Padang Bai, Gili Islands, Sanur, Nusa Lembongan, and back to Legian

John and I stayed in the Bali area for about 20 days. After leaving Tulamben (a town in Bali, which is an island in Indonesia), we headed to Padang Bai where we spent the night so that we could leave in the early morning for a full day trip to get to the Gili Islands. The Gili Islands are off of Bali's neighboring island Lombok. Even though the Gilis are in between Bali and Lombok, the journey requires a really round about way of getting there unless you are willing to pay a staggering $40-60 a person to go straight there. HAH. Now that I am back in the U.S., it sounds funny that I was unwilling to pay that, but when traveling in Southeast Asia travelers can make their money go farther by adapting to a different price scale. Instead, we paid $10 each, a price we bargained down from approximately $15 from a company sitting on the dock in Padang Bai. This price included a ferry from Padang Bai to one port in Lombok, a shuttle bus up the coast, and then a small local boat to the island. It is pertinent to note that when taking this trip, you will have to either book a trip back through the same company when reaching the small boat or you will have to put up with their distaste for you if you choose not to book. We booked it. We stayed on Gili Trawangan, known as the party island, though it was still really quiet. The reason I believe it is considered a party island compared to the other two Gili islands is that there is a bar open every night and the other islands are EXTREMELY quiet.

We spent 3 days snorkelling and hanging out on Gili Trawangan, which was very beautiful though a little pricey compared to where we had been in Bali thusfar. We left to return back to Padangbai and then took transport to another coastal town called Sanur. I thoroughly enjoyed Sanur as we decided to get massages on the beach every day (they only cost $7) and to stay at the most expensive place we had stayed at so far ($20 a night). It was a really cute place that had a little pool in the middle and resembled a garden. It's owned by Australians and thus, had the western idea of cleanliness in place. I liked not having moldy pillows for once:)

A couple days later we headed over to Nusa Lembongan, a small island belonging to Bali, to do some diving. We were on a quest to see mola molas (pacific sunfish is their other name), huge ugly fish that look very prehistoric-check them out online http://www.oceanlight.com/html/mola_mola.html
We were also trying to see Manta Rays. Unfortunately, we saw neither, which only means we will have to return some day to try again. Some of the people I was diving with did see the Mola Mola, which was sad that I did not see it as well. Manta Point where people can see the manta rays was unreachable due to strong currents. The diving here was a lot colder than anywhere I had dived before so I used my air up really fast, probably because I got nervous when I went through the really cold patches of water. Nusa Lembongan was cute and quiet. There was pretty much nothing to do at night, which was fine for diving. An interesting note is that the people here harvest seaweed, which is the reason for the strong smell that hovers in the air. Also, people on the island are very concerned about the build up of plastic bottles from tourists, so now sell purified water to refill water bottles.

In our last days, we decided to head back towards Legian stopping at a few places on the Bukit Peninsula that we had previously missed such as the temple on the cliffs (Pura Ulu Watu) and a famed surf spot (Dreamland)-though there were no waves the day we were there. We returned to the same hotel we had stayed in our first days in Bali, and spent our last two days surfing on Legian Beach, which was fun and left me with some huge bruises. I didn't quite get up on the board, but I tried really hard, which is all that counts, right?! :)