gilli tralalala ...

since we had planned our trip to be 7D6N, we still had a lot of time after our hike.

so we decided to go to the smaller islands or the gillis. gilli means pulau in the local language just like koh means pulau in thai.

our destination was gilli trawangan. we got to the harbour quite late at 6pm when all the public shuttle boats were no longer in operation. so we could either stay a night at the harbour or charter a boat. we did the later. something which i later think wasnt a good decision coz it was far more expensive than staying a night in mainland.though it was relatively cheap in sgd terms.

anyway......

once we got to gilli trawangan it was quite late. 7pm here felt late coz the sun sets at around 6. we stayed in a very cheap place costing 40 000 rp a night which is less than SGD10. but the room was of coz very very basic.

then came the irony of our travel..eventhough we scrimped on accomodation, it seemed so far we dont really mind splurging on food. so we went to a nice eating place which was part of a nice hotel to have crab and fish. the bill came up to be more than twice our night stay rate.

we would have thought the decent nice place will serve good food. it did, the food was delicious. but something was wrong somewhere and he got sick at night with diarohea and the following day developed a high fever!

because of his condition i thought to myself, no more scrimping on accomodations so we went to the other side of the island and stayed in the more comfortable villa almarik. which cost us 40USD a night.

this was the part of the holiday where i remembered a day of it being between lounging at the beach and going back to the room to do cold compress on him and waiting by the bedside watching indonesian mtv ampuh. by evening time, his temperature check showed 38.3 degrees celsius, 0.2 degrees from being very high fever..so i decided to take him on a cidomo ride (that's the island horse carriage ride) to the village doctor! how exciting rite.


anyway, it got much better thereafter. the next few days on the gilli we got to enjoy the holiday. but we didnt do snorkelling coz the legs were still feeling a bit crampy from the hike.

gilli trawangan is also called gilli tralala..coz of the rather hippy state of affair here. it's an island that seemed to have flourished tto serve the angmohs especially the backpackers. since there was absolutely no police here and the mainland ones close an eye to this island, the cafes here openly sell magic mushroom which they seemed to be universally described as 'bloody f**king fantastic' on the menus. the locals here also appear slightly more corrupted than mainland i.e. more western influenced. but on the whole, many were still nice and friendly.


our nicer accomodation was at villa almarik. italian owned with an italian manager. it has the nicest room for our entire lombok trip. very spacious room, well maintaned, had a/c and hot shower. though in the gillis, there isnt any freshwater. so water from the taps are actually treated salt water.

by the second day i was a bit tired of bathing in salty water..so we decided to hop back to mainland senggigi :)