We made it to Bali safe and sound and stayed at a hotel in Kuta for the night. We arrived after 11pm so we basically went to the hotel, showered and went to bed. Pop! Hotel in Kuta was a great place. The room was clean and it had this hilarious bathroom in it. It looked like some futuristic pod with a door that opened to reveal a shower and toilet. Hilarious!
Not Kuta
The next morning we were up really early because we were being picked up by Blue Water Express and transferred by car and boat over to the Gili Islands, which are part of Lombok, Indonesia. The boat ride was 2.5 hours and it wouldn't have been too bad if it wasn't for the engine breaking down right in the middle of the ocean! There were 5 engines on the back of this boat, but for some reason they insisted on fixing this one engine instead of using another one. They had one of their staff in the water working on it for almost 15 minutes while we bobbed away. In the end we made it to Gili Trawangan without anymore issues.
The Gili Islands are a set of 3 islands just off the coast of Lombok and they are beau-ti-ful! They are especially interesting because they do not have any motorized forms of transportation on the islands. If you want to get anywhere you are either walking, cycling or taking a horse-drawn buggy. Mainly I felt bad for the horses, having to drag tourists around all day, but it was interesting to see. We stayed on Gili T for 3 nights at the Coconut Gardens, which is a place with 4 little bungalows on a coconut plantation. It was awesome! The couple working there were so nice, and we had fresh coconut water every morning for breakfast! It was a little off the main drag of the island so they had bikes for us to use while we were there. Dave managed to break 2 of them...he was inflating one of the tires and it popped and the chain on the other one broke while we were trying to peddle through sand. Thankfully the hosts were understanding!
The horse-drawn buggy that took us to Coconut Gardens
Our first day there we went to the beach and did some snorkelling. We saw a huge turtle!!! And we even got to swim with it for a little while before it went off into the depths of the ocean. It was so cool! We also so tons of other cool fish, but a lot of the coral seemed really dead. We learned after that its because they used to do a lot of dynamite fishing in the area. So sad! The next day was Dave's birthday and we had hoped to scuba dive, but they were full so we had to save that for our last day on the island. Instead, we explored more of the island, hit the beach again, did a little more snorkelling and had some drinks to celebrate! Our last day on the island was our scuba day. We only did one dive, but it lasted for almost an hour and we got to see a ton of cool fish. We saw a few lion fish, which were my favourite, and a cuttle fish, which was Dave's favourite. I think I'm starting to get to used to this whole scuba diving thing!
We left in the morning on a public boat from Gili T and went to the smallest of the 3 islands, Gili Meno...aka paradise! We stayed in a beachside bungalow at Mallia's Child. It was a little more expensive than they let on over the phone, but it was well worth it for a splurge. The place was amazing...the island, the beach, the bungalow, the people. We loved every moment of our 2 days on Gili Meno. We spent most of our time lazing on the beach or in the hammock at our place, plus a little snorkelling, exploring the island, eating and drinking. We were so sad to leave, but excited to explore the island of Bali next.
The view from our bungalow at Gili M
Thanks for reading
xoxo
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