So the two nights we originally planned to spend on Gili T soon became a full 6 nights - turns out it's a really hard island to leave! In our defense, we did plan to leave earlier, but found ourselves at the mercy of the Komodo island trip we'd booked, which didn't leave until Thursday 29th.... Life really is tough when you're stuck on an island as beautiful as Gili with nothing to do but sit on the beach, swim in the beautiful turquoise seas, watch films under the stars (the hilariously pirated subtitles only enhanced the experience!) and scuba dive.

We arrived from Bali at lunchtime, prime room-booking time, and were greeted immediately by cries of "You must come with me, I have the only free room left on the island!" And this was the least irritating of the things shouted at us over the coming week. Whichever Cockney first went to Gili T and taught the bar and restaurant staff there that all English people say "lovely jubbly" (could it have been Jamie Oliver?) has a LOT to answer for.

We mainly spent our time on Gili on the beach (catching up on sleep interrupted by the 5am call to prayer, which in turn woke up the cockerels every morning), but our efforts were also expended for 2 days on not drowning in the torrential rain that just didn't stop (and which prompted Sivi's wonderful threat: "Really, if it rains again, I'll just s*** everywhere". It didn't, and nor did she, fortunately.) We spent one of these days largely underwater on a Discover Scuba Diving course, looking at turtles and quizzing our Londoner instructor on how he'd wound up living and working there for the last four years; unsurprisingly, he has no plans to return home.

And when we weren't sunbathing or swimming, we were eating, a lot, and cheaply. Multiple pie was an excellent discovery (not sure they realise how weird it sounds in English) - it's basically like an oversized crumpet covered in condensed milk, chocolate and peanuts, folded over and cut into six delicious pieces. YUMYUMYUM.

And finally, Thursday came, and we left for a four day boat trip to see the Komodo dragons!