Monday 19th September
Up at 6:30am. Got a bemo most of the way to the immigration office. It was open before 8am, and they confirmed that I stuffed up with my outward flight so will overstay my visa by one day so will have to pay a fine of about $25 at the airport. Doh!
I walked about a mile up to a major junction hoping to go directly to Pemenang/Bangsal but I could only get to Senggigi and from there there is no public transport to Pemenang/Bangsal so I had to go on the back of a guy's motorbike which was more expensive. But the scenery was great, views of the bays and the beaches and oceans. It was quite hilly and with my backpack on my back I had to really lean forward at times so I didn't fall off the back; I had my chin pretty much on the guy's shoulder.
At Pemenang I walked along to Bangsal harbour where there were many other tourists waiting for the public boat to Gili Trawangan. The long wooden boat had outboard motor, 20 white people and a couple of locals.
There are 3 Gili Islands: Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan. Gili Trawangan is the most touristy and normally that would put me off, but I read that there are quiet parts and I heard (mostly) positve things about it from other travellers. Soon after the boat dropped us at the beach, I found a nice place to stay but went to see if I could find anywhere cheaper for the rest of the week. An Aussie girl told me about a place for 50,0000 a bit north along the beach so I went for a walk and found it; the rooms are behind a dive school and the room looks ok. The Aussie girl told me the bathrooms were horrible so I didn't bother looking, I will save that for tomorrow. Had a chat with a dive school guide.
There are a couple of cool English guys here and they directed me to local cheap noodles in the lanes behind the main drag, rather than the more expensive stuff along the beachfront. It is a family-run shop and the mother just took packet noodles and eggs from their shop and cooked them in their own house and it was about a third of the price you pay on the main strip.
I had a cat nap this afternoon and woke up very hot so went for a late afternoon swim in the sea. The sun had gone behind the trees and the water was cold and refreshing.
Chatted to the English guys. One of the guys has been to Myanmar and he waxed lyrical about it and I did the same about Africa. We went down to the market for dinner. The island is full of white people and the restaurants and bars are geared towards western tastes, but the island is quite clean and calm; there are no cars or bikes on the island which is great. There are only motorbikes and a few horse and carts used as taxis and delivery vehicles. There is a good vibe here. My current plan is to stay until the weekend....
Tuesday 20th September
I moved to the rooms behind the dive centre. It is clean and so are the bathrooms. After arranging my dive for tomorrow, I walked north for a bit and then went snorkelling off Turtle Point. There were some good fish, and the current takes you along parallel to the beach. I hadn't seen any turtles so I got out and walked along the beach, back to the start again; you can't swim against the current. Again the current took me south and just at the end I saw a turtle in the sea for the first time ever! The shell and it's flippers were like a leopard skin print had been ironed on. I followed it around for a while and then it went under a rock.
After lunch I sat on the beach and read my book and had a quick snorkel and swim.
Wednesday 21st September
For breakfast I had Trangbulan, the cake that I also had in Ubud. It is cake mixture, baked while you watch and mixed with the ingredients of your choice; chocolate and condensed milk for me. I buy it at the food market the night before and eat it cold in the morning as it is a cheap alternative to the breakfast at the restaurants here.
For some reason the hotel staff asked me to move across the outdoor corridor to an almost identical room. After moving I just read this morning. Pineapple for lunch and then out to the dive shop for my dive briefing with English dive instructor Blair. He showed me the equipment, which looked pretty new and then sat me down and told me what was going to happen and about the dive site. I felt comfortable with him as the instructor and I just let him know that I would be fine as long as we went down slowly.
The staff carry all the equipment to the boat, just off the beach. There were about 15 divers on the boat. The sea was pretty rough and we were all soaked by the time we got to the dive site. Our group was Blair, an American Lady, a local guy and me. I had a few butterflies, but I figure that's how it should be. We rolled backwards off the side of the boat and into the deep blue sea. We met at the front of the boat, but then Blair looked down and told the Captain we had stopped at the wrong point (the buoy had moved) so we had to clamber back on the boat!
