Indonesia - Gili Trawangan

Well we arrived here on the boat at about 9am. Good time we thought as anyone leaving today will be checking out so there should be a good selection of accommodation for us. Bryan stayed with the bags whilst Jody went in search of rooms. Its actually not that hard to do - the island only has one road which goes all the way around it and many many shops, restaurants and rooming places set their stall on the main road. This means as you walk along the road they are waiting for you - they know what time the boat comes in! Such tantalising offers such as “i give you nice price. I have nice villa you can have for half price - normally Rp 3,000,000.00” yeah right (thats about £200 a night!) Then we found our mate Awight (said like Michael Barrymore does) at Flush Bungalows. We call him that as he likes to practice his English - or his Cockney, everyday with us. He was very friendly and his rooms were a good price. We have a beautiful rice hut again within spitting distance of the beach for Rp 230,000 a night (about £8 each) We have a huge bed with white linen (yes its really white) and a lovely outside bathroom. By outside we mean open air! It has walls around it but no ceiling and its great taking a moonlit shower before we go to bed. I’m not too worried about creepy crawlies here as we have a huge resident gheko in the bathroom and it is so bright and spacious (not like the first one on Gili Meno!) Our £8 a night gets us breakfast included so every morning we have been having banana pancake with honey and a pot of tea on our veranda. They put fresh banana, mango, pineapple, watermelon and pawpaw with it so its almost like a meal! We were chatting to Awight when we arrived and his best friend lives in Swindon of all places. Awight says his friend phones him a couple of times a week as he is so homesick. I’m not surprised though - who’d want to trade this place for Swindon! The only thing to mar our beautiful lifestyle at the moment is wailing man. Wailing man goes off at 5am every morning. Indonesia is largely muslim and as we found out on our first night, wailing man goes off at regular intervals throughout the day to call everyone to prayer. Its horrendous! Bryan has recorded it so we will try and put in on the site somewhere for you to hear. We also realised after we had got comfortable at Flush Bungalows, that the mosque is right behind us so we get him at full volume. Arrrh!!! So Bryan enlisted for a Rescue PADI diving course which has taken him off most days since we got here. This has left Jody with her days to fill, reading on the beach, snorkelling, reading on the beach, lazing in the sunshine, reading on the beach....you get the point. Between us we have taken lots of underwater photos and you can see them on the photos page. I think the highlight must be when a huge turtle swam right past Bryan on one of his dives. Amazing! The Gilis are big into turtle conservation here. They collect the eggs a turtle lays on the beaches, then incubate them until they hatch. Then have huge pools they keep them in until they are big enough to release into the sea. There are 3 of these big tanks filled with small, then medium, then larger turtles and you can walk up to them at any time and see the turtle all swimming away in them. They keep them open to the public and it seems to work well. Apparently they have 2 releases a year but there isn’t one due whilst we’re here unfortunately. So most days the temperature hovers around the low 30 degrees and as you can probably tell, we spend them lazing, strolling, eating, drinking and swimming. Bliss! All this for around £10 a day, we could stay here for a long time. Alas we are travellers and need to move on, we have 7 days to reach Jakarta, now all we need to do is find the cheapest and most scenic way of getting to Bali and then across Java (dodging the erupting volcanoes on the way). Tuesday 18th April, 2011 OK panic has set in now. We have to be in Jakarta airport by monday night and we are on completely the wrong island! we have to get from Gili to Bali to Java and right the way across Java to Jakarta on the other side of it. So now we are madly planning our trip and where we want to go..... Later.... Boat booked now for Thursday to take us back to Bali, from there a night bus to Java Island. We want to see some temples and stuff on Java before heading to Jakarta to get our flight to Vietnam on Tuesday morning. A lot to fit in but we can do it. Time to start packing now..... Flush Bungalows Room rating: 8/10 - clean, outside shower & toilet Location: 10/10 - it’s on an island on the beach close to everything we need Staff: 8/10 - lovely really friendly and his mate lives in Swindon! Value for Money: 10/10 - £8 a night including decent breakfast to sleep in a beautiful hut on a beautiful island....! Other comments: what more could we possibly ask for? Stay again? definitely. However if it was during a hotter time of year we would look for somewhere with air conditioning Overall experience: 10/10 Gili Trawangan is beautiful and is a little piece of Paradise