Gili islands Ambled down the beach to a couple of motorized outrigger canoes. No sign of Harris - guess the day wasn't operating to a strict timetable…Harris and the pilot arrived and I helped push our craft in to knee-deep water. All aboard, the 15hp outboard roared into life and off we pottered….A hot hour later we beached the boat on the Eastern short of Gili Trawangan - seemed a cool place with lots of folks hanging out on loungers and in bars with no ...

Doing nothing #2 Big decision of the day was booking the trip to the Gili Islands, a reputedly idyllic archipelago up the coast. We opted for a trip run by Harris - Annelise trusted his seaman ship because he claimed "I'm a surfer, I know the ocean". We installed ourselves at the Pool Villas loungers. Annelise wanted to sit on a lounger right by the sand and made me lie there by myself for 10 minutes to test whether the pestering from the Hawkers wa...

Doing nothing… We had set aside today to do very little….so following breakfast we installed ourselves on loungers by the pool and focused on achieving our objectives….The nearest pool was crowded (6 others) so decamped to the Pool Villas deck next door. By now we had sussed that the staff had been trained to say several English phrases perfectly. E.g. "How is your day?" and "How was lunch?" This was deceptive. We soon found that an...

Call to prayer woke me up in the early hours. I listened to the service remotely, puzzled at how a mosque with a 30.000W PA system could exist in the coconut trees and jungle across the road from Qunci. We lazed by the pool for an hour before deciding to investigate what was along the beach. Heading left was a deserted small hotel, followed by our sister resort. After a hundred meters of coconut trees was a resort of 2 huge private villas and some bungalows. A...

Cockerels! The noise starts at 5am and carries on and on. Cockfighting is bigger than soccer in Bali. c*** in cages like crab pots were everywhere; apparently keeping them away from the females makes them more agressive. The sport is illegal, but no-one is ever busted. Lazed around the pool for a couple of hours, checked out and went ot lunch. My comedy drink of the day was cardamom lassi - very bitter. The tendering for out our taxi business had been fiercely...