island hopping

South Bali’s huge shopping malls and deluxe cars were a bit of a shock to the system after 2 months in Nepal so we decided to get a speed boat out of there, pronto. First stop was the tiny Island of Nusa Lembongan (thanks for the tip Cam) which was beautiful, if full of 'rad' surfers and Aussies (a few bogans in there too, Em) and a generous sprinkling of ‘Bintang’ beer t-shirts and vest tops. Oh dear. No sooner had we got there than we promptly ran out of cash (Indonesia suddenly felt very expensive) so we spent two nights eating posh pizza in the place next door so we could pay on our visa cards – there’s no atm on the island. We also managed one of our now legendary fruitless-and-mapless-maddog-walks-in-the-midday sun where we vastly underestimated the time it would take to circumnavigate the island on foot instead of hiring a scooter, like everyone else, which resulted in two very sweaty and sunburnt people nearly coming to blows...

After a few days we headed on to the Gilis, three small paradise islands off the Lombok coast, stopping on the largest and most popular, Gili Trawangan, to use the atm before fleeing the ‘pubs and clubs’ for the less touristy and more tranquil Gili Air. Our first and most important discovery about the Gilis? There are no stray dogs and HEAPS of cats. Yipee!!

fruit loop

obligatory cat snap