Gili Air: Getting Engaged on a Tropical Island
Trip Start
Sep 24, 2008
1
48
76
Trip End
Jul 21, 2009
Where I stayed
Corner Bungalow (10 minute walk north of Boat stand), Gili Air
Gili Air, Indonesia
Friday, February 20, 2009
The sky was perfect; shaded in an array of pinks, purples, oranges that one only finds during an equatorial sunset. It was as though the sun had brought its finest curtain down on another wonderful day in paradise. In the background lay the majestic peaks of Lombok, quietly vigilant and providing the audience for what was about to transpire. I couldn't have scripted a better setting
Seated on a log placed perfectly, steps from the water's edge on the pristine white sand, we were next to each other in a warm embrace. I had my sweaty palm in my left pocket wrapped around a small piece of carved coconut hearing Mary talk to me about friends from home, but not listening to a word she had to say. Finally mustering the courage and calming my nerves, I turned to her and told her how she made me feel, how much I loved her and the commitment I wanted to make to her for the rest of our lives
Boat out to Gili Air
. With that, I placed the humble coconut ring on her finger and asked her to be my wife... Let's see how we got here. Paradiso Personified
Gili Air is a tiny island that is the easternmost of the three Gili Islands: Air, Meno and Trawangan. Meno is the least developed, followed by Gili Air and the larger Trawangan, that actually has a strip with bars, nightclubs and a semblance of a town. Gili Air is an oval shape with longer eastern and western coasts and is surrounded 360 degrees by sand and crushed coral and immediately behind the thin barrier of sand lies the dirt track that circumnavigates the island. It takes merely an hour and a half to walk around the entire island. Off the eastern coast of the island, one can see the dominating mountains of Lombok, including my beloved Monsoon Point. I appreciated the beauty of Lombok while there, but the magnificence of the green-covered volcanic mountains of Lombok are truly great when viewed from the Gili Islands. The sounds of Gili Air are filled with the voices of the villagers and the guests, the ocean, the birds, the passing horse-drawn carriage, but not a single motorized engine. All motorized vehicles (except for boats) and police are not allowed on the island. It is paradise, defined.
Mary, Sarah and I arrived at the harbor on Lombok for the boat over to Gili Air on the morning of Feb 14
On boat to Gili Air
. We boarded the boat and then watched as another 30+ people and all of their various belongings - food, clothes, wares to sell - boarded the same small wooden boat for the 1.5hr journey to the small island. I was immediately reminded of traveling through India where you should never tell a driver that the car is full. With baskets strewn about, we were on our way across the calm and light blue waters to Gili Air. The choice facing a new visitor is quite simple. Would you like to stay on the sunset or sunrise side of the island? We arrived on the island and shared a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, up the eastern coast of the island, to settle in at the Corner Bungalows, on the sunrise side. We later realized that this was a short 10 minute walk (and Sarah was the only one traveling with all of her bags, since we would return to Lombok). Our bags had barely touched the ground in our room and I was already in my trunks and sprinting the 20 yards to the ocean.
Just in front of our bungalow was a beautiful stretch of water that provided for some outstanding skindiving, but also some strong currents. As a result, I had to swim diagonally, in order to end up moving in a straight line, and you have to manage a drift snorkel, where end up different from where you started
near Zipp Bar 1
. There wasn't tremendous coral where I was skindiving, I would later find out why, but there were large amounts of beautiful and colorful tropical fish that I had come to recognize quite well during my time underwater in SE Asia. After both Mary and I had a nice swim, we set off barefoot to circumnavigate the island and explore what else was around us. We found completely secluded stretches of sand, took many dips along the way, found some beautiful shells and pieces of coral, but eventually reached a stretch of beach that was so littered with crushed coral, we could no longer continue barefoot. We moved to the dirt track that was a few feet behind the beach, but within minutes we saw a small snake cross the road and both of us bolted in the reverse direction as quick as possible. That ended that walk around the island; we made it about 2/3 of the way.
Zipp Bar: Didi and The Boys
All around the island are various small bungalows, bars and restaurants. All have the chillout couches with pillows that one finds throughout Turkey, and we found in Vang Vieng, Lao, and all provide serenely great views. One of these such restaurant/bars is the Zipp Bar. I previously mentioned my family friend Kelly who had spent a fair amount of her life in this part of the world
near Zipp Bar 2
. The Zipp Bar is owned by her husband Muzzy, run by her close friend Didi and was her home turf away from the US. I had told Kelly we were visiting Gili Air and she had contacted Didi to let him know that we were coming and to treat us right. We were treated like royalty during our stay on the island.We reached the Zipp Bar, a quick five minute stroll down the road, walk down the beach or swim with the current south from our bungalow, and settled in on their chill couches. Zipp Bar is located on the most beautiful part of the island, at a point break in the sandy shore and with the mountains of Lombok looming in the distance. Underwater, it is also the nicest snorkeling on the island with the least amount of current. As we settled in, a long-haired and smiling Indonesian walked over to our table with menus. I asked if he was Didi and he said "you must be Hari and friends!" Thank you Kelly.
