Bali Transit Interval: Lombok

Included in our package trip to the Gili Islands was a return flight from Lombok Airport to Bali Denpasar. So we left Gili via a small speedboat, which was like an hour late and my mom was flipping out. The speedboat was the scariest shit ever. It was going so fast and it was so small that it felt like we were going to go flying out of the boat every time it bounced off the top of a wave, which was like every nanosecond. After that my handsarm were sore from gripping.

When we got to the harbor in Lombok after about a 15-20 minute boat ride, we were picked up by a couple dudes in a car and they drove us to the airport. We didn't realize it beforehand, but it was about a 90 minute drive from there to the airport, so it was kind of a drag.

But they made it into kind of a tour.

First we stopped at a little stand to get some water and take pictures of the scenery.

  Cow.

There were a couple other scenic areas that we could have stopped at, but we were kind of feeling rushed, due to the tardiness of the morning boatman, so we didn't bother. I was tired of taking pictures of scenery by then, anyway.

Another stop we made, which I didn't feel right taking photos of, was a jewelry shop with local pearls and such. I pretty much hate pearls, unless they're an abnormal pearl color, like blue, and they're alone on a pendant. I'm no Marge Simpson. My mom seems to like them more than I do, but this place was incredibly expensive, especially compared with how much cheaper everything else was, so we didn't even consider buying anything. We mostly just allowed the stop so we could use the bathroom.

A productive stop, however, was at a little weaving village. Here's a picture of said village.
 

In this village, the saying goes that if a girl can't weave well, she's not yet ready to get married. The lady that brought us around said it was a cooperative, so everybody spends a ton of time weaving shit, just making patterns out of their noggins, and then they bring it over to the shop and everyone shares the profits. She also showed us how the weaving is done.

They offered to let us try, but we were still feeling pressed for time, and it looked like it would take a while to get set up at the loom, so we had to decline. We did each end up buying something, thought, because it seemed a shame not to. The quality of the work was really good, and they were charging a lot for it by Balinese standards, but considering how much work probably goes into each item and how much it'd be back home, it was still a deal. I spent about $30 on a really nice green and gold table runner. Currently, having no table, I'm using it to hang across the top of my tall bookshelf. It's nice. My mom bought something similar, I think.

So we finally got to Lombok airport, which was kind of confusing. Indonesia charges airport fees, but instead of including them in the ticket price, they make you pay at the airport and get a receipt before you're let into the gate area. But there's not enough signage to let you know you have to do this, so inevitably a lot of people proceed to the gate and have to go all the way back and find some cashier area where they're doing this and then go back again. And then there's more security at the gate and you can't leave and there's no bathroom. That seems like a really bad idea, especially considering our half-hour flight was delayed about a half hour. Jeez.

But anyway, the last leg of the trip was Ubud, and that was a lot of fun, so I'll start talking about that next time.

Snorkeling

Part of our package trip to Gili T was a private snorkeling trip. This was pretty cool, although I can't say you get much for your money. On snorkeling trips in Thailand, for example, you get snorkel gear, plenty of water, fruit, and sometimes lunch included, plus of course the boat and the guide. But for this tour, which I bet we really paid more than market price for considering it was part of a package, all we got were a boat and a boat captain and his helmsman, let's call him for fun.

They took us to some place to rent gear, and I didn't even think to check it for like holes or anything, but when we got into the water, I kept getting a snorkelful of water every few seconds. As it turned out, there was a tear in the connector and so water was just flooding in. BOOO-urns. But luckily the helmsman had his snorkel hanging around he was staying in the boat, so I borrowed his. What a waste of like four dollars.

Anyway, we didn't have an underwater camera, so I can't show you all the AMAZING shit we saw under the water. But my mom took a bunch of pictures above water, so here they are, chronologically. A lot of them are pretty samey and self-explanatory, so I won't say much about them in particular.

Captain. I heard my mom ask his name at one point, but the answer was so long, I was like fuckin even AYE couldn't be expected to remember than, and I'm used to foreign names.

Helmsman. I didn't get his name, but he was a nice guy, even though he has no face here.

Lookit the water, man.

