So
after Kintamani, I managed to get to Pandangbai after another costly
private ride for which I bargained a lot and still got a lameass
prize. I will get good at this someday... In Ubud, Natacha told me
about the Guili Islands which were a great place to enjoy snorkelling,
nature, the beach and a relaxed atmosphere. I decided to go to the
biggest of the three : Guili Trawangan for a few days before heading to
Yogijakarta.
The
night before my arrival there, I bumped into the group of friendly canadians from the Kintamani
trek : Ben, Annick and Annie. The three of them are from Montreal
suburbs. It has been great for me to hang out with them as we were
going the same way and they were really friendly people. I got to learn many of their expressions, that
are often really funny from the metaphors they use. I also had a
chance to listen to their accents which I am trying to learn to use
in Improv. I am not there yet, but it certainly helped. On the ferry
we also met another couple of canadians that were just as friendly:
Stephane et Bianca. The ferry took a long time to get to Lombok so we
got to speak a lot and I asked many questions about french canadian
humorists, singers and their culture in general. Was really cool ! Then we arrived in Lombok and
took the bus to Sengigi on which I met another friendly french
speaker : Nico. He was from the dutch speaking part of belgium but
spoke very good english and french. He is fond of diving and
currently travelling for two years. He had seen a lot and visited
many countries on all continents even some dangerous parts of Africa.
We
had a cool night in Sengigi listening to live bands and then left for
te Guilis. we arrived around noon. Bianca and Stephane had already
been there and knew about a small guesthouse that had clean decent
room inland for 4 euros per night including breakfast. Nice !
Guili
Trawagan is a great place to relax and have fun : no car of
motorbikes, the only mean of trasnportation is horse and carriage
which I never took. I am allergic to horses. There are also many cats
with cut off tails on the island, yet there are no dogs. It is a bit
strange, some local told us that one of the local delicacies was cat
tail soup. I think he was joking. Even if it is the biggest, you
can go around the Trawangan island by foot in about 2 hours walking
if you take your time. You can stop on the way to chill out and have
drink or snorkel. It was still the raining season and it was getting
very intense at times. Sometimes I' be walking on the islands streets and footpaths
with water up to the knees. Thankfully there is a litte cinema where
you can go and watch the latest movies in exchange of a food and drink
order of more than 2 euros per person– really nice ! There also are
little huts where you can lay down on cushions and have you own
private film viewing room on the beach. We did not do much there apart from walking around the island, snorkelling, enjoying the beach
and partying at times.
We
took a diving trip where we got to see a huge amount of fishes and
corals. There was even more to see than in Ko Phi Phi. It was really awesome ! I had bit of motion sickness in the
water, to start with and then things went smoothly. I got to swim
with a big turtle near Guili Meno (the secon biggest island of the
three), it was magic. I also got stung by tiny redish and transparent jelly fishes, it was not so magic. Then we went near Guili Air (the smallest island of the three) to
see some giant clams and have lunch on the beach. Was great ! I headed
back to my room with a big sunburn on my back and arms, eventhough I
did put suncreme on and it was meant to be waterproof...Anyways as usual,
you'll find the pictures of my stay on island in the « Guili
Travangan » album.
I
changed my plans since, I dont have many days left, I will not go to
yogijakarta but to Kuala Lumpur instead, which is much closer to
Singapour, my port of departure from Asia and back to Europe.I
gotta rush know since I want post all this, upload the picture and
find a ride to the airport as my plane to Malaysia is at leaving at
2pm.
Thanks
again for reading my blog, comments are as usual very appreciated and
welcomed.
Talk
soon,
Cedric
: off to Kuala Lumpur