We immediately hit it off with Didi, one of the sweetest dudes you will find on the planet, and were promptly and properly hooked up with drinks and food. Didi, a Sasak originally from Lombok, met Kelly about nine years ago and introduced her to Muzzy (a Sasak who is from Gili Air itself). Eventually, Muzzy opened up the Zipp Bar and Didi became the main barman, man in charge, jack of all trades
near Zipp Bar 3
. He is extremely close to Kelly and took great care of us to make sure we had the best time since we were friends with Kelly. We would soon find out that every single person on the island knows both Muzzy and Kelly. The coconut handicraft shop, where Mary bought some earrings and I bought Mary's engagement ring as well as Joel and Marta's wedding gift (Congrats you two!), was run by a Sumatran dude who is best friends with Kelly. His eyes lit up when I said I knew her. It was pretty sweet getting really favorable reactions from people, including better prices, because we were in the know. As an example, when we were looking to leave the island and return to Bali via Lombok, we were checking out plane tickets with one of the local sarong-wearing dudes who is waiter/bungalow manager/travel agent all-in-one. He quoted us some egregious price. We went down the road and told Didi to call some of his friends who normally book tickets for Kelly and see if they could give us a good price. 10 minutes later, the same sarong-wearing dude that we spoke with earlier came running down the beach with a significantly lower price.
The Zipp Bar would become our regular spot as we spent countless hours in between diving, swimming, walking and exploring just chilling at the bar, mixing music with DJ Didi, checking out pictures of Kelly and her son on her laptop, eating Kelly's sister-in-law's (Mukhsin's wife) delicious local food (you must go here simply to have her pineapple/coconut curry sandwich/salad, it is to die for) and downing many Bintangs and Didi Specials
near Zipp Bar 4
. They also had a nightly (thought it didn't seem to occur that often) beach soccer game at about 5:30p and I played with them. Thankfully, everyone else either got tired or something and the games always seemed to last about 20 minutes. We also quickly got to know the story behind the Boys. In my correspondence with Kelly, she repeatedly referred to the Boys as an entity, leaving me quite perplexed. The Boys are comprised of Muzzy's youngest brother and their various friends, seeming to vary in age from teenagers to young 30s. The Boys are a group of extremely nice, but extremely jobless dudes. They do absolutely nothing, but surf, hang around, make fun of each other, take the boat out for party nights on Trawangan, drink and occasionally clean up the bar (though I really only saw Didi and Mukhsin, Muzzy's brother, working all the time). However, they are great fun, and they took Sarah out surfing with them the second morning we were on the island.
Unfortunately, on this trip she got cut by some coral in the hard surf and we got to meet another character of the island. Yanni (or Ram as he likes to call himself) is a former sports doctor from the US who is a major free spirit and is now a homeopathic doctor living on the island in various sets of horrendously colored and loose-clothed outfits
near Zipp Bar 5
. He concocted a natural remedy for Sarah's wound that worked and then we all had a great conversation on the Burning Man movement (they apparently got sponsored for some cool boat floats off the island) and various other travel and free spirit-related topics. A nice dude, he was certainly out there (he, at some late night party, told Sarah he is from the planet Solar). Diving on Gili Air
One of the main activities to do on the Gili Islands is diving. There are several diveshops on the island and all charge the same price per dive - $35. On our various walks around the island, we came across Blue Marlin Dive, liked the DMs that we spoke with, and signed up to dive with them.