After moving to the right place, and rolling back in again we slowly deflated our BCDs and began to sink down to Hans Reef. It took me a bit longer to descend than the others, but once I started breathing out more heavily I went down and my ears were mostly ok, my mask got a bit tight on my forehead. Anyway we went down to six metres to the sandy bottom and then swam along and down, using our breathing to control buoyancy.
The main site is a large pinnacle of rock with lots of coral growing on it, with fish living in and around the coral. The visibility was good and we saw some amazing fish including large shrimp, lionfish, octupus, scorpion fish, ribbon eel, clown fish, angel fish, nudie branch and tube worms.
The shrimp was as big as my hand and it was disguised against the coral and then when we got close it darted into a hole. When Blair pointed at the clown fish it looked up and was drawn to his finger. The scorpion fish melted into the coral almost exactly; at first I could only see it because of it's eyes and then you can just trace its outline in the rock; it was actually vertical with its underside against the rock. The deadly lionfish was just behind a rock and I had a good long look at it. The Angel fish were the size of 2 baseball mitts. The nudie branch looked like a green slug. The octupus was in a hole but it was still cool seeing its head and body.
It was amazing just looking at this whole eco-system, this whole community living under the sea. Although the coral is not bright it kind of looked old or rather ancient, meaning it has been like this for millions of years - I liked that. I also just enjoyed being under the water and being in control; the only sound being my breathing. It is good to look up and see how far away the surface is.
After about 35 minutes we were all down to about a quarter of a tank so Blair got out an inflatable plastic flare and let it go up to the surface to let the boat know where we were going to pop up. A few more minutes and then we were soon at the surface. We had dived for 43 minutes, to the maximum 18m we are allowed to dive to.
I was really happy at the end of the dive. I had seen some great fish and had none of the stress that I had had at Pulau Weh. The 20 minute boat journey back was very choppy with lots of swell; we got soaked again. Back at the dive shop I got Blair to tell me the names of the fish we had seen.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the beach. I think there are just the right amount of people on the island at the moment. Few enough people on the beach to keep it calm and relaxed but enough for people-watching in-between chapters of my book. And I went for dinner at the night-market by myself but soon found other people to chat to.
Up at 6:30am. Got a bemo most of the way to the immigration office. It was open before 8am, and they confirmed that I stuffed up with my outward flight so will overstay my visa by one day so will have to pay a fine of about $25 at the airport. Doh!
I walked about a mile up to a major junction hoping to go directly to Pemenang/Bangsal but I could only get to Senggigi and from there there is no public transport to Pemenang/Bangsal so I had to go on the back of a guy's motorbike which was more expensive. But the scenery was great, views of the bays and the beaches and oceans. It was quite hilly and with my backpack on my back I had to really lean forward at times so I didn't fall off the back; I had my chin pretty much on the guy's shoulder.
At Pemenang I walked along to Bangsal harbour where there were many other tourists waiting for the public boat to Gili Trawangan. The long wooden boat had outboard motor, 20 white people and a couple of locals.
There are 3 Gili Islands: Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan. Gili Trawangan is the most touristy and normally that would put me off, but I read that there are quiet parts and I heard (mostly) positve things about it from other travellers. Soon after the boat dropped us at the beach, I found a nice place to stay but went to see if I could find anywhere cheaper for the rest of the week. An Aussie girl told me about a place for 50,0000 a bit north along the beach so I went for a walk and found it; the rooms are behind a dive school and the room looks ok. The Aussie girl told me the bathrooms were horrible so I didn't bother looking, I will save that for tomorrow. Had a chat with a dive school guide.
There are a couple of cool English guys here and they directed me to local cheap noodles in the lanes behind the main drag, rather than the more expensive stuff along the beachfront. It is a family-run shop and the mother just took packet noodles and eggs from their shop and cooked them in their own house and it was about a third of the price you pay on the main strip.
I had a cat nap this afternoon and woke up very hot so went for a late afternoon swim in the sea. The sun had gone behind the trees and the water was cold and refreshing.
Chatted to the English guys. One of the guys has been to Myanmar and he waxed lyrical about it and I did the same about Africa. We went down to the market for dinner. The island is full of white people and the restaurants and bars are geared towards western tastes, but the island is quite clean and calm; there are no cars or bikes on the island which is great. There are only motorbikes and a few horse and carts used as taxis and delivery vehicles. There is a good vibe here. My current plan is to stay until the weekend....
