Which Gili should it be?

Before this trip I read some stuff about the Gili Islands in Indonesia. Looking at the map I couldn't for the life of me figure out where they were. The term Gili means a small island, so you end up finding quite a lot of those in a country consisting of 17'000 islands. If you are talking about Gilis next to Bali you are probably talking about the three islands which are actually closer to Lombok's northwestern corner; from west to east they are called Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air, or Gili T, Gili M and Gili A, respectively. The largest, Gili Trawangan is supposed to be all about partying, Gili Meno is the least developed (supposedly because Lonely Planet wrote about its mosquito problems in the 90's) and Gili Air is somewhere in between. All have laid back small island atmospheres and clear waters made for diving and snorkeling. And at the final weeks of the rainy season the crowds would be… Well, in Thailand. Having been there too, as well as in many of the holiest places of Buddhism in Nepal and India, we decided to take the middle path and to go to Gili Air.

The way there

We arranged the transportation to Gili Air through our guesthouse in Senggigi for 75'000 IDR per person, which was cheaper than some other places were offering. With the ticket in hand we walked to the main street and waited for the pickup to arrive at roughly about 8.30 a.m. Having prepared to wait for a long while we were very surprised to see the van arrive already at 8.25. We picked up a few more passengers before heading out to Bangsal in the north. Once there we were dropped off at a restaurant and greeted by somewhat persistent touts offering us their companies services for the way back from the Gilis. I just spoke Finnish, Sini gave a couple firm "No thank you"s and we were left alone eventually. We much preferred the company of other travelers, one of whom was the same German guy who we met in Labuan Bajo. We'd met him the previous evening in Senggigi also, stunned, since he was supposed to travel all around Flores. Turned out he had, he'd taken a bus all the way to Maumere, then flown back to Bali and taken a boat to Lombok. That's a lot of traveling for only a few days.

Anyway, we were made to wait about 45 minutes at the restaurant, during which time they collected our tickets away from us and drove off with them. We never got them back. In the end it didn't cause us any problems but I still hate it when stuff like that happens. When time was ripe and there were about 30 of us gathered at the restaurant we were informed that we needed to hurry to the harbor to catch the boats to the different Gilis. Suddenly we were surrounded by horse drawn carriages offering to take us there for 10'000 IDR per person. It's a five minute walk, you don't need transport whatever they say (the pony-sized horses don't even move that much faster…). At the harbor we were made to wait some more as a guy went to get our boat tickets that would have cost 12'000 per person if bought there. Then we waited as we were turned away from the boat that was loading up to take the next one instead. All in all, we spent about an hour and a half waiting for no other reason but to make us use some money while sitting in the restaurant, on a horse cart, by the beach side bar (we didn't buy anything though). The cost of the boat trip to Gili Air from Bangsal is only 12'000 IDR per person so one might do well to avoid the package trips and just arrange a transport from Senggigi by themselves. At least for a group it might save some money, and time as well.

The accommodation

The boat trip from Bangsal took about 30 minutes or so, the vessel was a crowded little thing with about 35 people on board. At Gili Air we were greeted by some more horse carriages, but it was easy to escape them. As in other times when Booking.com and Hostels.com had failed us (they had accommodations on the island but not in our price range) we had looked at places to stay in from Lonely Planet, which suggested Bintang Beach 2 Bungalows on the northern shore of the island. We'd tried to call them the day before without any luck. Very few cheap places in Asia seem to have email accounts and the ones that do don't visit them all that often. And once you find a phone number for a place it's in no means certain that you can reach them that way either. That's why we haven't bothered with prepaid SIM-cards on our trip.

It took us maybe half an hour to walk through the island with our backpacks. Once we found the opposite shore we figured we'd come too much west so we turned east to look for the right bungalows. There was no shortage of such accommodations, but we hate going from door to door looking for places and usually opt for starting in a specific spot, checking if it's OK or not and then continuing on if necessary. That's what we did here and found Bintang Beach 2 Bungalows to be quite satisfactory. We were taken to a bamboo bungalow with woven walls and a big terrace with sea view. In the back there was a large bathroom with a western toilet and fresh water (supposedly some places there have sea water showers). They asked 170'000 IDR per night but settled for 150'000 IDR. The small restaurant on the beach didn't serve alcohol and had only a few dishes on the menu but the breakfast (a fruit plate, tea or coffee and a choice of three different pancakes and two different toast and egg combinations) was good and included in room price. Wifi was available at the restaurant from early morning to 8 p.m. and was speedy enough but the transmitter required frequent rebooting.

