Getting here was a bit of a mission, but now we are here it was well worth it! From Kuta we it was supposed to take 6 hours to get here, but after catching a bus, a ferry, another bus and then a speed boat it was more like 11hours by the time we arrived. There are three tiny islands that make up the Gili islands and we chose to stay on Gili Trawangan which is the slightly bigger of the three, and the most lively! There's a party every second night at a different venue! After arriving, as usual the first job was to find a place to stay, and after about half an hour we found a lovely little place on a small back 'street' called Twins Garden, named so cus the owners toddler twin grandaughters live there! They're so cute, they'd just waltz into our room during the day and start playing on the bed together or drawing pictures for us. The whole family live here and they're all so friendly. Anyway, after settling in we were famished, so off we went to find some grub! There was a girl (Sophie) sitting alone on her balcony so we invited her along with us! At first glance it seemed the Gili's were gonna be a bit more expensive than the rest of Indonesia but we then stumbled across a little street food stall, and dinner was served... Nasi Goreng all round!

The following morning we were heading down to the beach and had to make way for the local transport (horse and cart!), and as it passed there was Amy perched in the cart!!!!!!!!! We'd told her where we were staying so she got the speed boat from Bali (which is more expensive than how we got here but only takes an hour!). She hadn't been bed since we left her!!!! She brought a new friend with her who'd she'd met out on the tiles in Kuta the night before, an alcoholic 40 year old Aussie with a gruff voice called Christina!!! Aim said she felt sorry for her cuz people were trying to steal her bum bag, LOL!!! Anyway, we showed Aim to our room and she hit the hay for the best part of the day whilst we went to take advantage of the free wifi at one of the restaurant's on the front for an hour, only when we got there it absolutely hammered it down and continued to do so for the rest of the day, so we were trapped! Luckily they had a nice comfy sofa and TV so we watched a film! After a good few hours we decided to brave to brave the storm so that we could get back to Amy, who was still at the guest house! We were all starvin' Marvin' so after showering (in cold water of course!) we headed out. This time we found a little gem of a place nestled in a tiny corner, we only noticed it beacuse there were a lot of people sitting outside so we went to check it out... it was amazing! They served a few different things like chicken curry, beef curry, rice, tuna steak (best of all was the pumpkin curry, mmm!), and for 20,000 rupiah (£1.50) you got a bit of everything! Delish! It became our regular! After a quiet cocktail we headed back to our humble abode.

After our included breakfast at the guest house the next morning, me and Rich headed to the beach but Aim didn't fancy it so off she went on her todd and snuck her way into one of the resorts to use their pool for free for the day!!! We strollled along the beach front and stumbled across 3 large glass tanks, which on closer inspection contained lots of tiny turtles! It was a small turtle sanctuary! The guy picked up one of the larger turtles (which was recovering from an injury) and obvioulsy I was straight n there asking for a hold!

The following day was a little more eventful... we decided to hire bicycles to go around the tiny island - it only takes about 90 mins to walk it! The bikes turned out to be a bad idea... the tracks were all sand so we push them half way around!!! We had a great day though, the other side of the island has abslolutely nothing on it, there are some gorgous secluded beaches with not a soul on them, and we passed goats, and some posh isolated resorts, one of which we stopped at for lunch. That night we decided to take advantage if the nightlife, seeing as it was Amy's birthday the following day! Rich didn't last long so me and Aim stayed out on our own and got wasted! Everyone was buying us drinks cuz I kept telling them it was Amy's birthday!!! At one point Aim was crawling accross the bar! I don't remember much else, but we both had awful hangovers the following morning! And people kept saying 'hi' to us the next day and knew our names but we didn't have a clue who they were! God knows what we were doing to be so well remembered!!! Haha! Great night!

