Diary for samandlucytravels


Gili Trawangan (Paradise Island)

2017-06-09 to 2017-06-14

After leaving Seminyak we spent a night in Padang Bai, a small Balinese fishing village on the east coast. Unfortunately the docks were filled with litter. It was still a beautiful part of Bali, but had nothing on what we had to come.

The following morning we got our fast boast (Mahi Mahi Dewata) over to Gili Trawangan with a stop off in Lombok. We sat on the sun roof and enjoyed the sights, luckily the Lombok strait was kind to us and wasn't too rough. It was nice to pull up to Lombok and see how desolate the island is, maybe it's just the side we saw, but it looked like pure jungle. The boat pulled up on the beach and we walked to our home for the next 5 days, the Gili Smile Beach Bunglow. We spent our first night having dinner and sipping Bintang at a restaurant on the sand (they all are).

My favourite thing about Gili T so far (other than it being absolute paradise) has to be that there is no motorised vehicles on the island. But there's also no need, you can cycle round the island in an hour. On our first full day we headed out on our bikes to do a loop of the island, get our bearings and pick our spot for sunset that evening. For the afternoon we relaxed at the beach outside our bungalow, and watched the turtles swim in the shallows coming up for air. Beautiful creatures. We also visited the turtle sanctuary where they house baby turtles waiting to be released into the ocean. The view from the beach on Gili T is just stunning, you glance over the turquoise ocean to Gili Meno, and down the beach to the right you have the stunning view of Lombok. Thankfully so far Lombok has been pulling all the weather in, so we have glorious sunshine on Gili T.

We watched the sunset from Pandawa Beach Club, and certainly had a prime spot, sitting on our beanbags, to watch the sun go down. We cycled back in the dark, which I hated as you couldn't see the many pot holes! We ate dinner on the beach (something I will never get tired of) and planned our next day on Gili T.

We hired out some snorkels that morning, and went free diving where we saw the turtles the day before. Unfortunately we didn't see any, but luckily we have swam with them previously on the Great Barrier Reef. We still saw loads of colourful fish (parrot fish still being my favourite) and swam in between the coral. Most of the coral here was dead however, so has lost its vibrant colour. The most interesting part about snorkelling around Turtle Beach on Gili T however is the big shelf under the sea. Once you swim out about 100 metres the coral reef just drops into the deep blue sea, it made me nervous though, as I thought about the story of Nemo.

The rest of the time we mostly explored different parts of the island (on foot this time, as the bikes hurt our bums so much!), shopped in the small markets and dabbled in the different bars and restaurants, Egoiste being our favourite. Gili T is known for being a party island in places but only Sam and I would make the mistake of coming here during in Ramadan (Gili T is part of Lombok so is Muslim). The island was still lively however, and great fun. For a small island there certainly is a lot to do! Would 100% come back to Gili T, and Bali (of course).