Biking around
I rented a bike after breakfast and cycled around the island. It took an hour including having to wheel it where the roads disappeared into sandy stretches, and carrying where the roads had been washed away by the sea (in the north).
Activity and business is largely concentrated on the east coast; within that east coast, the northern part is dominated by family-run bungalows/restaurants and the southern part posher hotels/restaurants.
The other three coasts have few hotels and are largely undeveloped. There were also some abandoned sites that wouldn’t take much to bring them back into their prime.
Back on the east coast, it was a hive of activity with beachgoers lounging around on the beach in front of various eateries and accommodation. I was quite surprised to see things get really quiet at night as Gili Trawangan has a reputation for being a party island. Most of the crowd are young continental Europeans with amazing physiques, pus some English-speakers from various continents.
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- The places south of the jetty are posher.
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- The places south of the jetty are posher.
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- The places south of the jetty are posher.
Advanced Dive Certification
As I had done five dives on this trip already, I decided on doing only two here to get a taste of the underwater life at the Gilis. I dropped into a couple of dive centres to make enquiries and eventually concluded that if I did an Advanced dive certification course, it would only cost USD100 more than doing five dives, ie. USD20 more per dive … that’s if I was interested in doing five dives rather than my preconceived plan of only two. The premium largely goes to SSI (like PADI) for the certification.
At Aquaddiction dive centre, they explained that I didn’t have to decide upfront. I could just do it module-by-module and if I ran out of time or inclination to complete it, they would bill me for only the modules completed (but with a warning that the fees are less attractive and I would eventually have to pay for an extra certification fee elsewhere).
I would start in a few hours time with a night dive at a wreck (a sunken pontoon). For someone who can’t handle horror movies, it was amazing that night diving didn’t freak me out at all. My instructor Mike was a super-nice guy and I was extremely lucky to have his attention one-on-one (someone didn’t turn up).
I had Mike for the next two days (four dives) as well. It wasn’t the chilled holiday-within-a-trip that I had planned for.
You can read about my dives here: Day 1 (Night Dive), Day 2 (Deep Dive & Navigation) and Day 3 (Wreck Dive & Fish Identification).