On Amy's birthday we all went to a dive school called Bubbles where we'd seen a free intro dive in the pool advertised so Aim could have go, she'd always said she'd never dive, she had no interest and deep water scares her!!! But as it was free, she thought why the hell not!!! Whilst she did that me and Rich went our for a dive at a place called Shark Point which was incredible! It was our first drift dive (where the current takes you along, so no hard work swimming!) and the visibility was about 30 metres! We saw so many turtles and so close up - one was huge and just lying there on the sea bed being cleaned by cleaner wrasse! We saw an octopus, a strange shrimp which can apparently break glass(!), a sea snake, and so much more - it was Rich's favorite dive so far (mine's still Maya wall in Phi Phi, but this came very close!). We were actually supposed to be leaving the island the following day to go to Komodo to see the dragons but none of us felt we'd had enough time at the Gilies and it would've taken 2 days to get over to Komodo by another horrific bus journey so instead we decided to stay put! Aim had loved her intro diving so much she decided to sign up for her open water course! Bit of a shock considering she said she'd never dive! I reckon the fact that she had a hot French instructor (David) mught have swayed her a bit, LOL! That night the POA was to have a few drinks at our guest house, and then head out for a nice fancy fresh fish meal by the sea (our treat for Amy's birthday), but we ended up playing drinking games with 2 of the young Indonesian guys, Maddy and Alan, who lived at the guest house and we never made it out at all! Haha!

Aim started her diving course the following day which was the first Friday of May, and Bubbles have an amazing deal on the 1st Friday of every month... in an attempt to educate locals and clean up the island, if you collect a bag of rubbish from the streets they take you for a free dive to continue the clean-up under water! Obviously me and Rich were straight in! It took only 30 minutes and 2 streets to collect the rubbish - the island doesn't seem littered at all but it's amazing how much it is so when you start looking properly. At 2pm that day we did our free dive at Bio-Rock, which was our first shore dive (straight from the beach, no boat required!). There wasn't much litter under the water so most of our time was spent looking at the marine life, such as Lion Fish, and a huge Trigger Fish which swam straight at us! Aim did her first dive in the open sea whilst we were under, and absolutely loved it... although she did hold the instructors hand the whole time which he confirmed was a first for him! LOL!!! That night we all arranged to meet at Bubbles to have drinks with the staff and other divers. That's one of the great things about diving, it's a real community, if you do a dive you meet so many people and you all tend to hang out together afterwards! Anyway, that ended up being another messy night after playing drinking games!

The next couple of nights were quite quiet really, we just hung out at Bubbles around their pool in the day whilst Aim did her course, and went out with everyone for gorgeous fish kebabs served with mash, veg and a salad bar (complete with pesto tomatoes, mmm mmm mmmmmmmmmm!) at an Irish Bar by the sea.

On our final day at the Gilies, whilst Aim was finishing her open water diving course me and Rich headed to one of the other Gili Islands for the day (Gili Air). A 30 minute jouney on a boat and we were there. Gili Air is the smallest of the 3 islands and the closest to the mainland (Lombok), but it's the most isolated... there's almost nothing on it other than a few bamboo hut style guest houses and little beach side eateries. We just sunbathed, snorkled straight off the beach and had a gorgeous lunch (followed by a nap!) at one of the little restaurants. That night back at the guest house, Maria (the owners daughter, mother of the twins) cooked a proper home-cooked Indonesian meal for us... fish rolls, rice, soup, etc... it was lovely, and such a nice thing for them to do for us. Maria was so nice to us, I remember one morning for breakfast she made me a 'special' banana pancake, it was multi-coloured! When I asked her what was on it she told me she had some sweets left from making cakes with the twins so she put them in the pancake for me!! I think they were hundreds and thousands, it was so sweet! Bless her! Dean (the owner) was sad we were leaving, and the following morning the whole family came to give us hugs and wave us off so it was a sad farewell but I reckon we'll be back one day! So we were back on our 11 hour journey back to Bali where we stayed for 1 night, did some shopping and went out for drinks before catching our flight to Oz and saying another sad goodbye to Amy :'(. I'm so glad we got to share these experiences though :)!