Other than being a great dive shop, they also had the most lax policy ever when it came to diving. Basically, show up when you want to and don't show up when you don't want to. Given it was the rainy season, conditions would very quickly change from beautiful and sunny days into rainy, windy and "I want to stay in bed and not wake up at 7am to go diving" days. This happened to us before our first dive with them. Fearing they would charge us or scold us for not cancelling, we sheepishly went to the dive shop to find the enthusiastic DM Tony say "no worries, mate
Zipp Bar 1
. just show up when you want to, no need to cancel on us". On a going forward basis, we knew their three dive-a-day schedule and would show up an hour or so before to give them the heads up. They served up good food, had a pool and lounge area and we were allowed to keep a running tab and settle our bill before we left, which just enhanced the relaxed atmosphere of diving on the Gilis. Tony even told us of a guy who left for several months, forgetting to settle the tab, and they sorted out a way for him to wire payment to the dive shop! Diving on Gili Air was unlike any of the other places and dive boats we had been on before. All of the dive sites are very close, at most a 45 minute boat ride, so you go out on a rather small, wooden boat, that is not equipped with compressors or anything. As a result, you only go out for one dive at a time and with one air tank (normally dive boats have compressors and tons of tanks on board for repetitive dives). In between dives, you come back to the shop, grab some food and relax, reload your gear and go out again. This completely relaxed atmosphere and the conditions of the dive sites caused us to be lazy and only do three dives in total (and only two dives in one day).
The dive sites were nothing like the Similan Islands or Koh Tao
Zipp Bar 2
. There is world famous diving in Indonesia, but most of it is off the coast of Kalimantan, in the middle of a massive current that sweeps downwards from northern Asia (talked about in Planet Earth, Shallow Seas). Unfortunately, there used to be a practice of dynamite fishing, which is now banned, that has completely decimated the coral surrounding these islands. There is rubble of coral absolutely everywhere, including washed up on the beaches. That being said, it is still diving in the temperate waters of SE Asia (water was 28 degrees Celsius on our three dives, by far the warmest waters we had been in) and there was still some beautiful coral. What has also contributed to the decline in aquatic life on the island is fishing. Fishing is illegal, yet I saw many locals fishing around the shores of the island. While this is terrible and unsustainable (and they are likely to catch very small fish), I have no right to tell a local what to do on their own island. However, Mary and I saw these jacka$$ Westerners fishing with reel on a sodacan off the beach next to our bungalow and I was fuming. They ended up catching some tiny fusilier looking fish. I scolded them, loudly, saying that they had no right to fish off the shores, that catching small fish is stupid because it disrupts the food chain, and that the tourists will be long gone by the time the impact from idiotic acts like this are felt off the beaches of the island
Island Walkabout 1
. They told me to relax, it was just a small fish, and that fishing wasn't illegal. Well, it is. I wanted to walk over and drown that guy. Jacka$$. Despite the lack of conservation over the years, I was blown away by the amount of cool fish we found in the waters. There were tons of big and beautiful scorpionfish (I would make Chris, my DM from Koh Tao, proud with how I can spot them now), lionfish, morey eels, white eyed eels, honeycomb eels (we had never seen the last two before in Thailand), several green turtles, nudibranches, a large sole, a massive and freaky looking black frogfish with a black and white tongue, spotted boxfish, flounders, large octopus, schools of batfish and many giant pufferfish. I was really surprised by the diversity and amount of unique fish on these dives. Of course, while I had become somewhat of a diving snob and criticized the poor coral of the Gilis, having catalogued dives #40, #41, #42 while on Gili Air, it was still SCUBA diving, which is one of the greatest pleasures on earth.
Walkabout: Village Life on the Island
On one of the days we were on the island, I told Mary I was going to explore the island on my own, so that I could do some thinking and observing
Island Walkabout 2
. In the middle of the island lies the village of 6,000 people, with a mess of criss-crossed dirt paths bisecting the island in a sinous way from the beach through the village. While it is easy to get lost, I knew that walking 15-30 minutes in a relatively straight direction will lead to ocean, where I could get re-oriented. While on the coast of the island amongst the bungalows and tourist-oriented restaurants and bars, it is quite easy to forget that there is a village of locals at the center. I ended up crossing through the myriad bisecting paths through the island to see what village life was all about.
The entire village is made of Sasak people, who emigrated from Lombok many generations earlier. Many of the people who work on the island are not from the village, but have come over from Lombok themselves, like our friend Didi. They are all Muslim, but also believe very much in animism, just as those practicing Wektu Tulu on Lombok. Didi was telling us of one annual ritual, where all of the villagers make a mass exodus to the beach in front of Zipp Bar and have a mass swim in the ocean's water in order to wash away their collective sins.
