Indonesia Lombok Gili T Marygio Resort

Day 24 – Gili T

Gili Trawangan is a small island of the coast of a bigger Island called Lombok. Dave and I always try to spend the last week of our holiday somewhere relaxing, and this year, this is where we ended up.

We’re currently located under that red dot

Now, I knew Gili T had a reputation as a bit of a party island, but I was a bit. Surprised that how little there was to do OTHER than partying!

An awesome Regae band played nightly at Sama Sama bar

We did find some things. We spent 2 mornings looking for sea turtles (and found them both days!!), and our silver working class was a great way to spend the afternoon, but I think we would have gone a bit stir crazy if we’d stayed any longer.

I loved my time in this pool…. But I was getting awfully pruny by day 3!!!

As for the party scene, we did go “all out” last night, as it was our last night on the island. We ate some fantastic Indian food, ordered some terribly overpriced (but delicious) sangria wine and sat on the beach until midnight. It was a nice way to wind down the holiday!!

Day 23 – Classes

Back in October, we had a week off of work but opted out of our usual Golden Week holiday to avoid the stress of it all. Still, we wanted to do something interesting during our time off, so I booked us into an acrylic paint pouring workshop. It was a great experience and since then I’ve been keen to try any class I can!

In Bukit Lawang, a coconut carving class was included in our tour. The artist, Moon, was very talented and gave us lots of ideas to choose from. I tried to go with something simple, but I didn’t account for all the toes I need to carve (I chose to make a gecko necklace). It was a lot harder than I thought it would be and I realized quickly the value of all of Moon’s work.

Moon, working on my gecko so I didn’t accidently behead it…

Dave was much more competent and did his all on his own!

I can’t take total credit for my final piece because Moon ended up doing a lot of it himself while I tried to cool down outside (it was stifflingly hot in his workshop). But I did do about half of it myself (mostly the sanding and finer details).

Today, on Gili T, we took another class this time for making Silver jewellery. Dave chose to make a ring and I made a pendant. We were also there with another lady who was making a ring that represented her 3 children. It was a tonne of fun and I found it quite a bit easier than the coconut carving.

We had a good afternoon and all 3 of us left very happy with our results.

Now, I have some jewelery from our time in Indonesia, and some great memories too!

Day 22 – Ferries

Today we went to Lombok.

Lombok is about 20 minutes away by boat. We traveled to Gili T earlier this week from Lombok and it cost us a whopping 350,000 rupiah to get here (over $30 Canadian). They definitely overcharge for that short trip, but when you arrive at 9pm, during a rainstorm and have a bunch of luggage… You don’t have a lot of options!!

Today, though, we had options. The pubic ferry goes from Gili T to Lombok in about the same amount of time as a speedboat, but for a fraction of the cost (less than $3 Canadian).

Now, I realize that taking a ferry isn’t usually a complicated task… But in South East Asia, things don’t always make sense to my Western brain.

After buying tickets for the ferry, we asked when the boat left. The woman replied “no time…40 people”. The boats here don’t leave on a scheduled time… They leave when they’re full.

I asked “where do we find the boat”. She pointed to an unspecified area of the beach (where 10+ boats were floating and loading passengers).

We walked outside and saw that there were about 200 people all standing around… Not getting on any of the 10 boats waiting there…

Nobody seems to really know which boat they should take and nobody really seems to be responsible for sending people in the right direction, either.

After waiting in line for a while to get on the biggest boat we saw (public ferries need to hold a lot of people, right??), we found out it was actually going to Bali…

So, we walked down the beach and just started asking people where to go! Before long, we were on our way, but I have to admit… It was a lot more complicated than I expected!!

Day 21 – Sunsets & Selfies

The Gili Islands are famous for their instagram-worthy sunsets. We missed our first couple because of rain, but today was clear so we rented a couple of bikes and head down to the beach.

The problem with Instagram-worthy sunsets though, is that everyone wants them… And everyone wants to be in them. Asia is a very populated place… And everywhere we go, we struggle with getting pictures that don’t have a tonne of people standing around in them.

Of course, you can always get creative with your photos, like I tend to:

But sometimes you just need to give up and move on… Which is what I decided to do after waiting more than 5 minutes for this guy to realize he was in my shot…

As I turned to leave, so did he… While 5 other tourists simultaniously moved into my shot. So…I took one last angry photo(that accidently turned out REALLY well!!!

Day 20 – Relaxing

Dave and I have active holidays. Usually, our only real rest days are days when we travel to a new area and are forced to take it easy.

In the last year, we’ve worked really hard to get into a better lifestyle. After all, we love our life and the last thing we want is to be suffering from health issues prematurely. We started exercising regularly, eating better and looking at food as medicine & fuel instead of simply as an indulgence.

So with this mindset, I naturally planned a more active holiday than usual too and by the end of our Komodo Islands tour, my body was well aware of it!!!

So… After nearly 3 weeks of hiking, walking, swimming, trekking, climbing and scrambling through caves, we finally decided to put our feet up, and relax a little!!

Today was a fabulous day of nothingness!! (Followed by dinner on the beach!!).