(this is probably going to be all over the place because I have a lot of days and events to cover)
So the early morning travels started from Pulau Weh, then I got a ferry to Banda Aceh, next a flight to Kuala Lumpur, I raced off my flight and through immigration than ran with my luggage to the Air Asia booth and asked for the next flight to Bali, I just about got one an hour later but then it would have been an extra $90 because I had luggage to check and you have to give them 4 hours notice. So booked a flight 5 hours later and then went in the Starbucks and hung out with a girl who was on her way to Singapore who i also got the flight from Banda Aceh with. While sitting in Starbucks I though I recognized a guy who was ordering his drink, so I went over and discovered it was one of the guys I befriended on Koh Rong in Cambodia! He was headed to Borneo with one of the other girls from Koh Rong and I was on my way to Bali to meet the other 3 of their group. I couldnt believe how small of a world it was. Anyways i got my flight to Bali and when i arrived i wandered around the town Kuta where i was trying to find somewhere cheap to spend the night so i could get a bus to go meet my friends in the morning.
After meeting up with my friends in the north of Bali we decided to head over to the Gili islands. Being the budget travellers we are we decided to take the slow ferry over to Lombok ( the island just east of bali) and then drive up to the north and get a local boat across to the Gili's. We ended up getting a ticket with a tour company because it would cost the same as what we figured out it would for us to do on our own. Once we got the Lombok we discovered that "it was too late to get the ferry to gili" (probably wasnt) and we had to spend the night in a town on Lombok. It was weird cause they didnt take us anywhere specific to spend the night which you might expect in a tourist trap so we found a cheap place and decided that it would work out better anyways because we would get to check out accommodation before all the fast boats got there.
We found a place and then just hung out, went snorkelling, ate good food. Walked on the beach, stuff like that.
Gili Trawangan is really nice, We did a day trip to one of the other islands which was really nice as well and had really good snorkelling.
Here is a flip flop tree.
Watching the sunset
There were some beautiful sunsets that could be seen from the gili's
After a couple days my friends had to leave cause they were on their way to NZ and Fiji( super jealous) and i thought i would just hang out because my friends from work were coming from Australia soon and it didnt make sense to go back to Bali and come back because they wanted to come to Gili.
Here is a man that was using a piece of packaging foam and his flip flops to paddle out to his boat.
I went to the other two islands, Gili Meno & Gili Air, and eventually decided that Gili T was the best. The other ones were much quieter and less places. So everything was more expensive and honestly the people there just didnt seem to care so customer service wasnt very good.
I headed back to Gili T and got a room at the same place I was staying at the first time.
. My friend from back home came and we had a great time chilling out and going snorkelling and sitting in the sun. Then the cyclone came, apparently we got the tail end of one that was making its way up from Australia before it turned around and it was super stormy. All the fast boats were cancelled so lots of people were stuck on the island because they bought return tickets.
One day my friend and I were sitting eating lunch and watching a group of people trying to get into a local boat from the back to go to lombok so that they could fly back to bali. The waves were pretty big near the shore. The boat rocked like crazy once, twice, and then the third wave came crashing over into the boat and people went nuts! everyone was trying to get off this boat all at once, locals from every direction were running towards the boat to help people off and to see what was happening. in the end everyone and all of their stuff was soaking.
This is the giant Grass hopper that jumped out of the tree onto me
Here is a baby sea turtle that they had in the reserves on all of the islands. They collect the eggs and release them once the turtles are hatched and big enough.
We saw a bunch of full size sea turtles while we were snorkelling as well. Every time I went I saw at least 1 but usually 2 or 3 of them swimming around. The coral and fish around the Gili's was so cool as well. Kinda the same as on Pulau Weh but a lot more soft coral. There was also lots of bigger rocks with swim through's and what not. Lots of christmas tree coral where when you get close it sucks in on itself and disappears. Once while I dove down to swim around to this really cool looking coral my friend pointed out that I had just swam super close to this weird squid thingy. it had tentacle like things hanging around its mouth and wavy fins all around the outside.
My favourite part about snorkelling on Gili was that around there was beaches pretty much all around the island, once you go underwater just off the shore there is a bunch of short seaweed that makes it look like there is a big lawn around the whole island. Keep going a little bit further and then its like the lawn ends and it turns into a crazy coral jungle! then just past the coral ring it just drops off and there is coral going down the whole wall, super cool.
It was really sad after the storm finally cleared up we went to go snorkelling one last time before we had to leave and I was super bummed out about the damage that happened to the reef. well whatever was left of it, which was not much at all. The ocean was all foggy because of the silt that had been churned up and once you dived down deep enough to see the coral was wrecked. Most of the fish were gone as well, really sad to see.
None of the islands had any cars on them, there was only horse drawn carriages and walking paths which made it really nice and really chill to hang around.
Those horse carts came in very handy when one day the guy in the room next to ours had an allergic reaction to peanuts and his epi pen didnt work. My friend and I had to rally the locals to help us carry him to a horse cart and take him to the small clinic.
He ended up being alright and bought us pizza a couple nights later to thank us.
For more photos check the album on the left!
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