Tuesday 20th September
I moved to the rooms behind the dive centre. It is clean and so are the bathrooms. After arranging my dive for tomorrow, I walked north for a bit and then went snorkelling off Turtle Point. There were some good fish, and the current takes you along parallel to the beach. I hadn't seen any turtles so I got out and walked along the beach, back to the start again; you can't swim against the current. Again the current took me south and just at the end I saw a turtle in the sea for the first time ever! The shell and it's flippers were like a leopard skin print had been ironed on. I followed it around for a while and then it went under a rock.
After lunch I sat on the beach and read my book and had a quick snorkel and swim.
Wednesday 21st September
For breakfast I had Trangbulan, the cake that I also had in Ubud. It is cake mixture, baked while you watch and mixed with the ingredients of your choice; chocolate and condensed milk for me. I buy it at the food market the night before and eat it cold in the morning as it is a cheap alternative to the breakfast at the restaurants here.
For some reason the hotel staff asked me to move across the outdoor corridor to an almost identical room. After moving I just read this morning. Pineapple for lunch and then out to the dive shop for my dive briefing with English dive instructor Blair. He showed me the equipment, which looked pretty new and then sat me down and told me what was going to happen and about the dive site. I felt comfortable with him as the instructor and I just let him know that I would be fine as long as we went down slowly.
The staff carry all the equipment to the boat, just off the beach. There were about 15 divers on the boat. The sea was pretty rough and we were all soaked by the time we got to the dive site. Our group was Blair, an American Lady, a local guy and me. I had a few butterflies, but I figure that's how it should be. We rolled backwards off the side of the boat and into the deep blue sea. We met at the front of the boat, but then Blair looked down and told the Captain we had stopped at the wrong point (the buoy had moved) so we had to clamber back on the boat!
After moving to the right place, and rolling back in again we slowly deflated our BCDs and began to sink down to Hans Reef. It took me a bit longer to descend than the others, but once I started breathing out more heavily I went down and my ears were mostly ok, my mask got a bit tight on my forehead. Anyway we went down to six metres to the sandy bottom and then swam along and down, using our breathing to control buoyancy.
The main site is a large pinnacle of rock with lots of coral growing on it, with fish living in and around the coral. The visibility was good and we saw some amazing fish including large shrimp, lionfish, octupus, scorpion fish, ribbon eel, clown fish, angel fish, nudie branch and tube worms.
The shrimp was as big as my hand and it was disguised against the coral and then when we got close it darted into a hole. When Blair pointed at the clown fish it looked up and was drawn to his finger. The scorpion fish melted into the coral almost exactly; at first I could only see it because of it's eyes and then you can just trace its outline in the rock; it was actually vertical with its underside against the rock. The deadly lionfish was just behind a rock and I had a good long look at it. The Angel fish were the size of 2 baseball mitts. The nudie branch looked like a green slug. The octupus was in a hole but it was still cool seeing its head and body.
It was amazing just looking at this whole eco-system, this whole community living under the sea. Although the coral is not bright it kind of looked old or rather ancient, meaning it has been like this for millions of years - I liked that. I also just enjoyed being under the water and being in control; the only sound being my breathing. It is good to look up and see how far away the surface is.
After about 35 minutes we were all down to about a quarter of a tank so Blair got out an inflatable plastic flare and let it go up to the surface to let the boat know where we were going to pop up. A few more minutes and then we were soon at the surface. We had dived for 43 minutes, to the maximum 18m we are allowed to dive to.
I was really happy at the end of the dive. I had seen some great fish and had none of the stress that I had had at Pulau Weh. The 20 minute boat journey back was very choppy with lots of swell; we got soaked again. Back at the dive shop I got Blair to tell me the names of the fish we had seen.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the beach. I think there are just the right amount of people on the island at the moment. Few enough people on the beach to keep it calm and relaxed but enough for people-watching in-between chapters of my book. And I went for dinner at the night-market by myself but soon found other people to chat to.
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