The village is quite poor, but everyone has a home, clothing and ample food
Island Walkabout 3
. There is also a school, electricity and either running water or well water throughout the island. The electricity does go out on a regular basis, as seemed to be the norm throughout this part of the country. Additionally, all of the freshwater is desalinated and comes from Lombok, which is quite expensive, so many of the taps - both in the villages and the bungalows - deliver salt water. In my wander through the village, I observed the homes, the women cooking, the kids at play and found myself talking with a nice man, who was the head of his family. As I was walking by, in reasonable English, he asked where I was from and we engaged in a great and insightful conversation. He is a driver of a horse drawn carriage on the island and supports five kids as well as his wife. He has spent his entire life in the village on the island and seen the massive changes that have brought raised standards of living to the island. However, life is still quite challenging as there is a plethora of rikshaw wallahs on the island. He said that during the rainy season he gets only two fares per day, while in the busy season, he gets four or five fares per day. He says his average charge per fare is 10,000 rupiah ($1). I asked if his children go to school, he emphatically replied yes and that he emphasizes school for all of his kids. Unfortunately, there is only a primary school on Gili Air and for further education beyond the 5th grade, students must travel to Mataram on Lombok. For a family in Gili Air, this costs roughly 500,000 rupiah/per month for the child to have an apartment, schooling costs, books, uniforms and food. My friend, the rikshaw wallah, makes 600,000 rupiah/month during the rainy season and maybe double that during the busy time of year. Clearly, there is a problem here. Unlike in other countries, primary and secondary education costs are not subsidized by tax dollars, but must be paid out-of-pocket
Island Walkabout 4
. I thanked the kind man for his time, he was most thankful for talking with me, and I continued my journey through the village and the island. I passed by the school, saw a lamp post affixed to power lines that was made out of a plastic bottle (the ingenuity, resourcesfulness and innovation of the poor is nothing short of astounding) and eventually came out on the other side of the island. I completed my walk on the beach, taking pictures of kids playing amongst the dry-docked and decaying boats, caught the beginning of sunset on the western side of the island with the pancake flat and tiny Gili Meno on the horizon, and finally found The Spot.
On the southern tip of the island and just after sunset, I found a log and enjoyed a moment of reflection and the outrageously beautiful view of the ocean, mountains of Lombok and the painted sky. I set up a tripod on a coconut in order to capture an OCL picture of myself and completed my journey. From far away, I could see my beautiful woman, chilling on a beach lounge chair in her green summer dress. I knew that I would return to that sunset spot.
Recession, What Global Recession
Didi and Mukhsin told us that there had been dramatic changes on Gili Air in the last 10 years
Island Walkabout 5
. Most of the bungalows and beachfront restaurants/bars have been built during that time. I found this interesting given that Lombok's boom was in the 1990s and for both Bali and Lombok, the 2000s have been mostly a bust as far as tourism was concerned. Tourism is the sole export of the Gili Islands. They don't make much of anything besides handicrafts that are sold locally in the shops. Most of the food is either grown on the island or brought over on boats from Lombok. In addition to Didi's comments, I couldn't help, but notice the amount of construction projects underway throughout the island. Restauranteurs were building bungalows adjacent to their property and vice versa. We met many entrepreneurs, few of who were Sasak or from Indonesia, who had settled on the island to open new businesses. Mary and I had an unbelievably romantic meal at this brand new Italian restaurant opened by this Milanese guy that was right on the beach, steps in front of the water and under the stars. Given that we had spent Valentine's Day with Sarah and getting to the island, this was our makeup date night.
Clearly, there was an air of a boom to come and tremendous optimism throughout this island community. With limited internet access on the island that made me basically shut off to the outside world, I had no sense at all that there was a major global recession currently happening
Island Walkabout 6
. The construction of the direct international airport in Mataram (Lombok) will be nothing, but beneficial for the economic growth of the Gili Islands. However, I still wonder if they will suffer from the unfortunate skepticism that Western tourists have to traveling to Muslim-dominated countries. That being said, while we were on Gili Air and Lombok, Hillary Clinton was making her first foreign tour as Secretary of State. In a symbolic move to signal the importance of the region to the Obama Administration, Asia, and not the region of the world where diplomacy is badly needed and where the US government is waging two wars, was her first tour. Additionally, her second or third stop was to Jakarta (I would think because of President Obama's schooling there), which is surprising given the economic clout of Japan, China and India. Every single person in the islands seemed to be aware that Hillary Clinton was visiting Jakarta that day as it made them quite proud and most Muslims around the world seem to support the Clintons after President Clinton's intervention in Kosovo in 1999.
