I love how international this blog has become! I'm currently writing this from the Kuala Lumpur airport, waiting for my a flight to Bangkok while Mike sleeps sprawled out over as many seats as he possibly can. There is a LOT of travel getting ready to happen... hell, its started already! But, before I get into that, I'll tell you about the last few days in Indonesia!
We went from Tulumben, a very very quiet town with nearly no one in it, to Gili Trawangan, an island a ways off the coast of mainland Bali. In fact, it doesn't belong to Bali at all, its actually part of Lombok, another nearby Indonesian island. Gili T is awesome. It's a pretty big tourist destination and the speed of the island reminded me a lot of Koh Tao. Lots of dive shops, lots of backpackers, lots of bars. But Gili T is much smaller. There is no motorized transport on the island, only bicycles and horse and buggy. Even the horses are smaller than normal horses... must be an island thing.
We got to Gili T and met up with a couple of friends from Australia! Mike and I worked with Bec and Jeremy in Cairns long, long ago (last year). They've been traveling around southeast Asia as well, but have found a good spot on Gili T for a while. They were our tour guides around the island for the days we were there. The first day we got there was actually quite a good day to arrive! It was the island's annual Sports Day, where all the dive shops get their crews together for a field day kind of event... although the sports were a little different. Mike got roped in to participate with Manta Dive, the shop Bec and Jeremy had been hanging out at and where we would be diving the next day. The first event was a lime and spoon race. Pretty typical, you hold a lime on a spoon and run to the line without dropping it. The only difference was all the Sports Day events were done with fins! Old diving fins to be exact! So the wheelbarrow race? The three legged race? Fins, fins, fins. Trust me, it was fun to be an observer. The rest of the night was one big crazy party, all the divers on the island together and drinking. Needless to say, we decided to opt out of the morning dive the next day and stick with the afternoon dive instead. Our first dive was at a place called Turtle Point. VERY aptly named. Must have seen at least a dozen sea turtles on the dive. Most of them were just hanging out and snoozing. It was really nice to see that many of them again though!
The next day we went on a different sort of dive trip. We took a boat to a place called Seahorse Bay. Again, aptly named. Instead of diving on a reef or a wreck, we were doing what is called muck diving. Basically the environment is pretty simple: mostly sand and mud, but the animals that live there are amazing. They are expertly camouflaged, so you have to take the dive extra slow. We got to see lots of seahorses, pipefish and frogfish. We played hide and seek with a cuttlefish who, like their octopus cousins, can change their skin color rapidly to blend in with their environment. This was not a high octane dive, it was slow and sandy for most of the time, but the cool little critters we found hiding out made up for it ten-fold.
The rest of our time on Gili T was land-based, but still pretty awesome. One afternoon I was able to help out with a pretty cool project. Some of the guys at the dive shop were making an artificial reef. They used rebar and chicken wire to construct the structure and they're going to sink it and hook it up to a solar panel that will provide a slight electrical current to the structure. The theory is that the slight electrical charge provides a better substrate for new little corals to land on and they are supposed to grow faster than corals on non-charged artificial reefs! Cool! I helped out building the beginning of the structure, which will eventually look like a paper airplane, but unfortunately we left before we could see the reef get wet. Maybe if we come back to Gili T sometime, we can dive on a whole new reef!
Another day, we rented bicycles and cruised around the island. Gili T is very small, only a couple kilometers long, so the bike ride wasn't going to be too long... only problem is Gili T doesn't have much for roads! Much of it is still sandy paths, not as good for biking. There was a very humorous stretch of the ride where we had to do more bike pushing than bike riding, but we rewarded ourselves with nice cold beer at the end.
We left our friends on Gili T and spent one night on mainland Bali before flying out this afternoon. Indonesia was amazing, I wish we could have stayed longer, but we've got family to see! I definitely plan on visiting Indo again one day. There are so many islands and so many places to see, we just scratched the surface. The locals are also really nice, I don't think we encountered one unpleasant person on our whole trip! Leaving Asia is certainly going to be weird. I can't believe I'm going to be in a city tomorrow, let alone a city where the primary language is English! Well, it'll be England English, but I think I've got the hang of that one ;) It's been an amazing journey so far and I've met so many incredible people and done so many cool things. That being said, I'm very much looking forward to being home for a bit. First stop is England, so Mike can catch up with his family and I can see where he's from! I've never been so England, so I'm quite excited. Then it's back to the good ol' USA after nearly two years away!
So our Australian/Asian adventure is over, but stay tuned... the next adventure will just be around the corner!
Love and fishes!!
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