The only other complaints we had were of the noise of some renovations being done on the property and the somewhat lively cockroach colony. We found the best way to deal with the little b*****s to be to whack them with a size 50 flip flop. In the end the score was flip flop ten, cockroaches one (they're quick!). We also ended up making traps for them out of empty water bottles (they only caught one), I might share the design as one of my "Travel Innovations" posts. We were fine with a few roaches for quite a while, as long as they stayed mainly on the terrace and in the bathroom. Although when one of them decided to make a breakfast out of Sini's earplugs lying beside her on the bed (she was even under the complimentary mosquito net!) we decided to change rooms. We got a newer room in the back of the complex which wasn't completely cockroach free, but better in that aspect. It did however have the most sensitive toilet I've faced in years. It took at least three people to unclog it once…

The electricity on the island is a little unreliable and there seemed to be short periods without power almost daily. Some resorts and restaurants had their own generators, but Bintang Beach 2 wasn't one of them. A couple of hours without power is fine, you get used to such things on the road and remember to keep a torch nearby. It became problematic once though, when power was out for almost a whole day. That affected the flow of water also since there was no power for the pump that filled the water tower in the back of the complex. By the evening the tank was empty, meaning there was no flushing the toilet or taking a shower. Power came back eventually though.

Not surprisingly, the best part about the Bintang Beach Bungalows was the beach. Some might argue against this since the shore is very shallow and filled with seaweed, but we judge our beaches by the trees suitable for hammocking. There was a group of small trees with fruits resembling pineapples sprouting from the sand, which turned out to be one of the best places to hang our hammocks on the island. The leaves of the trees created a canopy over us that kept all the direct sunlight from us and the breeze kept us nice and cool. Most of our days were spent there with our ebooks in hand. We had brought the hammocks this far, we wanted to make sure we got to use them as much as possible before heading once again to cooler climates.

As for weather, most days started out sunny and hot but turned cloudy by afternoon. We heard some thunder over Lombok almost every day. It wasn't until the last days of our long stay on the island that the weather got really wet. We were caught outside on one of the worst storms, waiting under some restaurant's grass roof for the rain to stop. It was raining so hard we couldn't see Lombok anymore and the sea was so rough that the scuba divers had to return to shore (with much difficulty). As I watched them pile up their oxygen tanks I kept wondering how big of an explosion would follow if lightning happened to strike in their midst. Nothing like that happened of course and we got back safely. The weather also cleared out by the very end of our stay.

What to do?

One of the reasons to come to Gili Air was to do some snorkeling in the clear waters surrounding the island. Many places all along the shoreline offer snorkels, masks and fins for rent, we paid 50'000 IDR per day for two sets (they asked 30'000 per person, but we haggled some). They have signs on the beach telling which places are good for snorkeling, following them might be the best idea. Our favorite spot in front of Sejuk Cottages had clear water and the corals and fish were plentiful as promised. We were even lucky enough to see the "main event" - the sea turtles that call this place home. They were a lot bigger than I expected, their shields were at least 50cm wide. There are also bicycles for rent in large numbers (Bintang Beach 2 had some too), but even though some had huge tires for driving on sand, most people seemed to be pushing them more often than riding. The roads inland are good for biking, although there are no streetlights in the dark, but for much of the shoreline the road is just soft sand and as such very difficult to ride on. We didn't rent bicycles here, walking around the entire island takes between one and 1.5 hours, walking through takes less than half an hour.

