Abdi Fantastik Bungalows Lombok

... round the island on the beach in around an hour and quickly discovered that there isn't much going on other than chilling out on the beach, swimming or snorkelling. So that's what we did for 3 days.

The snorkelling trip takes you to various points on Gili Air, Gili Meno and Gili Trawangan and is an absolute bargain at 5 quid a head. We saw lots of turtles which was cool, some ...

... is absolutely crammed full of people. Anyway I'm walking up and down looking for these guys when a football lands at my feet. Triffic. I'm in flip flops and all I had to do was return the ball about 10m back to these lads. I really couldn't bugger this up. Surely? Male pride dictated that I had to kick the ball rather than throw it back so I line up the shot and with all the finnese of a bull in a china shop give the ball some welly. WHACK The ball veered ...

The boats on and off the islands are really cheap or really expensive. There are two regularly scheduled boats that leave in the morning and late afternoon that are $10 or so. The expensive ones leave whenever you need them too if you pay for all the seats on the boat. Since there were very few tourists on Gili Meno and even fewer that wanted to leave, Lynn and I were going to have to wait all day for the next boat. We did ...

We came to Lombok on tuesday by ferry after a couple hours travelling by minibus from Kuta, Bali to the pier. On the ferry, we met Hery a young local from Lombok who happens to work for Carnival cruise line and was in vacation at the time. After a long time chating on the ferry, he invited us to go spend some time with him and his family. His uncle picked us up at the ferry and we drove to Praya, his native village. From there, we were very well welcome to his mother ...

... to be slightly worse than me - apparently about 5 minutes after I'd left, Haavard carried him home (what a boss - betcha you wouldn't get bosses like that in Ireland). I arranged to meet the guys for dinner later - my first food in over a day - and a chance to pay them back for leaving them with the bill the night before. These Scandinavians are too bloody nice... After a huge barbecued white snapper with a veg kebab which I selected fresh from the ...

... at the point checking out the surfers enjoying the massive point rock break slightly offshore. These guys were good. I have never seen, in person, anything more than extreme amateurs surfing waves that boogie boarders could hang on and, generally, they are not locals who grew up fishing and surfing before they learned to walk and talk. We saw some ultimate wipeouts, but equally a number of guys riding the barrels all the way through ...

... landscape &, of course, the roadside monkeys. I returned home, got cleaned up & headed out for dinner with the Swedes. We ate at Blue Marlin (no party tonight, just good eats). From there, the Swedes called it a night as I got pulled into Rudy's for a couple beers - the bars & restaurants along the walkway like to try & convince you to stop for a drink or meal, Rudy's now just called me by my name & had my drink waiting. Since I had to ...

... Cesta na Lombok nam trvala 24 hodin, nejdriv jsme jeli transferem do Sape na Sumbawe, je to jenom 70km, ale lode jsou tu silene pomale a trvalo to 8 hodin. Lod byla celkem narvana (v Indonesii nic noveho) a z Labuan Baja odjela s 1,5 hodinovym spozdenim, ale i pres to to slo celkem dobre a do Sape jsme dorazili vcas. V Sape jsme se doslova prinarvali do minibusu do Bimy, kde jsme meli presednout na vetsi nocni autobus. Minibus ze Sape byl asi pro 20 lidi, ovsem jelo nas ...

... and booked ourselved into an airport hotel for 6 hours to try and catch some shut eye and shower before the next trip. Singapore to Dubai. In Dubai I spent some money in the airport, knowing that I'll probably not step foot on international soil other than SA for a long time. Dubai - JHB was fine and then finally JHB - Cape Town. We kind of expected it, but was still somewhat upset when we found out that both our bags were left in ...

... needs. As we envisaged diving a few times we wanted hot water shower (something not so common to get on Gili T) and by the soaring morning temperatures we felt A/C was a must too. After having a long chat with Harriet (aboout all ur options) from Manta Dive we moved to a lovely big room situated conveniently at the back of the Irish Bar called Tir Na Nog. It certainly ticked all the boxes for us and despite it being the bars 'all ...