Gili Trawangan, Lombok, Indonesia (Dec.23-30)

Gili Trawanagan, Bali, Indonesia
Written by Caleb

We quickly finish up the delicious banana pancake and cancel the café latte. Me and Mark run down to the boat to check in. I wait for mom outside while Artemis and Mark go onto the boat. When me and mom get inside, there is only one seat left so she takes it and I sit on the stairs next to the wide open door. The boat ride started out great. Just as we're leaving the harbour, we see some flying fish. And when I say flying I mean flying. Like they flap their wings and stay up for at least 15 seconds. They are so cool. The rest of the ride is a series of hitting my head on the roof and totally being rocked back and forth. It was crazy bumpy and pretty darn scary. Lucky none of us got seasick.

Arriving on Trawangan Mark gets a horse carriage. On Trawangan there are no taxis or cars or mopeds or motorized vehicles of any kind - only horse drawn carriages. It’s pretty fun, but pretty tough to fit all of us plus our four huge bags plus the driver and to top that off the driver’s 4 year old son decided to come along for the ride too.




We look at basically every hotel/villa/bungalow on the whole island. Finally after 5 hours of looking we decide to stay at our friends place, Big Bubble. We met the owner, Lyndsay, on Bunaken, diving. And he was the one that convinced us to come to Gili Trawangan. So we're going to dive and stay at his place. The problem is we can only stay there for three nights. We decided we’ll just figure that out later.

Mom doing Yoga at Big Bubble
Big Bubble accommodation

Mom and dad's room is really nice because they have the deluxe. Unfortunately we just have the standard. The standard has a fan but it doesn’t do anything and the toilet doesn’t flush and the beds are scratchy and small. But we manage.

Sunset on Tarwanagan

That day we head out for a dive. Memorable because underwater I started getting really bad stomach cramps and then I shit my pants. I DIDN’T HAVE A CHOICE! When you're 20m underwater and a 30 minute boat ride back to the nearest washroom then you gotta do what you gotta do. Other then that it was a nice dive.


On the Diving Boat with Doug

The next day was December 24 and we moved into the deluxe rooms which where WAY nicer. The bathroom was really nice and there was hot water. There was one huge bed and they had to put in a mattress but me and Artemis just switched off.


Xmas Dinner

We woke up on Christmas day at about 8:30 and did nothing. For presents I got a pair of pants and a t-shirt… AND A BLOODY TRIP AROUND THE WORLD! But other than that Christmas was just another normal day in the life of the traveller. The rest of the week went by pretty quick.

Caleb trying on new shorts

Mark on the beach

We moved into a new place because they kicked us out at Big Bubble. We moved into a really nice house with two floors and air conditioning and a TV and DVD player (yay!). It was probably the only place on the whole island with vacancy.

Artemis at the new place, sorry no pictures but there were lots of cats there which she loved

We went on a couple more dives and saw some sharks some huge turtles some cuttlefish (really cool) some huge angel fish, banner fish, morray eels with a head as big as yours, nudibranches (really, really cool. They're about 2 cm long and they have the most vibrant colors I've ever seen. They're really amazing). Oh we saw 2 octopus which where uber cool and a whole bunch of other stuff.

The food in Trawangen wasn’t amazing, just pretty good. There isn’t much variety in Indonesian foods. You have mei goreng (fried noodles), nasi goreng (fried rice) and nasi champour which is rice with a bunch of veggies and chicken. The first night there were not many people on the island and the restaurants were all deserted. We go to some villa for supper. You pay 60,000 rupea (6 dollars) and get a whole grilled fish with an all you can eat salad bar with ROLLS!! We haven’t had bread in like a month. Each of us probably has 8 rolls and that’s before the fish comes. The fish was good and so was the salad. We basically had the whole place to ourselves. We had some more good food and great diving.


Waiting for the boat to leave the island

The day we left we were all tired and it was a nice day. The boat we were getting on to had five 200 horsepower engines. FIVE. When we got on there was a lot of room and then this huge group came. There was still a lot of room. So we are going fast and then it starts to rain. Hard. And it rained during the whole ride back. Fortunately I fell asleep but I didn’t miss the huge waves, god those where treacherous.

But we lived and on we went to Sanur Beach where it continued to pour.
Caleb