ANA AND ANDY GILI ISLANDS AND PADANG BAI, INDONESIA. 13 JULY 2014

Gilli Islands

Phew… so after the worlds longest journey involving several different modes of transport over land and sea we finally arrived at the port on Lombok to take us to the Gilli islands for some r and r (yes that’s right, we need to relax!).

We’d been accompanied by Michael on and off since we boarded the ferry in Flores and he was heading to Gilli Air so kept up with us.  The 3 of us bought our tickets to the islands at the port and squeezed into a local fishing boat which was rammed with locals ferrying their wares and produce to the islands.  Andy made the mistake of putting his bag down in the boat on-top of some womans livelihood… She was not impressed and let him know by growling something at him and pointing at the goods she was going to sell which were comfortably underneath Andy’s rucksack. 

We headed to a beachfront restaurant and the boys filled up on a full-english style breakfast and I tucked into some fruit, muesli,yogurt – a breakfast favourite.  After eating we had a little explore and decided that it was time to have a rest and get some sleep.  The two of us headed out after our nap to do a lap of the island, by this time it was getting close to sunset and dinner time.  Gili Air is only 5km around the island and therefore easily walked around in search of a place for dinner.  We ate at a local warung and then made our way back to the guesthouse (more of a guest complex type place – Si Pitung Village).  

The boys enjoying some much needed 'local' cuisine!

Gili Air

Just another day in paradise...

Emilie and Sarah M - We had an inside, outside bathroom! Luckily Belgravia only had an indoor, outdoor window :)

Next day we’d arranged to go snorkelling and swimming with Michael so we caught up in the morning after breakfast and made our way down to the beach.  Before which I went for an around the island run, completing just two laps but part sand and in the heat 10km was plenty enough!

Snorkelling from the island was easy peasy.  Just left our clothes on the beach and went straight in to find loads of life just a few swimming strokes away from the shore.  I’m not 100% on what we saw but it was pretty busy with plenty of marine life of all different shapes and sizes.  

Late evening snorkelling - not easily done!

Afterwards we headed out for lunch and had a hearty Indonesian meal in a local warung (this will get repetitive – activity, eat, activity, eat, activity, sleep…).  We wanted to head out to catch the sunset properly and did so that evening.  The boys even took their snorkels down to see if they could catch some more marine life but the tide was a little too far out.  We then headed around the island to spy somewhere for food and it didn’t take us too long to find a great place right on the beach BBQing meat and fish to serve the 3 of us.  We all had massive tuna steaks served with rice and veggies washed down with a few beers and a ginger ale for me, we chatted the evening away and headed back to the guesthouse.

Time for the sun to go down on our little island

Looks as though someones just started work...

Tasty tea - for three :)

Next day it was Andy’s turn to run and he headed out for a morning run whilst I decided that a walk would be more appropriate for my tired legs! Pretty much the same itinerary as the day before, we headed out snorkelling and exploring the sea.  We met with Michael later in the day and had dinner again in another local place.

Another sunny sunset

Next day we said our goodbyes to Micheal and he was off on his solo adventure.  We stayed another day on the island, planning to move to the next of the islands the following day – Gilli T.  Andy ventured in for another snorkel whilst I sat and read my book and drank coffee and banana shakes!  I was reliably informed that there were some lion fish, parrot fish, sea urchins and banner fish out on the reef.  Pretty lazy day, lunch followed by a walk and then back to the beach for sunset drinks.  It’s a hard life on the islands, pretty much all there is to do! Dinner back at the place where we had the good tuna and it was time to head back and prepare for our move to Gili T the next day.

Evening activities consist of sitting on beach, drink in hand, bit like during the day too!

Andy's got it down to a fine art

Oh, and once the suns gone, it's time to eat

We walked down to the pier where the local boats cram as many people into them as possible to ferry them around the 3 of the islands in the group.  We were moving onto the larger of the 3 of the islands and sat in a rickety old boat for the 30 minute journey between the islands, collecting more passengers and dropping others off.  

No seats left one this boat, oh go on invite more people on...

We recognised immediately that Gilli T was far busier than where we’d just been and made our way through the hustle and bustle to our guesthouse – Rumah Kudun.  The place was really nice and ran by a local couple who have 3 other rooms that they let out.  We ventured out around the island on foot, this time a bit of a longer walk and also a less enjoyable one.  The island is still very much under development and whilst new places were being built you could see the old ones just being left to rot.  

Flowers on pillows in this part of town :)

Ok, so not everything looked like a building site

After lunch and a coffee we headed to the beach for more, you guessed it – snorkelling!  This time we managed to spot a turtle on the sea bed gnawing away at the coral beneath us.  We were able to stay with it for around 30 minutes and just watched in awe as it ate its way around the reef beneath us! Just as we were moving away from one, we saw another! Two turtles just by snorkelling 10mins off the beach – happy days.

Luke - we saw these and thought that they may have been left there by pre-historic nipple-man descendants! Bit like a nipple-man stonehenge

Next day Andy headed out on another couple of dives, he’s getting quite good at this underwater malarkey!  This is where Andy takes over in letting you know about the dive itself...

