Gilis, my way.

2.5 hour flight from Singapore to Bali, Denpasar Airport.

The Gilis (=island) are actually part of Lombok, Bali's next-door younger sister. When I tell people I dived in Lombok, I don't actually mean mainland Lombok, but I'm actually referring to this little cluster of three offshore islands: Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air. Gili T, the largest of the three, is also known as the party island, with the most number of pubs sprawled along the beach-front, and has most number of resorts/home-stays as compared to the other two Gilis.

There are a few ways to get to the Gilis, the most convenient (but most expensive) way will be to take a speedboat from Bali. It takes approximately two hours from Bali once you board the speedboat, and what's nice is that the speedboat companies usually provide pick-up service from your hotels/hostels in Kuta to the harbour. The last time I looked at the prices, it was 1,200,000 Rp for a return trip; that's about S$200 and a little out of my budget.

A slower but much cheaper alternative would be to take the public/chartered boat from Padang Bai. From Kuta, it's a 2-hour long bus/taxi ride to Padang Bai and another 6 hours of travelling on the public boat before finally arriving at the Gilis, 8 hours of transport time in total (not a lot actually if you're not in a hurry, but definitely not for the ones who get sea-sick easily). Perama Tour is one such operator that offers chartered trips to the island. If I hadn't read wrongly, the public boats are the ones where all the locals get on (hence, much cheaper), whereas the chartered ones are more for tourists.

Bali - Lombok - Gilis

I was almost going to decide on taking the public boat when I realized that the domestic flights from Bali to Lombok were not that expensive and not that long either. Looked up a few domestic flights schedules online and finally decided on Merpati Air. I paid 660,000Rp for return tickets in total, but that wasn't the end of it. After a 20-minute flight, I arrived at Mataram Airport in Lombok. From the airport, I took a 45-minute taxi ride to Bangsal Harbour; the road was long and winding, if I stayed another 15 minutes on the taxi, I'd probably have puked due to car-sickness. It cost me 80,000Rp; I'd initially bargained it down to 70k from 100k, but I was so afraid of all the touts at the harbour that I forgotten about what I'd bargained for that I just handed him 80k. Blah. Shrugging off the touts, I walked to the Port Office (white building) and paid 10,000Rp for a public boat ticket. There was also the shuttle boat ticket that cost 28,000Rp. Public boats leave once there are 20 passengers, whereas shuttle boats follow schedules (the last shuttle boat of the day should be leaving at 6p.m.). I didn't have to wait long, probably 20 minutes at most, before an announcement was made for people taking the public boat to hop on. The boat-ride took 40 minutes.

Finally on the island, I headed up to Manta-Dive to register for my dives the next day, dropped my bag there temporarily and walked along the street to find lodging. I ended up at Milani's Homestay, paid a 130,000Rp deposit and chugged my bag into the room. The room (actually, one building by itself) was big and spacious, and I got to sleep on a double bed(!), but there was only going to be electricity from 6p.m. to 8a.m., and I had to shower with cold, salt water. Not such a big deal anymore, when you have a comfortable bed to sleep in for the cold night, I guess. I was quite happy with both the owners (local family of four, with one more member on her way) and the room anyway.

I had most of my meals at a local warung called Kiki's, and the price ranges from 10,000 - 15,000Rp (S$2+). It is much cheaper as compared to many other eateries around the island that serves big seafood feasts.

lombok boat.

Most of the boats (local ones) I've seen on Lombok have two metal poles sticking out from their sides, supposedly to help in stabilizing on choppy waters, I presume. The one that I went diving on had those poles too. Before my first back-roll entry from the side of the boat into the water, I was so afraid that my head might knock into one of those poles. My fear was unfounded, the distance from the diver to the pole is too far apart.

My first dive-buddy of the trip was Bev, this English lady in her 40s. She works as a nurse back in Brighton, England and lives just beside the sea. By the time I met her, she was already in her 3rd week of holidays with her partner. When I told her I felt that smoking's like a social skill, she went like "Nah, it's not! It's a filthy habit!" even though she was probably onto her 3rd cigarette in less than an hour. Haha... funny lady.

My other dive buddies were Liz and Mandy from Holland, and Joel from Canada. Joel was there with his wife and baby for a short vacation (from working their asses off in Saudi), and they took turns to look after the baby so that either one of them could go diving. I think that's such a good idea; who says you can't bring your baby along for vacations?

first shark sighting in the wild in my life; reef white-tip. quite a number of turtles too; managed to get really close to some of them.

