Flying boats, sinking boats and no boats, it's been an interesting few days on the Gili Islands...

After an hour and a half in a minibus from Kuta we arrived at the dock to take us to Gili, it was full of the usual array of sellers trying to flog sarongs, sunglasses, etc. However, i really must give credit to one guy who was walking around in 30 degree heat with a huge boomber jacket on trying to sell old coins. His selling tactic essentially involved walking up to you and opening his hand which had about 4 rusty old coins in and saying 'old coin, old coin?'. He didnt have much luck but that didnt stop him trying, despite asking us 3 times on the dock, when we eventually got on the boat at the end of the pontoon he leaned down to our eye level (where his feet were on the pontoon) stuck his hand in the window and said 'old coin'?. Anyone collect old Indonesian coins??

We arrived on Gili Trawangan on via speedboat from Bali. That in itself was quite an experience. The water was extremely choppy with huge waves in the straight between Bali and the Gilis/Lombok, the 70 seater speedboat was jumping right up out of the water and crashing back down constantly, which at first was fun but after an hour and a half pretty much everyone on the boat was about ready to see their breakfast again.

We arrived on the island to one long street by the beach with laid back bars and guesthouses. There are no motorised vehicles allowed on the island so bikes and horse and cart were order of the day.

We walked up and down with our backpacks until we were so fed up we'd stay anywhere despite the price or amenities (this is pretty much what we always do when we have thought it would be a good idea to wing it!) as usual we ended up in what at first looked like a decent room but then turned out to be flea ridden, or in this case red ant and cricket ridden (I'll come back to the cricket later).

We went out for dinner and drinks in the bars overlooking the beach. I had an amazing seafood BBQ, the mahi mahi was delicious. We then went to a bar called Sama Sama where a reggae band was playing. I has some rancid cocktails and the bar was soon rammed. It turns out that one bar holds party night each day as there arent ebough people to justify all the bars staying open until 7am. We discovered this when after midnight we thought we'd head to another bar only to be met with darkness all the way up the street. We did however find one place where a few locals and a group of giggling foreigners were hanging out, the reason for the giggling, magic mushrooms (freely available here as there are no police in the island, see pic). Robin of course got suddenly very thirsty for a milkshake of the vegetable variety. A bit later Robin decided it had no effect and we headed back to the room. After a while Robin found the plants in the bathroom very colourful, and reported a few random effects, I on the other hand was flipping out about there being a cricket behind the curtains, despite a robin shaking the curtains several times and clearly showing me there was nothing there, now obviously I was completely sober and in no way had any of Robins milkshake, I'm absolutely sure that somehow that cricket was hiding ;)

Next day we moved to a less stressful room! It was a little bamboo bungalow on stilts with a veranda and a bathroom with sand on the floor and big slate stepping stones. The pool was also gorgeous and I spent ages swimming until the rain started. we them borrowed some DVDs from the reception and spent the afternoon lazing around watching those.

The next morning we were up early for the island hopper boat to Gili Meno, the least developed and unhabited of the 3 islands.