing. I later read in a guide book that this was as much of a party you would find on Gili Meno. Perfect !
We arranged to leave Gili meno with some other travellers staying at our accommodation and going on a snorkelling trip around the island. We too decided to pay a little extra and go to the first few snorkeling drop off points before going onto Gili Air.
We'd really struggled to pick our accommodation for Gili Air and spent quite a bit of time considering if we should spend more and go in one of the plusher ones on the east side where it seemed loads were. But we begrudged paying £40 a night and wanting to stick to our budget settled on a £16 a night bungalow without air con. James worried he'd be too hot so we'd been looking for air con rooms but they are much more expensive, almost all double the price. Although the one we chose only had a fan, it had fresh hot water and cold water! No more salt showers! Yay! We booked 2 nights at Salili bungalows but loved it so much we stayed for 4 nights finding a great restaurant in the east side of the island that took about 40 minutes to walk with a torch each way but allowed us to have a desert to walk off. We again solely chilled out and watched some Downton Abbey, Great British Bake off and Strictly Come Dancing on the beach as the wifi was great!

Our time on the Gilis was super chilled and we loved it! Gili air being the best because the beach was ours! We rarely saw others, had the best banana pancakes for breakfast on our room patio our on the beach and I loved catching up on all the TV I'd missed! I know... Sad but I do love Downton!! :-)

We left the gilis to spend a few more chilled out days in Lombok and enjoyed some £3 hour massages! Then headed back to kuta intending to do a 5 day package of surfing lessons. We started with 1 to see how we liked it and the instructor and thank goodness we did. The instructor spoke good English speaking to him face to face but in all honesty when shouting over waves, asking for more instruction his English wasn't great. He just said the same kinda things to me... try again and stand up quicker. Plus after 2.5 hours surfing I had bruised scuffed knees, sore hips, blusters on my finger tips and a dam sore foot so needed a rest the next day to recover!! The surf in kuta is wicked, continuous great waves the whole time we were there, however not so great for beginners! The succession of waves are quick so it was hard to get back out, especially in parts of the beach where there seemed to be a double wave and we were later told that there is a dip in the sand which creates a double effect. So we ended up hiring a board a few days later and continuing at our own pace. All went great until 1 day I was beginning to get much better and then I fell off, winded myself and got cramp in my chest and whilst this happened I let go of the board and then whack it hit my in the face and bruised my cheek in 2 places. Needless to say, me and surfing stopped then. I'll try again in Oz!! James on the other hand was much better but still struggled with the speed and strength if the mega surf! Again maybe oz will be better!

We headed to ubud for a night to visit the monkey sanctuary and the cultural centre of Bali. The monkeys were everywhere and very cool, especially the babies! Ubud itself was really small and quaint with lots of arty and crafty shops. Here I started my shopping! Yay!

So overall I think we can say our 3 weeks in Bali were all about chilling and more chilling!! We're slightly concerned the speed of Australia, early mornings, tours and business may take a while to get used to!! :-)