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Chapter 4, Part 1: East Indonesia 1-Oct-08 to 5-Oct-08 +ve spin rating: 7 out of 10
The Gili Islands:
This section started a bit interestingly. I landed into Denpasar from KL at around 10pm, then it took an hour to get a Visa and go through Passport control. A lovely sign reminds you that being involved with drugs will result in the death penalty... a lot of people turned round and got on the plane to wherever they came from.
After a bit of mild panic from discovering that there were no vacant room in the whole of Bali due to the Hari Raya (Muslim Festival - so a lot of Indonesian people flocked to Bali for a holiday) I decided the best thing was to go to Denpasar city to search for a room, I mean surely there'd be something!?! An off duty security guard on a moped agreed to take me there to have a look for a room... 9 hotels later we still hadn't found a vacant room for me and it was 12.30am. s***! However a night on the streets of Denpasar for Pete Mac was saved by a couple of Indonesian guys on holiday from East Java... I told them my situation and they let me sleep in their room for the night. I'm not gonna lie to you I was a bit skeptical about the offer but I put my doubts to one side and accepted, in fairness I didn't really have much choice. The next morning everything was absolutely fine, I had a bit of broken conversation with the lads, one of their mates took me to breakfast and after that one of them dropped me to the bus station for me to make my way to Padangbai (the port from which I would leave Bali to make my way to the Gili Islands). They wouldn't accept any money from me for the room nor the lift to the bus station. I was walking normally so how sound is that...?!?
Right I gotta get shorter with this blog, 2hr local bus to Padangbai then a ripped off 4.5hr ferry journey to Lombock. I met my next group of travel buddies (Thomas, Ben, Todd and Nichola) en route, being conned into thinking we would get to Gili that night was the common conversation. We got to Gili Air the next afternoon and the entire journey was forgotten as soon as we checked into our beach side bungalows. That day we pretty much lay out in our hammocks or on the beach listening to the ocean, so tranquil! Cliché or not, this was absolute relaxation, I was in yet another paradise! The 2 days and 2 nights involved sleeping, eating, reading, snorkelling in the beautiful warm clear waters, sleeping, eating, a spot of night spear fishing, eating, drinking a few Bintang (Indo beer) and cocktails and not a lot else really. Pure bliss!
Being in Gili Air it would have been rude not to go to Gili Trawangan (Gili T), I think LT would agree. Thomas and I would leave from Gili T the next morning to begin our Komodo boat tour... Ben, Todd and Nichola had other plans. So we had a lot to fit in in a short space of time and I think we did alright. We got a Scuba dive in (saw my first 2 white tip sharks in one dive) followed by the sunset followed by a good 'oul session. There's nothing like an 'oul session the night before you have to be up and on the boat by 8am... we didn't do a Phil (from Hull, hard b*stard) on it but we were pretty bleeding knackered and hungover. To be fair there was no way I was going to miss the very reason I had come to the Gili Islands.
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