During this trip we went to I think three different snorkel sites around the three Gili Islands.  The first couple of sites were where sea turtles hang out, and we saw a couple at each place. That was cool. Actually, the best part of the snorkeling trip was this moment when we found a turtle just a few meters below us. Now, the water kind of changed its quality depending on where we were. In some places it was such a dark blue that you couldn't really see more than a few feet below you, but you could still see pretty far laterally. But in other spots, it was so light and clear that you could see like a hundred feet down to the bottom. In this area, though, it was like being in a bucket of dark blue. I couldn't hardly see anything. All I could see was this giant sea turtle, literally in a sea of blue, right below me. It was very peaceful. The boat captain swam down and touched it, but when I tried to do that my eardrums felt like they were going to explode. All morning I couldn't swim down more than a few feet. I tried swallowing, but it didn't work. So I didn't get to touch the sea turtle, but that's okay. I recently heard you're not supposed to touch them anyway.

In addition to sea turtles, there were these really cool little electric blue fish, which I liked enough to remember. I don't really remember any other fish from the first two sites. There weren't many. I did keep getting stung by tiny jellyfish, though. It was like a bunch of bee stings. I finally was able to see them in the water, and they were like electric pink or blue, as I recall. Smaller than a pea, the bastards.

By the way, it was a glass-bottom boat tour, so here is the glass bottom. You don't really see a helluva lot looking through there, but actually we did catch a glimpse of a sea turtle or two, and some fish of course.

At the last stop, we kind of stopped nearish the shore, after getting the boatspider legs caught with the legs of another boat, huhrrr, but then we were okay, so I jumped out because it was wicked hot. But then the boat had to kind of turn around and move a bit, so I had to hold on for dear life so it wouldn't leave me somewhere. When I started, I was holding on to the front of the boat, but the leg is all slimy, so I slipped on down to the back. Ha.

The third site was for fish proper, and in order to attract them, the captain put a bunch of breadlings into a water bottle and put some water in there. Then we went in the water, and he'd dump out some pieces and give us each a handful, and the fish would come and eat out of our hands. Sometimes they would eat our hands, too, but it didn't hurt. My favorite fish were these bright purple technicolor ones. I think there were also like some yellow fish, and definitely a lot of uglyass brown fish, but also the blue ones I liked again, and some others. It was interesting. The captain left the water bottle in the ocean, though, which I wasn't too pleased about.

One time, I've heard tell, my sister told my mom, "I'm sorry I'm not your GOLDEN BOY, Ryan" and ever since then he's been called the Golden Boy. So we took this picture for him.

After snorkeling, we were taken to this beachstaurant for lunch.

I got this banana cappuccino shake. It was awesome.

While we were eating, several people came up to us to sell shit. We might have been more willing, except we didn't expect to need money for more than gear, water, and lunch, so we only had the equivalent of a few dollars with us. Mom did end up getting a wooden mask for a good deal, because it was kind of a take it or leave it thing, only having a little money as she did. Then once she bought that, the vultures set in, and weren't really believing us that truly, we had no money. So some guy ended up getting her to trade some little keychain or something, plus a handful of small change for a pair of Fashion Earrings--plastic pearls that matched the real pearl necklace I got her in Shanghai. We both know she got taken, especially since one of the damn things came apart the next day, but she found the experience of trade interesting, so I guess it was worth it.

Small toes only.

It's fun sitting in these beach huts. Maybe I'll get one when I buy a beach house someday.

This is some sort of offering to Dionysus, or some local equivalent. It's a lot of empty alcohol bottles and junk.

Returning back to Gili T, we had to be dropped off at the main harbor, rather than at the beach in front of our hotel (where we were picked up), because of the tide situation at that moment. That was fine, except that we were expected to bring back our own rented gear, and we couldn't remember where the hell we'd gotten it, because we didn't get there by land, but boated over to the place, not even necessarily realizing we were on the same island when we went back on land (because we were focused on the water and looking the other way and such). So I asked the captain where we should go to return this stuff, and he pointed in the direction of our hotel. I think he must have misunderstood, because we didn't see the place on the way back. So we said, well, fuck it. They probably don't expect the gear until five, and it's only like two now, so let's go swimming first at the pool, then try and walk back to find the place.

