Gili T

We needed to get away from the chaos of Bali. Kuta was too dirty and too expensive. Both of us were aching to find some white sand and some crystal blue water. Gili Trawangan off the coast of Lombok was where we could find this paradise.

Joey and I purchased transport tickets that included bus and boat to Gili T. We were told that it would take approximately 9 hours to get there. We could deal with a long day of traveling considering the 2 hour fast boat alternative was triple the price. The day started off with a very early morning. Up at 5 and out of the room by 6 am.

After 12.5 hours of a lot of hurrying up and then waiting around. That is the theme of Asia. Hurry up, and then wait. We dealt with a pretty horrible sales guy who was trying to sell us a ticket back. I seriously thought he was going to fight Joey at one point. Joey wasn't sure when we wanted to come back or how we were coming back so he said he didn't want the ticket. The guy was like "Well how are you going to get back?", Joey somewhat frustrated but said jokingly "I'll swim." The guy obviously was not pleased with this answer and started to get really rude to us. Finally we caved and bought a ticket from him for a better deal, but I was still not impressed by his crappy sales tactics.

We didn't get to see much of Gili T when we arrived because we arrived 3.5 hours later than we were supposed to. This posed as a dilemma because we didn't know where we were staying and we were almost too tired to find a good deal. Luckily some guys had a relatively cheap room with breakfast. It would do for the night.

Later on we met up with our good friends that we met in Penang, Tim and Hayley. Joey and I met them in Rudy's at a local bar. We were exhausted from the long day of travel so we went back to our hotel pretty quick, except we got lost and spent half an hour looking for it. When we finally did, a bed never felt so nice.

The room that we had was actually really nice at Gili Gecko. The only thing that really sucked was that you could hear every little thing happening in the other 3 rooms. You could hear someone brushing their teeth, or farting. We had already arranged with Tim and Hayley to check out a place they found down the beach that was reasonably priced and right on the beach. We all met up and made the 30 minute trek there with our loaded backpacks. The group of us finally found it and were relieved to take our packs off.

The rooms weren't the nicest at Nusa Tiga, but they were 50ft to the beach, and breakfast was included. What more could you ask for $11 a night? Some of the best snorkeling on the island was right in front of our beach too!

Later on that day I met up with Tori which was a friend that Joey and I had met up in Laos. We had been trying to get together forever, but Joey and I were always a couple days ahead of Tori. It was so nice to finally meet and catch up. I liked hearing about Tori's recent adventures. Tori also saw some other friends she had made in Thailand in Gili T, a couple named Gwen and James. It was like one big happy family.

The next couple of days were spent laying on the beach and soaking up the sun. We'd go for the occasional snorkel. Life was really good. After a bunch of weeks of traveling non stop, this is exactly what the doctor ordered. Good friends, beer, the beach and the sun. Gotta love life.

One evening while the tide was going out and the sun was setting, some of us decided to go searching for sea turtles on the reef by our beach. Tim and I were the first to go out, and luckily we discovered a sea turtle. It was so amazing. He was just cruising around, eating coral and occasionally coming up for air. I was in love with this little guy. I didn't want to be selfish with my snorkel so I swam back so Joey could experience the turtle too. On my way back I found another cute turtle.

After a few days of doing nothing, Joey and I knew we wanted to do some diving. We though we'd finish up our Advanced Open Water certification with Blue Marlin. We signed up for a deep dive, a navigation dive and a night dive.

Our first dive was the deep dive, which just so happened to be very close to our hotel beach. I was a bit disappointed because I had already seen a lot of the reef, but going 30 metres below the surface gave me another perspective. There were a lot of fish down there, and we even saw a turtle and a black tip reef shark. The diving itself was challenging because the current was so strong. There was this cleaner fish called a remora that had been on the turtle, but decided it wanted to be on me instead. The rest of the dive I was trying to scare this thing off of me. I wasted half my air nearly screaming. I like fish, but I don't like them cleaning my skin and cuts. Joey was beside himself with laughter. He wasted so much air he had to use the emergency air supply.

In between dives we went to the dive centre where were worked on our work sheets. Joey wanted to get a little R&R in the hammock near the front of the shop. Next thing I know, he's lying on the ground not really sure what hit him. He had broke the hammock! People in the dive centre restaurant were laughing hysterically and so was I. Joey sheepishly got up and pretended as if nothing had happened. It was hilarious.

The navigation dive was rather uneventful. I am not very skilled with the compass. I realllllly don't understand how they work; they are beyond my comprehension! We fumbled around and did the set tasks and barely saw any cool animals. Oh well, we had been prepared for this boring dive.

The night dive later on was quite cool. The scariest part was actually jumping out of the boat into the water. Once we starting going down, it was like going down to another world. The reef wasn't all that impressive, but it was really neat to see the fish sleeping. A lot of the fish you see in the day were getting some shut eye by resting up against rocks or the sea floor. Both Joey and I were getting annoyed because the other two people on our dive were higher up then us. They would not control their buoyancy and then all of a sudden be dropping on top of you. My buoyancy also wasn't the best because I was too heavily weighted down. It was my first time wearing a wet suit, so I took on extra weights. I kept on almost touching the ground which is not a safe thing to do at night because you don't know what's on the sea floor.

Later on in the dive we turned off all the flash lights and just swan through darkness. All the particles and organisms that were floating in the water turned a glowing green colour. This is called phosphorescence. I had heard about this before, but had never experienced it. It was such a cool feeling to be floating around in the ocean with no light, except for dancing green dots.

After the dive we were filling out our dive books when this woman in our dive group started talking to our dive instructor about spirituality. I was having hearing problems because of some water in the ear so I couldn't hear much. I heard some really random things about this adventure our instructor had gone on that involved lots of puking, pretending he was a cat, and then seeing UFO's. I later clued in to the fact he was on peyote. It made sense. The conversation was getting a bit weird, especially because Joey and I weren't being included. I just wanted to be like "k sign our log books now..." but I had to wait for the perfect opportunity. It took about 45 minutes of extremely weird conversation to get my piece in. Joey and I were exhausted and had a really early morning back to Kuta.

The next morning we woke up and hurried to the ferry. We were sad to say good bye to the island that was our home for over a week, but were also excited to get on with our adventure. We were off to Borneo next!