So I decided to go with Blue Marlin who are a chain of schools locally with a large office on the island. It seemed like a pretty slick operation and when I asked, they were headed out to 'Shark Point', one of the deeper sites offshore (down to 30m) and perhaps not surprisingly - a good place to spot some sharks! Also they spoke to me about another site, 'Turbo' which sounded quite fun too so I signed up for a couple more dives at a very reasonable price.

When we all met up before the morning boat at a perfectly reasonable 8:30 (as all the sites are very close to shore, no early starts!). Our group ended up being just 2 of us with a guide and we had a great time, plenty of very large fish including a schoal of massive bat fish swimming overhead and we spotted a turtle grazing away on the reef itself. Great dive! After finishing we came back up and sunned ourselves on the deck waiting for another group and headed back to shore.

Back to the dive centre for the afternoon dive and I realised it was another very small group with 2 guys from Holland who were good fun, they were both divemasters and had been diving together for years so I ended up being buddied with the guide, a different guy to our morning session.

This guy was a little more interested in being funny and enjoying himself than looking after his group. This became more apparent as we started to descend to the reef , the instructor put quite a distance between us - much further than I felt comfortable with, so using my best annoyed hand signals I got him to come closer. Not impressed. Unfortunately this pattern was continued throughout the dive.

In addition to making me a little nervous, this was making me work harder to try and catch up and before I knew it I was starting to get through my air supply much quicker than usual (I tend to get through it quite quickly anyway!) we saw some great sights, fish and coral and some sharks, a couple of Black Tip reef sharks about 1.5m were circling about 10 metres from us and much closer there were some juvenile sharks with their snouts poking out from under a rock in a small hollow just a couple of metres away.

Even with these cool sights I was struggling to enjoy this dive and relax without much confidence in my buddy. After a pretty short time I signalled to him that I had reached 50 bar of air left, the point at which he had said we would start to surface.

He acknowledged and we carried on the dive for a few more minutes, I signalled when I was at 40 bar, then at 30 (at which point I started to be a little more emphatic). We started to surface to the mandatory safety stop (5m below the surface for 3 mins). As we stayed in the water it was clear my air supply was dwindling rapidly and I ended up switching to the guides reserve air supply so we were breathing from his tank whilst waiting to surface. By the time we had surfaced, my supply had dropped below 20 bar and I was pretty unhappy with the guide.

Back on land, I did take the guide to one side and discussed what happened with him but I get the impression he was really not that concerned and not really that fussed - knobhead.

Still, a fun day diving spoilt a little on the second dive. Meanwhile, Ana will pick up what was going on back on land....

I (Ana) soaked up the surroundings in the local coffee shop whilst catching up on admin and blogging etc. Dinner wrapped up our final evening on the Gili islands and after a stroll down to a restaurant where they have locals singing it was time for some shut eye.  Up early the next day to catch our ferry to mainland Bali and a place called Padang Bai.

Andy showing them how it's done... He's officially the Usain Bolt of diving now

We managed to get a good deal with our tickets for the journey from our guesthouse.  They sell ‘fastboat’ tickets at vastly inflated prices, all of which are negotiable – of course!  So we took a local recommendation and with our cut price tickets boarded a big aluminium boat with proper seats and a TV showing dodgy copy DVD’s.  The journey to Bali took around 1hr 30mins in total and was pretty smooth and we were off the boat with our bags in no time.

Bye bye gili islands, we've had a great time

Padang Bai is more of a transitional place for those moving between Bali and Lombok (and the Gili Islands) so is a pretty dusty and ramshackled port which provides locals and travellers with the amenities for a overnight stay.  We’d decided that we would stay a little longer and would spend our last 3 days before Ubud in the town.  

We had a look around at accommodation and chose to stay at the Aloha Inn after securing a good rate from the owner with included breakfast and pool!  

Not too shabby for a few nights stay

The pool at our place

We drifted into town after settling in and went on search for food.  We dropped by the Zen Inn café for lunch and ended up chatting to the owner – Liam for quite some time.  A Londoner who had moved to the area many years ago, he was running a café come guesthouse with his partner for the past few years.  We ended up staying all afternoon chatting and drinking and listening to his funny stories about the celebs who frequent his place.  A real character and easy to talk to, he also gave us some good ideas about what to do at our next stop.

The next day we headed to the beach.  There are two main bays in the area which you can go to and we headed to the ‘blue lagoon’ beach for a couple of hours.  

These accessories are generally more suited to the water, but you've got to give it to him, he can really carry this look off!

Quite a nice spot, not too busy and serviced by a couple of locals who make a living selling food and souvenirs to those on the beach.  Back to the ranch for more admin and planning and then dinner out in town.

View from my spot

Fish n chips indonesia style

As they say all over Asia – Same, Same for the next day.  Although this time we headed across to the other bay and went to white sand beach.  Not as nice as the beach the day before but it was a nice sunny day so we read, people watched and got chatting with some of the locals who work selling on the beach.  On our way out of the bay we bumped into an Aussie couple who were trying to get them and their two children back out onto the main rd (was a bit of a diversion to get to the beach and it was pretty steep).  We, the royal we of course, ended up helping to carry a pram with a small lad in it and helping to navigate the way off the beach.  Good deed of the day done and time to wrap up our stop in Padang Bai.  

Andy must've taken 10-15 photos of this praying mantis so one had to make it in here... Can you see it?

Next stop Ubud and the slippery slope to 40 by becoming 30!