My divemaster for most of the dives was Kandar (or DJ, he tells me that's his clubbing name -.-). I like diving with him because he's really funny most of the time! On one of the dives, he forgot to take his packet of Gudang Garams out of his boardshorts' pocket. The moment he entered the water, he was like "Oh shit, my cigarettes!" No prizes for guessing right who went cigarette-less after we came up (okay to be honest some other smoker offered him a few sticks la).

christmas-tree worms; not that many of them actually. lobster; another first!

Most of the Caucasian divers that I've met on Gili T use air rather quickly underwater. They like to ask how much air do I have left after each dive and it usually goes something like that (a few variations)...

#1

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I only have fifty left! Don't you breath underwater??!!!

me: ....

#2

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I only have sixty left! Were you sleeping underwater??!!!

me: ....

buddy: ... so how much air do you have left?

me: Oh, about a hundred bars. What about you?

buddy: Whuut?!! I have seventy left and I thought I've done well! Do you like have gills or something??!!!

me: ....

white leaf scorpionfish, and an anemone crab. yet another two Firsts! Both were really tiny, probably like half the size of my palm.

Just to clarify, the conversations were between a few buddies, not just one. I was down for a good whole 71 minutes for my second last dive, and when I got back into the boat (with probably 40 bars of air left) with another DM, Pamela, everyone was like... "Exactly how do you do it?!! We've been waiting for you for the past 30 minutes." Quite funny, come to think of it. Do Asians really have smaller lungs? Or smaller nostrils? Or narrower windpipes? Ahh I really can't figure it out. Maybe it's really just the breathing technique!

batfish, a few different kinds there. and divers!

So while we were on the topic of 'who uses air the slowest', DJ suggested the two of us have a competition on our next dive. The one who has lesser air left a.k.a. the loser, has to buy the winner 2 large Bintang beers. Then he talked about how he would cheat by pumping more air into his tank kns. Lol. I was sooooo excited about the competition... but then I realized I was set to leave the island the next day. And he volunteered to bring me trekking to see the island's beautiful sunset but then the sky turned gloomy and he was appointed some duties last minute. Oh well! I hope the competition'll still be on the next time I visit them again.

beautiful gorgonian fan, and a scorpionfish.

In my humble opinion, I thought the visibility that I've had for almost all of the dives that I've had were pretty good, ranging from 10 metres to 15 metres. Dives were not that hard either, though there were a few sites where the currents were quite strong; though this has got more to do with the lunar calendar and the moon I guess? I saw a lot of creatures that I've never seen before in most of my previous dives even though you still get pretty much the same kind of tropical fishes. This must either mean that I'm finally more observant (just a little la), or I had really good dive guides. Seems more like the latter hur. Anyway, I felt more relaxed on all the dives I've had at the Gilis, save for the ones where the currents were really strong, and I'm really happy about it! Relaxed diving = Happy diving!

young lionfish and a moorish idol.

When the dives were over for the day, it was Kiki's with Mandy and Rene, and Rudy's for a drink after. Rudy's a pretty nice place, with a number of beach-shacks by the sea, some cushions, and really strong breeze. If you are interested, they also serve magic mushrooms and weed (as do many other drinking/eating places on the island). We met a really cheeky waiter at Rudy's.

Him: Hi! Where are you from? (to Rene)

Rene: Hi... I'm from Holland.

Him: Want some weed?

Rene: No, thanks. And where are you from?

Him: From my mother. -big, cheeky grin.

Don't know if he was high on drugs or something. Guai lan can. lol.

DJ and John, my other dive buddy (the one who said I have gills!)

Before I met Mandy and Rene, I had dinner alone at this place called Juku's. I thought I was going to walk back to my room for an early rest but this table of three invited me to sit with them. An Indonesian lady, Emma, a Caucasian guy, Raoul and a Japanese dude, Kano. Turned out the Caucasian guy is the lady's husband, and both the guys are doing Bahasa Indonesia at Mataram University.

After checking out ferry ticket prices back to mainland Lombok, the couple headed back to their room while Kano and I bought a bottle of local spirit (wine or something) and sat down by the beach to chat. It was really nice, the island didn't have much lights so the sky was clear and star-studded. We saw a few shooting stars in between our conversations in broken English, and I learnt that some words have similar pronunciations in both Japanese language and Mandarin. It was really nice, writing characters in the sand with the sea-breeze and clear night sky.

And that was the day (or night, rather), that I decided to invest in my very first bottle of OFF because I was getting stung so badly. I made sure it seeped into my every pore on every exposed area and my limbs were glistening wet with it okay. When I was doing research on the island, I read somewhere that there were not a lot of mosquitoes on the island as the air was dry. Bluff one, you have been warned that there ARE mozzies around if you ever decide to drop by the Gilis...

ps. I'm missing the place already as I'm typing this entry...