Welcome to my paradise

Our trip to gili air started in usual southeast-Asia style – we were picked up from our hotel by a taxi which spent 20mins weaving around backstreets only to drop us off at a travel agency only 5mins walk from our hotel!

We then hung around there for 45mins before being collected by minibus which drove us to bus station on the outskirts of kuta; we waited for a further 30mins before our bus arrived to take us to the port. At the port we had an hour wait for the boat!

The 4hour boat ride was lovely with clear blue skies all the way and they even gave us a rather delicious free lunch! There are 3 gili islands very close to each other and ours was the last – as they are surrounded by reefs we had to transfer to a small boat out at sea, this seemed quite a simple operation at the first two islands unfortunately by the time we got to gili air it had started to rain – so hard in fact that you could no longer see land! It reminded me somewhat of king kong as we approached the island in monsoon rain with the land slowly looming out of the mist, ominous would be the word

Thankfully there were Cidamo's (horse drawn carts) waiting for us

The next morning we woke up in our 2 storey bungalow – downstairs was an open area with a day bed, chairs round a table, a hammock and the bathroom then you go up ladder like steps to the balcony and from there into the bedroom. It really was beautiful and comfortable but having to hold a towel round you while trying to climb down a ladder every time you need to go to the toilet doesn't work for me

so we spent the morning having a wander along the east coast of the island checking out the beach bungalows and taking the opportunity to see gili air in the sunshine, it really is the most gorgeous little island and the beach isn't very wide so there are restaurants along the seafront with bamboo platforms (some with hammocks) where you can hang out which works well as Ben hates the sand

We found ourselves a simple cheap bungalow and spent the next two weeks enjoying the island paradise that is Gili Air

most of my time was spent reading, eating, lying in my hammock or playing cards with Sas - who basically ran the place we were staying at when he could be bothered to – but we also managed to find time to rent bikes and cycle round the island, rent snorkels and check out the reef just off the beach which had an amazing array of fish and giant clams and big blue starfish

we did two trips – first a snorkeling trip with a Finnish couple and a Spanish guy lead by Balgius who worked at the place we were staying, he took us to a few different snorkeling spots and we swam with turtles (amazing), jellyfish (somewhat painful – I still have the scars!) and loads of other weird and wonderful fish. I only freaked out once! He also took us to the turtle sanctuary on Gili Menno where this dude looks after eggs and baby turtles until they are 8 months old and we got to hold the cute little baby turtles

the second trip was supposed to be a fishing and snorkeling trip, Balgius took us again this time with a couple we'd met – Brooke and Craig, they 'd come along for a day out but Craig had made it clear he didn't want to fish. We then spent the entire day moving from one fishing spot to another with no chance of snorkeling, Balgius also spent most of the time hogging Ben’s hand line leaving me, Ben and Brooke one fishing rod between us.

Brooke and I spent a lot of time saying we were fine and just enjoyed being on the boat but Ben was getting angrier and angrier as he felt that basically we had paid for Balgius to have a day out – when we got back in the boat after lunch to find that Balgius had either eaten or sold the rest of the squid we'd been using as bait Ben lost it and there was much use of the f and c words. Personally I wasn't sure this was the wisest course of action as we were out at sea on Balguis's boat! However it seemed to have some effect as Balgius relinquished the hand line and cut up some fish for us to use as bait – then sat at the end of the boat sulking while we caught some fish

I caught 4 in total – two of them very small but the other two were about 8-10 inches long and I had them BBQ'd for my dinner!

After two weeks of blissful laziness we decided to leave with Brooke and Craig and join a Perama Boat Tour which involved a bus across the island of Lombok then a boat around Sumbawa with a few stops at nice beaches and islands including the komodo island and finishes up at Flores where we would then carry on to Kelimutu over land

If Brooke and Craig hadn't been leaving to do the boat trip and suggested we go as well I'm really not convinced we would have ever left Gili Air!