Traveling around at least 5 countries in 42 days. Exploring the world after 3 years in law school.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Legian and the Gili Trawangan

We woke up in Phuket when it was still dark outside and as most of you know I hate waking up early. The purpose for the 4:45am wake up was to make it to the airport for our flight to Bali. As we said good bye to Thailand, I was excited to go to a place I have never been to but have heard such great things about, Indonesia. While the majority of Indonesia is Muslim, Bali is the exception with lots of karma infused traditions and spectacles.

Our first stop was Legian a city about 30 minutes from the airport on the coast between Kuta and Seminyak which are much more touristy/ party cities. After checking into our hotel we made our way to get some lunch at a local restaurant. Here, I had my first bottle of Balinese Cider. While it didn't compare to Wyders, it still had a unique crispness to it that I liked.

After lunch Kirstin and I walked around the town filled with cute artisan shops. Some with the token tourist crap, but many with original pieces and hand carved wood furniture. If I had a house to furnish, this would've been a great opportunity since the stores all say they ship relatively inexpensively to America.

In the evening we showered up and headed out to a restaurant Kirstin had read about and turned out to have live music. The food was an amazing Italian/Indonesian blend and we ordered way more then necessary because it all sounded so good. That's ok since our meal came out to less than $40 for an appetizer, two entrees, dessert, and four drinks after sitting and listening to the band for 2 hours.

Ohhh the band! They were amazing! Brent and I had been chatting earlier about how expensive wedding bands are and I seriously wanted to scoop up this group and place them at my wedding next year. In my head I calculated what it would cost in airfare and a small fee and determined that it would likely still be under the cost of an LA wedding band. Kirstin probably thought I was crazy. they did such great covers of so many songs from so many different genres. I will try to post a video of them soon.

We woke up the next morning and were out of the hotel by 7am. An hour drive later we were at the dock to catch a boat to the gili trawangan islands. My friend Rachel had spent a year in indonesia and highly recommended this spot so we took her up on it. Definitely did not disappoint in terms of views but the service and locals left a lot to be desired. These islands are not part of Bali but rather considered part of Lombok I believe. Though honestly, I'm really not sure.

The boat ride over was one of the worst boat rides of my life. While it was only about 90 minutes, the fumes and bumps were so bad that more than half the boat was throwing up. The crew passed out black plastic bags for people to throw up in. Thankfully, I only had a queasy stomach but didn't get sick and Kirstin appeared to be unfazed entirely. The result of the 90 minutes of torture was the bluest waters I had ever seen. We literally had to jump off the back of the boat and carry our luggage through the sand. Ok, maybe WE didn't necessarily do that, but we did ask some nice Australian guys to help us out.

There are no cars on the island at all, only horse and buggy carriages. Here's a shot of us trying to make our way through the little dirt road with all of our luggage in our horse and buggy on the way to the hotel.

I know I'm a few days behind on where we are in real life but next post will contain our three days in Gili Trawangan followed by our current stay in Ubud!

3 comments:

  1. You making fun of my way of writing again? I'm aware bluest may not have been proper but at least I'm blogging ;)

    ReplyDelete