Laid back Gili T

After a number of days of staying at hotels that were miles from anywhere and full of people on their honeymoon or other coupley holidays, it was pretty refreshing to hit the laid back surfy style island of Gili T and see other people and have options for restaurants and bars. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the lap of luxury 🙂 but it’s good to mix it up.

We were staying at the Gili Eco Villas, which on the map looked to be a long way from the harbour, so we snagged a horse drawn cart to take us to our hotel. Turns out nothing is far from anything on Gili T and even though it was on the other side of the island we were there in about 5 mins.

We had two full days on Gili T which was “suffering” very early season winds (they’re due in December) and the locals were bemoaning the terrible weather – it was still over 30 degrees and sunny. We spent one day exploring a bit on bikes and the other day we went scuba diving, which was a first for me. The Gilis are known for the diving and all of the companies are good and reputable and have fixed prices (not common in Indonesia) which was reassuring for a newbie. There’s also a load of conservation work going on there because the place was destroyed by a Tsunami a number of years ago so they’ve formed an Eco trust that has installed some artificial reef structures off the coast that have a current running through them which is supposed to stimulate coral growth. Each person diving has to contribute $6 to the trust which of course we were more than willing to do.

As for the dive, we did a morning of training in the pool which all went well and then the actual dive was later in the afternoon. We only went down to 12 metres, but that was good enough for me for my first dive and we saw loads of brightly coloured fish. Apart from a small panic as we were descending – my imagination getting the better of me for a moment – everything went swimmingly 😉