As for shopping, there are beach side stores almost all around the island, most selling water for 7'000 IDR per 1.5 liters, in addition to some basic snacks. There are bigger stores inland, the biggest, called Siti Shop, is located about 300 meters inland from the main pier, along the biggest road on the island. That's not saying that much though, since they don't have any cars or regular mopeds on the island, only bicycles and electric mopeds, in addition to the horse drawn carriages. And the occasional ice cream man with the musical bicycle… The Siti Shop is home to whole lot of very dusty merchandise ranging from dried fish to fresh fruits and vegetables, from snacks to sacks of rice, from kitchen appliances to power tools etc. They also have some clothes in the upper floor. Water was a little cheaper here at 5'000 per big bottle. They don't have alcohol here, but other stores nearby sell small Bintang beers for 20'000 and big ones for 30'000. The prices for those in most restaurants seemed to be 25'000 and 35'000. Stronger liquors could be found in the stores at the southern part of the island, the cheapest locally made rum was 185'000 IDR per 750 ml. Same sized Bacardi rum was 460'000 IDR, the cheapest imported choice. That was a little too much for our purses and we didn't trust the local spirits enough to buy them. We'd read too much about methanol poisonings from locally made Arak that we figured it best to avoid all Indonesian made spirits. In other words, we stuck with beer and wine, as I'll later clarify.

Food was easy to come by, with dozens of restaurants spread out along the beach stretching the entire shoreline of the island. With few exceptions the cheapest local dishes ranged from 25'000 to 45'000, the western dishes started from 35'000 IDR. They had a surprisingly large amount of Mexican food and places offering wood oven pizza. Italian ice cream was also easy to find in the southern part of the island. A peculiar thing to see were the many signs openly advertising magic mushrooms in restaurants. Such things grow here locally, so they haven't been able to outlaw them even though otherwise dealing drugs in Indonesia might just get you placed in front of a firing squad. Afraid to even drink locally made alcohol, it's pretty unnecessary to say we stayed away from the fungi too…

Moving on

There's no shortage of places selling boat and bus tickets to nearby destinations, mainly different spots on Bali and Lombok, but also further ones like Flores. Without haggling slow boats to most places in Bali seemed to be 200'000 IDR. The trip would consist of a short boat ride (30 minutes) to Bangsal, followed by a bus to Lembar and a ferry (4 to 5 hours) to Bali, where you would be dropped off at your reservation. The whole trip would take about nine hours. Fast boats (2,5 hours) to Bali were more expensive, most places asked 400'000 IDR per person, but the entire journey should be over in just four to five hours. We opted for comfort and speed and after some haggling got our transport to Canggu for 625'000 for the two of us.

We took the speedboat from a company called Wahana that had its pickup point on the beach just west of the main pier. That's where we waited for quite a while, our checkout was already at 10 a.m., after which we went to the harbor for check in to the boat. We were told to be there at 11, the boat was supposed to leave at 11.30. It was late though and didn't leave until 12.30, after which we went to Lombok's Senggigi before heading to Bali. Despite the delays I have to say that the boat was great, there were plenty of life jackets, the inside was air-conditioned and they showed some movies in the front. We arrived to Padang Bai in Bali at 3 p.m. and got into the van going to Canggu. It took another three hours from arriving to the harbor before we were at the hotel. We ended up traveling from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., so much for four to five hours…

But just how long would the slow boat have taken?

Three months on the road!

The realization that we had been traveling for three months already came pretty much out of the blue while we were on Gili Air. We decided to celebrate the occasion by buying a bottle of wine and what better choice than one made in Bali? Hatten red wine was available in a couple of stores and some restaurants, we found the cheapest bottle for 180'000 IDR. As we set ourselves to enjoy it underneath a canopy on the beach we weren't all too surprised that the taste wasn't all that wonderful. Maybe it was just the vintage? It got better towards the bottom though, as many "cheaper" wines do. It didn't bother us too much though, since the evening of the 4th of April turned out to be such a beautiful one. It started out with something I could only understand as a lunar eclipse, followed by a full moon so bright we could set our cushions on the sand and play cards with no other light. I've never seen the moon so luminous, or so high up in the sky, it was practically straight above us.

After the wine and the Siti Shop muffins were exhausted we laid back on the beach watching the few stars the brightness of the moon allowed to show. With our time in Indonesia almost at an end it was nice to think that we still had more than half of our trip to go. The stars would continue to be different from the ones back home for some months still and we will have ways to go even after we return to the northern hemisphere. Still, three months on the road is something of an achievement, I think. So far the trip has been a success and even with all our whining about India I wouldn't have wanted to do things much differently. We'll just have to hope that the rest of the RTW trip will turn out to be as great as it has been so far.

Although I could do with a little less cockroaches on the bed…