Day 241-245:Paradise Islands

Good afternoon all! Hope you had a fantastic white Christmas. Well with the festive feasting over (apart from the turkey sandwiches that'll be good 'til they become the turkey curry around Wednesday) and the return to normal working life imminent, thoughts will no doubt stray to 'getting away from it all soon' so I thought I'd get in there with a quick post about the Gili Islands.

They got a little shout-out on our Chrsitmas-day post but, to be honest, they're so so bloody amazing I think they deserve some more cyberspace.

We took the short boat ride from Lombok to Gili Air, the nearest of the 3 Gili Islands, and took up residence in a small hut on the beach on the "quieter" Western side of the Island. 'Quiet' is a relative term here since the island only has a total population of 1,800 and there are NO vehicles. At all. No engines. No car-horns. No motorbikes. The favoured modes of transport are walking, cycling or the Gili Ferrari which is, when it comes down to it, a horse and cart.

We were told that you could walk around the entire island in under 2 hours; whoever was conducting this experiment had not hired a snorkel and fins for the day. We spent the best part of a day burning our shoulder blades and that bit you always miss behind your knees in various spots around the island and seeing all sorts of beautiful fish and coral but, unfortunately, none of the turtles that were rumoured to be "over populated" in the general Gili area.

After a couple of days of pure relaxation and some fantastic food we jumped on the Island Hopper boat over to Gili "the party island" Trawangan. No doubt avid Ibiza-lovers or even, closer to home, Bali-fans, may turn their beach-party noses up at this suggestion, but Gili 'T (see? it even has a cool abbreviation) is definitely the busiest of the Gili Islands.

Here the water is crystal clear ("I can actually see better through the water than I can though the air here", thanks Rob) and the beaches a made of the purest white sands. There is everything from the most luxurious of resorts and restaurants to the cheapest of food shacks that opened their wagons and set out their plastic chairs for dinner every evening. And every night one of the bars is the bar to go to tonight. There's always something going on.

We met up again with Brian, of Lombok bike-day fame, and invested in some more snorkelling which resulted in out first spot of the thus-far elusive hawksbill turtle (hurrah!) and some more incredible fishes that I couldn't even begin to describe.

Diving is big business on the island, and we did indulge in our Christmas-Day-dive, but snorkellers are by no means unable to really enjoy the marine life that surrounds the island. Even those that prefer to just lie on the beach have been known to catch a glimpse of a turtle surfacing for air.

Despite big plans to do so, we didn't make it to Gili Meno, the middle and most rural of the three islands, for a day of - you've guessed it - snorkelling off beautiful beaches. We hear it's incredible and, given its two neighbours, I can certainly believe it.

The Gili Islands really are a perfect holiday destination and I would strongly recommend it to anyone with a couple of weeks that wants to relax, eat well, drink too much, see some turtles and/or be in some of the most spectacular scenery on this side of the globe.

Day 244: Merry Chrsitmas!

Massive hellos and lots of festive love from the Gili Islands!

Though no-one can accuse Team 365 of having a traditional Christmas, we are certainly having a very special one indeed...I'll keep this short because there is Bintang to drink and Nasi Goreng to eat and you probably have presents to unwrap and a turkey to baste.
This morning we started the day with a scuba dive through gorgeous coral and even swam with - not one but two - turtles, I even stroked one. I don't think any Christmas will ever be the same again.

We're thinking of you all and as our Christmas day come to a close and we know back in England it's just getting started, so have a wonderful day and a mince pie for us xx

Day 186-191: Underwater adventures

From the buzz of Bangkok we departed to tiny Koh Tao; covering about 20 square km it's famous for being one of the best - and cheapest - places to dive in the world. And that is exactly what we were there to do.

As proud holders of the PADI Open Water certificate, the first level of diving qualification, all we needed to do was get a refresher course to swim with the fishes but we weren't going to settle for that. Instead we opted for the next level; the Advanced Open Water certificate which meant five dives over two days including a deep dive (30m below sea level, baby!) and a night dive (here we are wetsuited and overexcited after the dive, below) as well as necessary navigation, buoyancy and fish identification skills.

We lived and dived with Coral Grand; a company that had not only an awesome team of divers but a beautiful pool (pictured) to learn in and a spectacular beach-side location.

The island itself is lovely; small enough to bike around in about half an hour, on the rare occassions that we were not diving, we explored the islands other beaches and snorkelling hot-spots.

But to the diving! Which was just incredible. We were so lucky to enjoy 6 days of clear blue skies and, most of the time, excellent visibility. We swam with beautifully bright fishes of all shapes and sizes and really got into trying to identify them and learn the hilariously-literal hand signs that are used to communicate under water e.g. angel fish = circle a finger above one's head like a halo, pipe fish = play an invisible pipe. All good fun.
We saw stingrays, hermit crabs and coral of every shape and size that you could imagine and more that you couldn't.
We also - most importantly - SWAM WITH A TURTLE; literally my dream experience. The gorgeous hawksbill turle was happy to swim with us near for a good 15 minutes, it was magical.

All in all we extended our five-dive stay by three extra days and 4 extra dives; we literally couldn't tear ourselves away and with every dive that passed Rob and I became more and more sure that diving is going to feature heavily not only in this trip, but in the future in general.

The next step in the dive-certification ladder is to become a Dive Master, and after hanging out with the guys at Coral Grand (thanks again Joe, Dave, Phillis, Nad & Co) it's become #1 on our ever-extending To Do list.

Koh Tao; we'll see you again soon.