3 fun nights  in Gili T

If you want to hear about the journey to Gili T, read my blog on Nusa Lembongan  it wasn’t pretty.

Accommodation – My mates place

We had booked to stay at My mates place. Based on it being a lively popular hostel. It lived up to that expectation.

Due to laws in gili you are only allowed 3 to a dorm room. Which actually works our quite nicely and we didn’t have to sleep in bunk beds.

The hostel is super social and you can meet lots of people

Ella and Sarah

In the Perhentians Emily and I had met Ella and Sarah on a drunken evening on the beach. It then turned out they were in Gili T at my mates place the same time Dom and I were. I have given them a paragraph as the requested lots of mentions in my blog or else.

When we arrived I dropped them a message and we popped to see them in their dorm. Turned out they too were heading for food so we decided to go together.

Lunch at Le Pirate

We hired bikes from the hostel for 25,000 rupiah and after Ella searched the place she wanted to find from last year for a very long time… we were on our way.

We cycled to the other side of the island and along the beach. To be fair to Ella despite Dom and I being hangry (we hadn’t eaten all day and it was now 3pm) she had picked a beautiful spot.

The restaurant Le Pirate was part of a luxury complex on the quieter side of the island and the food was yummy and the views amazing.

After eating we settled ourselves down on the sun beds and chilled in the late afternoon sun.

Dinner

After a couple of hours at the beach Dom and I headed to find a cash machine and go for a wonder near our hostel.

We ended up stopping at a restaurant on the beach which was a great setting.

Disappointingly the food was terrible. Our pizzas were shocking really not worth the money we paid.

I guess that’s the risk you take when you just rock up to a restaurant.

Social at the hostel

Outside the dormer rooms at the hostel there are benches and bean bags and in the evening lots of people gather outside for drinking games.

On our first night we didn’t go to crazy as we had booked a snorkelling tip the next day. But the drinks were so cheap compared to everywhere else it would have been rude not to.

We also met Amy and Clare, from leeds and got them involved in the snorkelling trip.

Snorkelling trip

The trip is organised by the hostel and at only 100,000 rupia it’s really cheap.

You do 3 stops for snorkelling and a stop for lunch.

It was lots of fun, we saw so many fish and even got up close to a turtle!

Unfortunately, it seemed I had taken on Dom’s bad luck. When I was waiting to get back on the boat, it moved and dragged my shin across the coral.

It hurt straight away, like a stinging burning feeling but it was hard to tell underwater whether it was bad or not.

When I got out it started bleeding pretty quickly and the stinging feeling didn’t stop but it definitely could have been worse.

My flip flops then went missing, just as I as about to give up and embrace the bare foot walk. I noticed they had some how managed to slide into some ones flippers!

During the search I also noticed that my hand was bleeding. I am not usually this accident prone I swear. Some how I had managed to puncture the palm of my hand on the boat. I wasn’t even drunk I promise.

Dinner at Pizzeria Regina

Myself, Dom, Ella, Sarah, Amy, Clare and Sianne (an Aussie girl in our dorm) headed for dinner at Pizzeria Regina

The food was really good, I had carbonara but lots of the girls had pizza which also looked amazing.

The drinks were cheap too so obviously we stocked up on them as well!

Night out

After dinner we headed back to the hostel and continued the drinking.

We were involved in a game called on the bus or f**k the bus. Something like that anyway. Unluckily for Ella she had to ride the bus which essentially met she had to drink ALOT.

I think that essentially set the path for her night right there!

At 10pm everyone heads out of the hostel and onto another hostel, Castle, to join them for more drinking and fun.

We went to some other bars which were packed and had dance floors and a pool. To be honest I can’t remember the names, I had consumed quite a few large vodkas by the point but I know they were along the beach.

Unfortunately, Dom and Sianne were not feeling great so headed back early. But obviously I was well on my way by this point so decided to stay.

From then on, there were more drinks consumed, dancing and just general drunken behaviour.

There was a moment of clarity in the night when my sensible Abbie head returned and realised that I had probably drunk enough for one night and that I should go home.

I did a quick pace walk back to the hostel and most definitely woke Dom and Sianne who were sleeping in our room, sorry girls.