So we left the gear out on the balcony of our room, so as not to mess up the room itself. But when we got back, it was gone. I called the front desk to see if maybe housekeeping had picked it up thinking it belonged to the hotel and we should return it (which would have been pretty shitty if in fact we had rented it from the hotel). But the dude at the desk told me that the owner of the gear had come looking for it, and security brought him to our room to pick it up. As if. It's a small world around there, so it's no surprise that he knew where we were staying. But our question was, did he think we were trying to steal it? We never found out, but I hope not. Also because that happened, I wasn't able to tell the dude that the snorkel was useless. But whatever, man.

In any case, it was a fun little trip.

The End.

Gili T: No Police, No Pollution

At Gili Trawangan, there are only about 400 families in permanent residence. I'm not sure how many tourists are there at any given time, but I bet during peak season they rival the number of locals. It's quite a popular destination, and regarding the three Gili Islands, this one is considered the "party island." I didn't know that when I booked the vacation package, but my mom was certainly happy.

Getting back to my point, there being so few people on the island, they've apparently found no need for a police force, and to reduce noise and air pollution, they've all agreed to not have any kind of motorized vehicles on the island. There's hardly a need for them, anyway. You can walk around the island in a couple hours or less, it's so small. The other forms of transport are by bike and by horse and buggy. We rode a buggy from the harbor to the hotel, and got ripped off (by like three dollars at most, though) because we were staying at the nicest hotel on the island. But after that we never needed a buggy.

One of the activities we did on Gili T was to rent some bikes for a few hours and bike around the island. You can tell my mom took these next two pictures, but I won't say why, to be polite.

To her credit, however, my mom did notice this sign.

Then we found what appeared to be a much nicer beach than the beaches around our hotel. Here's one of those three-strip-style beach photos.

Our plan was to finish biking around the island, then go back to the rental guy and extend our rental time so we could go back to the beach.

But after we hit this part of the island, it started to get too sandy on the road, and we had to drag our bikes through sand in really long stretches, then we'd get some nicish road for a few seconds, then back to dragging. It was so exhausting we had to stop to get something to drink at one of the other hotel's restaurant. Then when we finally got back to our area, we couldn't find the rental dude. It wasn't like a proper shop, just some dude hanging around a bunch of bikes by the road. So we were like, fuck it, we'll just bring them back late and pay the extra money. That probably happens a lot.

 

But by the time we got back there, the tide had changed, and you can see all those damn rocks and coral right at the water's edge. So it was again unswimmable.

So we just sat in the couple inches of water a bit, and walked up and down the beach, looking for shells. Then we ended up getting the bikes back in time because there was no reason to stay very long at a beach you can't swim at. We went swimming in the pool instead.

At night, the island has a lot of reggae music playing and stuff like that. No local music, it seemed. They would have a party on weekend nights, and maybe weeknights, too, I'm not sure, but which bar having the party would rotate so everyone got a fair chance at revenue. But actually, we didn't really experience the partying that much, because we would be so tired out from swimming and biking and being in the sun. I think we went to bed at 10 or 10:30 every night. We did have a drink after supper one night, or rather my mom had a drink, and I had a water, and that was okay. I'm not much of a partier, though. 

The restaurants were pretty cool because they were all along the beach, and a lot of them had resident cats. I think my mom took like a hundred photos of them, and I also took a few, but I won't bother you with ALL of them.

This kitty was our first close encounter. It patiently waited for scraps, which I never give to restaurant cats, but I think my mom gave it some.

Then when we went to the restaurant next door that night, we found that it was also the territory of that cat.

And another cat.

And then we saw that the orange cat had a little twin.

 

And then finally, they became triplets, and we assumed that was mom there, in white. Isn't that precious.

My mom's shoes and cat.

All the cats on the island had fucked up tails, as feral and semi-feral cats often do, so my mom felt right at home with them. All her cats have fucked up tails.

 Here's the restaurant we had lunch in the first day. It was an Indian place with a hookah bar, but we didn't try that part.

They gave me a whole bucket of korma, and I couldn't even finish it. Bintang was the local Indonesian beer, reasonably cheap, so that's what my mom drank when she had beer. I don't think I tried it, but I'm sure it tastes like every other beer I've ever had.

 Because of the whole having to import fresh water from Lombok thing, everything was more expensive in Gili that in Bali, but we still got lunch for at most fifteen bucks for two, including beer and/or cool fruit or coffee drinks, and supper wasn't much more. At this one place they had a chocolate lava cake, and I got that for dessert twice. It was awesome. It was almost as good as that dessert place in Cyprus.

ALMOST.