Gili Trawangan
The Wanaman fast boat from ubud to gili t takes about 2 hours. We paid 350,000 rupiah each way which includes hotel pickup/drop off. The boat is small, and everyone sits inside so it got hot very quickly. Between the boat being fast and the waves water was flying in the windows and literally came through the wall at one stage.
There are no cars on the Gili Islands- so when we got into the port we grabbed our bags (which were literally thrown off the boat) and started walking. There are horses and carts at the port and all along the streets for visitors-but there are a lot of reports of the horses being mistreated.
The 5 Brothers Hotel is a five minute walk off of the Main Street- back behind the mosque. The hotel itself was very nice & the guys working there were really friendly and helpful.
The streets are either dirt roads or sand covered- and the best way around the island is on bike. The hotel had bikes we could rent for 40,000 rupiah a day. It took me about 45 minutes to cycle around the whole island.
The hotel was definitely closest to the busy area of Gili T- the other side of the island was much quieter and had less options for bars or restaurants.
All of the beaches are covered in coral-with some being worse than others. I would definitely recommend wearing some kind of shoe in the water- there are people selling ‘coral shoes’ all around which more or less looked like crocs.
The Exile is a great spot for watching the sunset and there are a few swings there to take pictures in.
I took a yoga class one morning at Sunset Beach Yoga. The ‘studio’ is an open air building that felt like being in a big tree house with an amazing view of the beach. One class was 130,000 rupiah-but there were package deals if you were planning on going to more classes.
We did a 3 island snorkeling tour- making stops off of Gili T and then at Gili Meno and Gili Air. The first stop was to see a shipwreck and blue coral around it. We then stopped at Gili Meno to see the lake that is in the middle of the island- and to see baby turtles that were going to be released through conservation work. The second snorkeling stop was to see the underwater statues-a circle of people-like statues underwater- which was cool but very crowded so you really had to pay attention to where you were snorkeling. We stopped at a bigger reef then where there wasn’t as strong of a current so it was easy to just float and watch the fish swim by. The coolest part of the tour was getting to snorkeling by sea turtles. The turtles are huge and surface every few minutes for air. It was beautiful to watch but again there was a lot of people and everyone would rush to where the turtle was coming up from. The guide then brought us to a restaurant on a Gili Air for lunch.
We took the same boat back to Bali—and as it says on the signs in the boat-go right to the office to get the shuttle- don’t go with the people on the pier. Men came on the boat when we docked and were asking where we were going and how many people and they said it was for the shuttle bus. Sounds great that’s what we paid for. Nope. He took our shuttle bus tickets and we followed him to the parking lot. He proceeded to tell us that it would take 4 hours to get from the port to seminyak and we would be on a 40-person bus. Which is 100% not what we paid for. After a few heated words- I got the tickets back from him and went to the company’s office- where we were pointed in the direction of the mini bus that was waiting to take us the hour and a half to seminyak. The scam was to make us ask to get a taxi because who would want to sit for four hours on a forty person bus after being told significantly less time & on a mini bus. No problems getting to our accommodation in Seminyak once we found the right mini bus :)
