Bali - Day 7 - Off to Gili Air

Having been good and packed the night before for a change, we were up and (almost) ready for our pick-up at 7:30am. We said goodbye to Trish and Wicko who had been really great hosts – we were glad we’d decided to stay there and would probably go back again if we ever found ourselves in Ubud.

Our ride to Padangbai was a mini-van – with another couple who weren’t all that talkative (not sure how much English they spoke) so we pretty much just sat there in silence listening to the drivers random music choices (UB40 and Tracey Chapman). Earlier in the week I was a bit disappointed we’d missed the turnoff to Padangbai, but as soon as we got into town I realised it was a pretty good mistake! In the LP it was described as a funky café town with plenty of backpackers – in reality it was chaos. We went through 3 or 4 really narrow streets, jam packed with tourist shops and people on the hustle. We pulled into a huge car park – full of other mini-vans, full of other tourists. Padangbai is also the central port for all the day boat trips from Bali for snorkeling and scuba diving so there were a LOT of people waiting around.

Arrivals and Departures

We nervously surrendered our large backpack to the GiliGili fast boat guys (our pre-booked boat service to Gili Air, 2 hours crossing plus hotel transfers vs 6-7 hours crossing in the cheap boat was an easy decision!) – concerned that they just labeled it ‘LISA’ again, and threw it onto the huge pile of other luggage. Then we were taken to a café to wait for our departure time – about 45 mins, or just enough time to sell you an amazingly shit and overpriced breakfast. I did have time to haggle a woman outside down for a tube of pringles for the journey (Cooksey is like a child when she see’s a treat she wants).

Tiny Island - Tiny Barcelona fan

Once our boat was called everyone rushed to the jetty to get on board – despite the fact it was only a 24 seater and there was about 20 of us. We had to make our way through a massive gathering of white folk hanging around on the jetty for their boats – who looked hot, and annoyed as we skipped through and pretty much got straight on ours. It was pretty comfy, for a boat – with big airplane style seats and a decent amount of legroom – plus they fed us croissants and water and even teeny tiny cold towels afterwards!

The crossing itself was fairly uneventful – the scenery of the Bali coastline was amazing, but Cooksey had the window seat and slept through it all. I was feeling sick so just tried to concentrate on the horizon and not see my breakfast again.

After a brief stop off on Lombok to pick up some annoying American girls we were on Gili Air. It's a fairly small island off the west coast of Lombok - East of Bali, and one of three 'Gili Islands'. There is also Gili Tranwangan (party island) and Gili Meno (remote, minimalist island) so we'd picked Air as a midway point for our island leg. Apparently you can walk around the entire coast of it in 90 minutes!

No jetty this time – we had to clamber around the deck to the front of the boat and pretty much jump onto the beach. We grabbed our backpack, which had miraculously made it too and walked through another huge crowd of (sunburnt) white folk waiting for their boats off the island. We looked lost, but fortunately some locals figured out who was meant to be meeting us form the boat – a little surfy looking dude called Idris with massive hair lead us to our bungalow. Fortunately he carried my small bag, because it must’ve been at least 30 degrees and no cloud cover – it took about 15 minutes to walk there and by the time we arrived I was a sweaty mess.

Gili Air Taxi Co.

The bungalow itself looked nice, but we weren’t all that keen on it being a trek through 3 cow fields to get to the majority of bars and café’s. It was the cheapest, nice place we could find online though – so we thought we were stuck with it and quickly had a shower and went out exploring. We made it back to the port and past all the island taxi’s (there are no motors on Gili Air – so these are horses and carts!) and hit the main beach complete with a host of beachside restaurants, bars and dive hire shops. We strolled up as far as we could be bothered with in the heat and chose somewhere that had some cool looking bamboo day bed/sofas overlooking the sea and had some lunch – it was mediocre (flat beer, awful cocktail, bland food), not a great start!

We’d seen a fair few places were doing happy hours (mostly from 5 or 6 until 7 or 8 – my kind of happy hours!) so we headed back to our room to get changed and hit the town in the hope things would improve on the island! On the way back, we passed a few of the beachfront or ocean view bungalows – with swimming pools and restaurants attached and couldn’t help getting amazingly jealous. That feeling continued as we got back to our place and it was hotter than before – it also turned out that you cant really swim on our side of the island as it’s all coral and there are poisonous sea urchins – awesome.

Fresher than fresh

We headed out and picked the first decent looking bar/restaurant with a happy hour and private huts to drink the evening away in. We went for the Zipp Bar – staffed almost entirely by teenagers (as most places seemed to be), but they were playing some classic 90’s music (pretty sure it was the Now 94 CD). We worked our way through their cocktails – bogof so it worked out to about $3 each and they were (mostly) tasty! On the islands they sell imported liquor as well as their ‘local’ versions of vodka, whiskey and rum – plus something called arak which I think we read either makes you go blind, or killed a few people when a bad batch got on the market! We steered clear of it.

A lot of the places have nightly BBQs to entice people in – Zipp was no do different and we ended up just staying there for food, and had a spectacular skewer with fresh tuna steak and veggies (that was a good foot long) each with sides for $4 each. Soon our worries about not enjoying Gili Air were vanishing and we had a couple more drinks before happy hour ran out – then decided to try and stay for a party which was being advertised by the staff as kicking off at 10pm with a DJ and beach bonfire. We were both exhausted by 9pm – then both too drunk and tired to actually make the party but apparently they have them every night on the island (at different bars – alternating so there is no competition) and they roll on til the sun rises so we were glad we tapped out when we did.

Also – by this point I’d been offered marijuana by at least 2 of the staff and another guy on the walk there, it seems the lack of police on the island combined with the laid back attitude of the locals and abundant partying tourists means the industry is thriving!

Unwinding during happy hour

The walk home turned into a bit of a nightmare, as we rapidly got lost amongst the cows in a maze of pathways that all looked the same in the dark with our tiny torches. Lisa couldn’t see a thing and I was fairly tipsy after finishing both cocktails in our final round (we tried the locals ones, they were not good). As we crept into the darkness from the beachside path we kept stumbling across sleeping cows that would get startled and starting moving around as we approached. I was pretty confident they wouldn’t attack us (being cows) but apparently Lisa has a morbid fear of them, which I only discovered after the first couple in the dark mooed at us.

What took us 15 minutes that afternoon took 45 in the dark, at that point we pretty much decided that tomorrow we’d be searching for a new hotel near the beach and cutting our stay there short by a couple of days despite booking for 4.

Sunset sky