Turns out Ella left shortly after me to, but Sarah stayed out then came back in the party spirit singing and jumping around the room much to the annoyance of good ol Hamish and Ella.

The morning after the night before

Hello hangover, I felt awful. Literally awful, after Dom and I had laid in bed for well over an hour she was an absolute hero and went to the hostel bar to get me a coke.

With my new found sugar levels I was able to get out of bed and get dressed.

Dom and I were heading to get food so Ella and Sarah, who felt equally as shit as me, joined.

We went to the Bayan tree on the promise of aircon, eggs and avocado.

The eggs and avocado existed, and I ordered poached eggs on toast with smashed avocado and tomato. But the aircon did not! Damn you Hamish.

The heat in the restaurant and the hangover was a bad mix and I thought I was going to pass out while waiting for the food at least 5 times.

When my food came I manned up and ate it knowing that it would make me feel better (though not the egg, I wasn’t ready for that just yet). It was actually really nice. I would love to have returned when I wasn’t dying and enjoyed it a little more.

Beach club

There are various beach clubs along the sea front with bean bags so we plonked ourselves there and went down to the sea to cool down.

Watching the sunset

We decided that we were all going to have dinner and watch the sunset so we were scheduled to leave the hostel at 5:15.

Turned out Sarah couldn’t find any clothes to wear or the toothpaste, which she blamed on Hamish, but we blamed on her messy room.

We take it back Sarah, it later transpired it wasn’t her fault, Hamish had actually stolen the toothpaste! And apparently Clare and Amy like to spend a while getting ready because they were late too.

When they arrived we were in the middle of a rather heated discussion with the bike hire people. They just appeared to take forever to do anything and didn’t respond to anything we asked.

So we ended having to do a pretty fast bike road across the island to catch the sunset.

Let me tell you, riding a push bike on bumpy roads with a sore hand and a coral burn while trying to read a map is a challenge. But we made it.

We had dinner at Casa vintage  which had great views of the sunset. The lady serving us was a little crazy though and said ‘darling’ loudly ALOT.

When the sun had set and we had eaten dinner we headed back to the hostel to join everyone outside.

Though there was no way we were going out out that night with our fragile heads and an early boat back to mainland Bali.

The ferry

The ferry was as expected delayed unorganised and chaotic. You have to arrive at 10 and the boat is supposed to leave at 11.

It was 11am and there was no boat in sight. Then when the boat did eventually come they made everyone stand on the beach with their backpacks while they unloaded the previous trips passengers and bags for over 40 minutes.

I mean logic says to me, unload the people and baggage then call the next people to board up as otherwise it just creates chaos and hot aggravated people. But as I have come to realise the ferry’s are just an organisation failure.

The actually ferry ride was fairly smooth and they put a movie on which helps pass the 2.5 hour boat journey.

Collecting our bags

The real drama starts when you get off the boat in Padangbai. They load the bags off the boat and pile them right as you get off the boat. This obviously creates a massive blockage and people gather and surge towards to bags.

We literally couldn’t move, people were pushing and shoving to get to the front. One girl actually dropped her suitcase on me and didn’t even say sorry, she even wanted me to pick it up for her.

Another scrapped her bag over my coral burn because she was so impatient to get through. The Abbie of a month ago would have definitely pipped up and let her know what she thought of her. But now I will just use the blog to vent the anger because it’s just really not worth getting annoyed in these situations. Even if she had to just opened the cut again making it bleed again.

As you can tell the ferry experience is not my favourite part of travelling. But it’s certainly character building and one that should be shared. No one tells you about this when you ask them how travelling was or read their glossy travel blog.

After the ferry we then had a 2 and a half hour mini bus drive to Denpasar. Where we would be staying the night in order to catch our early morning flight to Flores.

Abbie’s view

Gili T is so much fun, there is lots of nightlife and it’s definitely attracting young traveller crowds.

The hostel was great, probably one of the best I have stayed in and it’s ideal for meeting people all after the same thing as you.

I think for me one of the best parts about travelling is meeting people and the experience you get which can’t be written down on paper or in a blog.

The snorkelling is amazing and turtles are epic. But coral hurts.

Ferries are terrible but necessary so just embrace it.

Thanks for reading.

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Thanks

Abbie x