Getting Engaged on a Tropical Island
I knew when I first arrived on Gili Air that I was going to ask for Mary's hand in marriage
Island Walkabout 7
. We had discussed it, but there is a big difference between couples talking about something like this and actually being engaged. The first day that I was on the island, we popped into this little coconut handicraft shop right next to our guesthouse. Mary liked some of the rings and earrings, while I loved the hand-carved coconut rings and was really quite limited on my choice of jewelry stores on the island. Without her noticing, I bought a ring that day and had it in my pocket basically the whole time we were on the island. For much of the time, especially in the evenings, we were with Sarah and the three of us were enjoying our time at the Zipp Bar and hanging out. Compounding the lack of the right opportunity, Mary and I each had a day on the island where we were quite mopey and grouchy since we knew we were going to be traveling separately in a matter of days. However, towards the end of our stay, Sarah had left to Gili Trawangan to give us some time to ourselves and we were both resolved to be in good spirits on our last couple of days together on the island.
The afternoon of Feb 18, we went for our last dive on Gili Air, which was when we saw the crazy frogfish and sole. We were feeling really wonderful, and slowly made our way to the Zipp Bar for the last time
Island Walkabout 8
. We had some late afternoon beers and chilled out with Didi, Mukhsin and one of the Boys. Somehow, we got into Texas Hold'Em as Didi and Mukhsin both wanted to learn how to play the game. I drew out the order of the hands and pictures, we collected Bintang bottlecaps from everywhere as poker chips, and I explained the game. Unfortunately, this is probably not good development as I have now breeded a generation of gambling poker players. As Didi, Mukhsin, Mary and I were playing round after round of poker, where the two Sasak boys would bluff on the most ridiculous hands (they got the hang of the art of bluffing quite quickly), the sun began to make its journey to below the horizon line. Seeing the beginning of the pink sky, and not really having any pre-meditated notions, I asked Mary if she wanted to take a walk on the beach. We reached the log, in the same place I had found it the day before, and took some tripod-on-coconut pictures of us on the log (probably my favorite picture of us, our two silhouettes and sunset over Lombok) as we gazed at the amazing colors of the sky. We were both reflecting on the beauty and magic of Gili Air and just feeling that warm and fuzzy aura that strikes couples at specific moments of their life.
I kept dwelling, to myself, whether this was the moment, whether I was going to do it or whether I wanted to wait until we could get to Monsoon Point on Lombok the following day after we had left Gili Air (thankfully I didn't because of the poor weather and because we didn't have time to go back to Monsoon Point). Contrary to many people, I also didn't have any grand plan, or speech or anything at all. Intentionally, when the time just seemed right, I wanted to speak from my heart and I've never been one to write out a speech (Gold Medal in Academic Decathlon for Impromptu Speech coming in handy!)
Island Walkabout 9
. So, at some point, Mary starts babbling on about her friends back home in what may have been an interesting conversation at any other time. I was nervous as hell (even though I knew what her answer would be) and putting the words together in my mind of what I was going to say. There was a pause in her monologue and I turned to her, held her hand and began to speak (something along the lines of this): 'Mary, you know how much I love you and how much our relationship has grown during the last few months traveling together. You are one of my best friends, you support me, you love me back and you balance me. You asked me a question a month or so back in Thailand and you told me that I did not need to answer the question at that time. You asked me, "I want you to know that if you decide to go to Africa (for the Peace Corps) and want to commit to me, I will be here when you get back". I have thought long and hard about it and I have an answer for you. (Ring came out of my pocket) I want to spend the rest of my life with you and I would be honored if you would be my wife.'
Mary's immediate reaction was to laugh at me. Seriously. But, other than giving her a hard time, I know that this laughter was one of joy and shock as she looked down at the ring on her finger, looked up at me with a gleam in her eyes and a massive grin on her face, and emphatically said "yes" as we embraced and kissed
Island Walkabout 10
. There she was, my gorgeous wife-to-be, looking amazing in her maroon and sleeveless summer dress and glowing in the wondrous Gili Air sunset over Lombok. It was absolutely perfect. We sat there, holding each other's hands, just gazing at the view and taking in the moment. It sinks in at many moments over the course of many days. There are still moments where different realities sink in. It is an outrageous emotion to know you have someone in your corner for life. As Hollywood as it all sounded, reality set in when the evening bugs started attacking our legs and we had to retreat to the Zipp Bar. As Mary says, it was the only imperfect thing about that perfect time. We returned to the Zipp Bar, the only difference was Mary was sporting a piece of coconut on her ring finger, and we didn't say anything to anyone. There was no need for a toast. It was our moment and it is our love.
Sadly, we had to leave Gili Air the next day, Feb 19, as Mary had to get from Gili Air to Lombok to Bali to Singapore for a flight to Australia on Feb 21. On our slow stroll to the boat docks in the morning, we saw Didi and Mukhsin one last time, said our goodbyes, vowed we would return again soon and then took the boat and long bus transfer back to the Hotel Elen on Lombok.
