Gili Trawangan

The journey is almost over and I think I saved the best place for last! Five days on the pristine white beaches of Gili Trawangan is definitely the best way to end the trip. I'm staying at Trawangan Dive, a great hotel, restaurant and dive shop. What more could you ask for? I met a colorful Welsh fellow on the ferry ride over whose birthday it happened to be, so we had a couple of beers on the boat. He invited me to the hostel that he owns for drinks later which turned out to be a great way to meet some people and have a fun night bar hopping around the island. I wisely planned to go diving on day 2 in the afternoon, so I was able to sleep off the previous night's festivities. My first dive here was amazing! We saw two black tipped sharks, loads of sea turtles and lots of fish. One of the turtles was as big as a car! After my dive, I wandered down the main road and noticed that Gili Yoga had a vinyasa class starting in about half an hour. What a great was to end the day. I think I'll have to make a habit of it while I'm here.

With water so clear and diving so convenient, I went diving everyday while in Gili T. Staying at a dive shop was the best decision! All you have to do is sign up, hop in the boat, and 10 minutes later you're at the dive site ready to backward roll off the side of the boat. I dove Shark Point, Sunset and Turtle Heaven and saw lots of sharks, turtles, cuttle fish, garden eel, a moray eel and tons and tons of fish. It was some of the best diving I have experience anywhere in the world.

Liz, my dive master from the first day, wanted to show me more of the island the following day. I went along with him for a bike ride around the island to a great sunset spot. Gili has amazing sunsets! I could stare at those skies everyday for the rest of my life and never tire of it. After the ride, I went to an Indonesian cooking class at Sugar and Spice. It was a lot of fun and the food was SOOOOOO good! We made Mie Goreng, Gado-Gado, Chicken Taliwang, Fish in Banana Leaves, Peanut Sauce with Tofu and Tempeh and Kelepon which are these weird little green balls filled with palm sugar and rolled in shredded coconut. Yum!

I went out with some guys I had been diving with a few nights and enjoyed the Gili night life to its fullest. I even ran into a friend from Chile who happened to be travelling around this part of the world too!

On my last morning, I woke up to an email from the booking agency I used to book my boat back to Bali to catch my flight home saying that the boat at 9:00 was cancelled, but not to worry because I had been issued a ticket for the 10:30 boat. I went to an internet cafe to print my ticket and reported to the appropriate boat check-in. The guy looked at my ticket and said "Boat is full, You needed to check in 48 hours prior." I argued with him to no avail, took a deep breath and decided that the worst that could happen is that I got stuck in Bali for an extra day. Boo hoo! I called the agency back with a little edge in my voice and about 30 minutes later, after running out of both phone credit and charge, I had a new boat ticket at 11:20 back to Bali. I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make my 4 PM flight, since it's an hour and a half to Bali and another hour and a half to the airport from the jetty, but luck was on my side. I got to the airport around 2:30, checked in and began the long journey back to London.