Snorkeling from a Glass Bottom Boat! Lovely.

On the way back to Gili Trawangan


Lunch stop on Gili Air


O Hai.


Who's that gorgeous girl? She looks like a mermaid.



Now that I have my boyfriend back from the Scuba Divers, we were able to enjoy some lovely snorkeling time around the three Gili Islands today- something I had been wanting to do all week, but didn't want to do it without Pat. Why? Easy: because I am afraid of deep water. It just creeps me out.

However, even before coming here I had heard about the opportunities to swim with the sea turtles and I was damn certain that I would get some ample sea turtle time during our week long stay (yes, it's sad, we are leaving the Gilis tomorrow and going to Bali for a week).

So yesterday I asked our wonderful innkeeper, Tommy (note* yesterday I asked him his Balinese name and it was several words long with complicated syllables, so we will stick with Tommy), who is 28 but looks about 14, who has a girlfriend in Sulawesi, who calls him an astonishing amount of times a day, often yelling at him to call her more often, and they have been together for a year but they only saw each other for four days while he was visiting his uncle in Sulawesi... am I off track here? Oh yes.

So I asked Tommy to recommend a good boat to take us out snorkeling for the day and boy, did he deliver. We woke up the morning, ate our banana pancakes with coconut syrup (yum), and Tommy took us to a group of local men and gave us our ticket (a day long trip for about 7 bucks). We thought we would be the only people to show up, but several more people came before we left... all Austrians!

First they took us to a spot on Gili Trawangan, which was terrifying for me as the water was quite deep and I knew there were sharks ("harmless") around somewhere. Once I got into the groove, though, it was quite peaceful and not at all scary! I saw some nice fish, but my vision was impaired due to the fact that I couldn't have my glasses on and snorkel at the same time.

Next, we went to "Turtle Point", which was even deeper than the first place! Gah. The guide took us out to where the turtles were known to hang out and "we" saw two of them. I mean, I saw two blobs that I was told were turtles. Sigh. This was on the next island, Gili Meno. Less touristy and quite a nice island!

Finally, we hit my favourite spot of all! We went to the last island, and the closest Gili to Lombok, Gili Air. The water was so clear and beautiful, I could see right to the bottom, and it was teeming with beautiful, tropical fish. To hell with the sea turtles! I jumped right in and could have stayed there all day, just watching the fish dance around. They were so cool! It was great.

Our guides dropped us off on Gili Air where I had some Indonesian fried rice (nasi goreng) and we hung out in a bamboo hut until it was time to go home. Lovely day. Now, we are going to have those delicious fish n chips one last time before we leave bright and early tomorrow... I'm so sad to leave this gorgeous place, but I'm sure Bali will be exciting. Stay tuned!