Island. Paradise.

Not really anyother way to describe it, Island. Paradise. There i've said it again.

There are in fact three Gili Islands and they lie off the coast of Lombok, which is near Bali. There's the geography. We stayed on Gili Air which is kind of the middle island in the sense that there is a party, party island and a boring, nothing there island. The atmosphere on Air is somewhere in the middle, there is a beach party twice a week but the rest of the time everyone just chills out. On the back of a recomendation (cheers Stu), we stayed at Sunrise which following on from Ubud was another great choice of accomodation. About 30 seconds walk from the beach, the bungalows are two stories (so not strictly bungalows but I couldn't think of the right word), large bedroom up top and bathroom and hammock and little garden downstairs. The second best place to relax.

The first of course being the beach. I feel like a stuck record because i've used this description before but, golden sand, clear blue sea, you get the picture (and if you don't we have plenty). Oh and as you lie there the view opposite should you raise your head, is of the mountains of Lombok, which looked like far too much effort to climb so we didn't bother.

So we pretty much just lazed around, trying to get a tan, and not really succeeding unfortunately, but you'll see that when you see us. The sunrises and sunsets are magnificent and we saw both. On what I suppose you'd call the strip there are a few bars and restaurants, we spent most of our time lazing around Zipps Bar, chatting to Didi the barman and his chums. On a couple of nights we hit the beach party, on the second of which we went with two Aussie blokes and a Canadian girl and got hideously drunk on the local rum and watched some locals do fire juggling, fortunately none of us were drunk enough to have a go!

We hired snorkels and went out in the local area to see the beautiful coral and little fishies. All good, although it took a bit of time to get Rhiannon out there and by now the tide was on it's way out and to get a a decent swimming depth you had to walk across a fair bit of coral submerged in about two inches of water, most of which is dead. Halfway through it Rhiannon cuts her foot (although no blood or visable cuts were to be seen) and decides that she can't go on any further, nor of course can she go back so she is stranded. To the rescue comes Ross, one of the Aussies, who grumbling about whinging Poms volunteered to go and get some flip flops so she could walk around; I stayed in the water with Rhiannon.

To keep off the coral she had found a concrete block to stand on for the five minutes it took Ross to get back. The spectacle of Rhiannon stood nervously in two inches of water and refusing to move was clearly too much for one tourist wierdo who seemed to be taking photos of her whilst pretending to take scenic shots of the area. His eagerness may though have had something to do with Rhiannon accidentally showing a bit more than she should have been in decent company. Anyway she survived the ordeal, although when you see her you should probably ask about the ankle as perhaps the full extent of the injuries are yet to be revealed.

We were absolutely gutted to be leaving Gili Air and even hung on a day more than we planned to, it was absolutely brilliant, with friendly people, great weather, great beach, great sea, I could go on. Plus eventhough it was peak season almost there weren't that many people there so it really feels like a 'get away from it' place.

Something else happened on the island but it seems to have slipped my mind. Can't have been that important then.