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We left Gili T on the 4pm boat to Gili Air, it took a little longer than planned after the boat got stuck and a snorkelling midget had to swim under and sort it.
It was very different to arriving at Gili T, hardly any hassle...and hardly any beach. We walked what felt like the length of the island in search of a room, on the main road mainly fully booked except for spider rooms. We spoke to some nice Australian ladies who's friend ran a hotel and they found us a room there...the only problem was after 10 minutes of walking I felt like we were in the outback not a tropical island so we never even looked at the place and turned back. When I took my rucksack off after what felt like 6 years of lugging it around my shoulders looked like they needed a skin graft. We saw a fancy looking place and it turns out rooms with a fan were really good value (£25)....but as I lie in bed writing this in my sauna of a room it doesn't seem so much of a bargain now. We have our eye on somewhere else for tomorrow so will head over first thing and see if we can get in there. We have a lovely bungalow, really new, clean, big room, pool, outdoor bathroom...it's just too hot.
There are so many restaurants here but they're mostly empty, like everyone else we went to biggest restaurant with lots of tables on the sand. Dinner was really nice, then we sat and had a cocktail listening to a live band...who were surprisingly good. It made a change from one Indonesian and his guitar.
Neither of us slept very well, I kept waking up thinking bugs were crawling on me...but it was just sweat trickling all over the place so that was ok. We found a nice room with aircon at a dive centre, obviously with my swimming skills I won't be giving it a go but atleast I can pretend I'm a cool diving type person by staying there. We have an outdoor bathroom again, in theory it sounds nice but I'm permanently on bug/spider watch which is hard work when you're trying to shower. Cheryl was not feeling too good so I spent the morning by someones pool and found a nice spot for lunch on the beach. I'm such a good friend I sent the girls a photo of the white sand and blue water...thought it would help them jump out of bed and go to work early.
I found a little bar I liked playing good music so decided to set up camp on the sand just outside, listen to the music and read my book....but there was a problem. On Gili T dogs and cars are banned, I think they should extend this to children! Yesterday after we arrived we saw a little French family, super tanned chain smoking mum, super bald chain smoking dad and their adorable super tanned identical twin girls with adorable long blonde curls. Anyone else would have looked at this pair and thought, ahhhhh, aren't they lovely, so pretty, so cute and there's two of them! Not me, I could tell these 2 were trouble and I was right. So there I am enjoying my music and the sea and my book...and then I hear it. Not a cry, that would have been ok because if they were crying that would mean there was something wrong and everyone enjoys a cry once in a while. This was more of a cat being strangled, whining, spoilt little whimper...and it went on and on and on. The parents did the right thing ignoring her devil behaviour, but by doing that and walking off to smoke in the sea they left the little squealer next to me...I've never wished I spoke French so much because I'd have told the little witch to pipe down. After probably half an hour I was elated to see the screaming midget getting dragged off down the beach to spoil someone else's day.
After that ordeal plus having crispy hair for the forth day running (I'm having shampoo issues)...the only way to get over such stressful matters was to eat an entire pizza, chocolate icecream and beer.
At breakfast I asked (begged) the dive centre we'd been staying at if we could stay on another night, the thought of walking round with my backpack in the heat was not appealing...luckily they'd had a cancellation and we could stay!
We sorted our boat bookings for the following day and then I pretty much sat on the beach till sunset...I thought a lot about coming home and other things which put me in a bad mood...so I stopped thinking and enjoyed my last day on the island. For dinner we had a lovely BBQ on the beach and a beer too. I've enjoyed it here, when I first arrived I thought I'd hate it but it's been nice to be somewhere quiet and relaxed.
We had to be up early on Friday, I wasn't missing my included breakfast and our boat left at 8.30 back to Gili T. We decided to head back to our favourite hotel and pool, hopefully they'd remember us and let us hang out there for the day. On our walk over I saw one of the poor ponies in a real state, I'm not a horse person but the thing in his mouth was really bothering him and he kept banging his foot on the floor. I went over to his abuser and told him that he needed to sort it because the pony was in pain...I got 'yeah yeah'. Not one to back down, I said 'no yeah yeah,do it now'! The guy ignored me occasionally saying yeah yeah and then a couple of others joined in telling me yeah yeah! Eventually he came and looked at it and said it was fine, they were laughing at me like I was mad. I told him he was a bad man and I hoped that he dies an extremely painful death...and I meant it. I also told his friend who kept making weird cat noises that he was a d*** too!! There really is no need for this to be the only mode of transport here, why not golf buggies or rickshaws like I've seen in other places. It wouldn't take much to treat these animals a bit better.
It is mega hot today, I even had to sit in the shade I felt like such a failure. On our little walk to the boat we saw some baby turtles that were being held until they were big enough to be released...I'm so sceptical now about the use of animals I'm sure there must be a money making angle somewhere. I was right, you could make a donation to their local initiative to help keep up their hard work...or pay £10 and they'd let you put the turtle in the sea yourself.
I'm sad to be leaving the islands, it means it's almost time to go home and who wouldn't want to wake up to this every day. The weather has been great, the food big and the Bintang cold. I'd recommend the Gili's to anyone, we never made it to Meno because it was the quietest and I think Air was as relaxed as we'd have liked...but I'm sure that was beautiful too.
If you ever go - enjoy - but please don't use the pony taxi just walk and that way you'll see more too.
The boat ride back to Bali was worse than the first, I didn't think it was possible. This time because we stopped at Air and Lombok it was 2.5hours, get me back on the bus ha!
At one point the waves got really big, the boat was jumping all over the place and people on the roof were squealing. We were tipping from side to side like it would tip, then at the end one massive wave went right over the boat...then it wasn't just the people on top squealing. As we got off we saw a couple of people soaked to the skin, that was pretty funny. I was glad to be back on dry land, we found our bus but god knows where we'll end up, it's looking doubtful we'll be back in time to meet our group for the last supper.
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