KyuPugh: Bali Second Third: Not Actually Bali

So I'm calling this trip my Bali trip, but actually, three nights of it were spent on a tiny island called Gili Trawangan, the biggest of the three Gili Islands off the larger island of Lombok, Indonesia. The other two Gilis are called Gili Meno and Gili Air. I booked a little vacation package to Gili T online, which included a hotel pickup in Bali, fast boat transfer to Gili, three nights in a five-star hotel (still ridonculously cheap, though, for what you get), a private snorkeling trip, and a flight back to Bali with airport transfer from the Gili hotel. It was pricier than the rest of the trip, but I figured it'd be a lot of fun and a nice splurge for us.

We took a lot of pictures on this whole trip, and I'm kind of busy now with new semester starting a new teacher having just gotten here, so I'll split it up a bit. This segment, Vila Ombak Hotel.

This is an award-winning luxury hotel that costs only like $200 a night. You can tell it's big because they have one of those busy signposts:

And a big map:

We stayed in what's called a Deluxe Lumbung Hut, a semi-outdoors, actually mostly outdoors, kind of dwelling. Here's the exterior:

This type of room seemed to only come with a double bed, so I had to share with my mom. Luckily it was only three nights, and I slept reasonably well, so I didn't notice too much.

One of the only downsides of this hotel was that despite the plethora of services, activities, locations, etc. that exist at this hotel, they don't provide one of those little Welcome to Vila Ombak information binders, the kind that even the tiniest guesthouse usually have. So if you want to know when the pool hours are, you have to either make a call, or go look at the sign at the pool, for example. They did put in a room service menu and spa menu, but both of those were too expensive for us. Blargh.

Anyway, it was a nice little room, despite being dark and not having much info. In the cabinets are a mini-fridge and a safe.

In the back of the room are the stairs down to the bathroom, which I'll get to in a second. They were steep.

This is the balcony outside the room. That's a handy thing.

Stone stairs go down to the terrace. Or up to the room, if you prefer. The huts were duplices, so we shared this staircase with a German couple, I believe.

I totally used the hammock a couple time, and I did a little reading on the daybed. I did it at night, though. Mom was slightly annoyed that it was so dirty down there. The staff didn't really sweep off the bed or the floor or anything.

The wooden door at the back of the terrace also leads to the bathroom. This was actually a topic of great concern for us the first day, because although there was a padlock on the outside of the door, we weren't given the key, and it was attached so that the door wasn't actually locked. The back door in the bedroom didn't lock, either, so it would have been totally easy to get in to our room. Eventually, though, I found a wooden bar to lock the bathroom door from the inside, old school, and then housekeeping actually locked it from the outside the next day.

So the bathroom was an outdoor bathroom, which was really cool. It was all walled in with bamboo, but there was no ceiling. Gili T has no freshwater spring, so all the fresh water has to be boated in from Lombok daily. As a way of saving fresh water, Vila Ombak uses salt water in their toilets, sinks, and showers. So what you have to do is take your shower, then the urn right there has a bunch of fresh water in it, and you use a big ladle to rinse off the salt. It sounds shitty, but for a few days it's okay. It's preferable to allowing people to waste tons of fresh water, as tourists tend to do in the shower.

Here's an upward view from the bathroom. It was nice because I took my showers in the evening, and I could look up at the moon and the trees.

The only downside of an outdoor bathroom is lack of auditory privacy.

These little vessels had shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in them. I wished I could have taken them home. They're neato.

And back to the stairs.

The rest of the hotel was also pretty cool. This is reception.

It had intricately carved doors, ceiling, and windows.

And a koi pond on each side of the entrance. I'll never escape the koi pond.

Our welcome juices were served in these little wooden guys.

Just outside reception is a little woodcarving shop, but I never saw anyone working there.

Here's the little promenade nearby. This hotel has a medical clinic amongst these little shops. As if.

This is the breakfast restaurant by day, fine dining by night. It's one of a few restaurants on the property, seems.

Here's a little area to just sit and read or use Wifi.

The pool was crazy. There were two pools on the property, but this one was cooler, and I had the feeling that the other one was reserved for the particular set of nicer rooms it was near. So we swam in this one only.

A couple times we had just one drink during Happy Hour, where you get two for one cocktails. The drinks cost as much there as at home, so we couldn't enjoy much of the bar.

We were hoping this was a hot tub, but no, it was just bubbly water. Booo-urns.

This bridge was fun to swim under, but after a second I realized how ill-conceived it was, leading to nowhere as it did. They should have switched the jacuzzi and the trees.

There were two pools on the side, one for kids, and the other maybe also for kids, but when there was a scuba lesson, they used the back section for that.

The area around the pool was kind of a funny thing. On the pool level, there weren't really that many loungers, maybe about 12-16, but then down a step was a whole sandy area with another 12-16 loungers, but they felt a little far away from the pool.

Also by the pool was a little game center, and a camel.

Including Giant Chess.

The hotel had a dedicated portion of the beach, with some beach bars. They were apparently strict with the guests only policy. There were some people next to us, sitting on some loungers and drinking some beers from the bar, and they got kicked out of the area because they weren't staying at this hotel. Jezum.