Chilling out in Gili Trawangan! (Indonesia)

I’m on day four of 10 on the Indonesian island of Gili Trawangan and absolutely loving the place.

The Gili islands are just off of Lombok and according to a local, Gili T is party island, Gili Meno is honeymoon island and Gili Air is in between the two!

For a casual million rupiah (£60) we got two return tickets on Ganggari fast boat from Bali, which took about two hours. It can be a bit of a choppy ride but thankfully we were quite lucky and it wasn’t too bad!

Arriving on Gili T was so exciting – there was no jetty or harbour, the boat just pulled up on the sand and we hopped out! It was everything I had expected/hoped for – white sand, turquoise, tranquil and crystal clear sea, and a relaxed atmosphere with cars/motorbikes not permitted and horses and carts and bicycles everywhere. Paradise!

It’s a bit of a party scene on a night, but in the day it’s a completely chilled out vibe and we’ve spent the last four days relaxing.

Without a doubt the biggest highlight has been snorkelling and swimming with sea turtles! The Gili islands are in what’s called the coral triangle and each is surrounded by coral reef, meaning you can walk off the beach into the sea, swim out about 25 metres and see loads of colourful coral and fish, sea snakes, AND (very excitingly) sea turtles! They seem quite used to people and don’t mind at all if you dive down and get close to them or swim along next to them. As I’d never even seen one before and absolutely love them, this was literally beyond a dream come true! We’ve spent hours already just watching them munching on the seaweeds, it’s so lush, and all for free! We’re doing a PADI diving course in a few days and I can’t wait to see even more.

One of the other highlights of Gili T is that it’s so small and it has a road (I say this loosely, it’s pretty rickety and sometimes it’s just sand) all around the circumference. Cycling around the island only takes max hour and a half, although we made a day of it and stopped half way for some snorkelling. It’s all totally flat so it’s a dead easy ride, no more difficult that walking, and you can take in the island’s coastal beauty as you plod along. It’s amazing! We hired our bikes from our budget accommodation at Beach Box Bungalows for 30,000 rupiah (£1.50) each for 24hrs.

Having the bike also meant it was even easier to get to the southern end of the island where you can chill out with a drink on a bean bag and watch the gorgeous sunset. It does down behind Bali, which means that as the sun gets lower, one of Bali’s volcanic mountains comes into view, and it’s just gorgeous.

For the rest of the day there’s sunbathing, swimming and generally loving doing bugger all! I’m definitely so glad we decided to book in for 10 days – a few days here just wouldn’t have been enough for me!