Chilling in Gili Trawangan, and the Journey Back to Bali

Well, back to Kuta, Bali after 6 relaxing days on Gili Trawangan. I can't believe we are down to less than a week! It has been very nice having the last 2 weeks with lots of sun and sand. After running around so much, we have finally had time to stay put and actually get a little bored every now and then - perfect vacation!

On Gili, we did 2 more dives - both were great. Sealife here is a little different than in Thailand. We saw lots of turtles, a nice big ray, some eels, and my favorite, a large, squiggly, OCTOPUS!! He was so cute (i only assume it was a "he" - I have to admit that I didn't actually check!) Poor Krista was not there to see him, but I did and it was quite funny seeing him swim and then try to hide in a hole. I spent a bit of time trying to coax him out, but to no avail. I wish I had an underwater camera - the fish are amazing and so colorful, but you will all just have to imagine....

Otherwise, we also did some snorkeling, lots of relaxing on the beach, and a little exercise with a good size running "road" around the island - the road being a sandy path that is sometimes so narrow that you have to jump out of the way of one of the speeding horsecars - which is the island's major form of mass transit (see 1st picture). The other form of transport on the island is by bicycle - I couldn't get a pic of the family of 4 on a bicycle, or the person carrying a basket of pineapples on her head while riding a bike with her 1 year old balanced on the crossbar, but the 2nd pic is a little taste of normalcy there!

While Gili Trawangan is known as a "party island", there really weren't a ton of partying tourists there when we were - but we still went out a couple of nights, and our last night we spent with the fun Irish couple (Julie is in the picture with us at the bar) and some their friends, which made for a great last night before getting up to hit the boat -> bus -> ferry -> bus back to Kuta, Bali. On the way, we discovered the "Krista", which is apparently an SUV made by Toyota - Krista was very excite!!!

So, we are now back in Bali to do some more surfing and sunning - the "Asian Beach Games" are here starting Saturday, so we'll have to see what that's all about. We got very lucky and the hotel we stayed in before had a room for $8/night with breakfast included and a great pool - a nice place to finish out our time here. We fly out early Mon morning to Kuala Lumpur and then to Saigon for one last night - poo! But we won't think about that for another couple days!