Bring Your Own Life Jacket

It's been awhile coming, but here's the final climax of our trip over the New Year holiday. To get to and from Gili Trawangan, you can take a small boat from Lombok or you can take a speed boat from Bali. We chose to go from Bali.

Because there's a big demand for passengers trying to get to the Gili islands from Bali, there are several companies that offer transportation services. Our trip to Gili Trawangan was uneventful, but when we were on our way back, although it was a beautiful day, the seas were really rough.

At one point while we were crossing the approximate 50 miles between the islands, we started hitting some really large swells. For some reason, this French guy (wearing matching flower print shirt and shorts) stood up to talk to his friends. As we hit a huge swell, he immediately fell in his friend's lap, then went flying up in the air and hit the ceiling and then fell down to the floor again. After that the captain slowed down and we got back to Bali uneventfully.

Because the New Year holiday is one of the biggest travel times of the year, we had to take Merpati Nusantara Airlines, which is less reliable than some of the other options. It was delayed about an hour, but then we were on the runway ready to take off. The captain hit the throttle, but then the plane went quiet and we headed back to the terminal for repairs. We waited at the airport for five more hours and they finally had to pile all the passengers and luggage onto two small buses to take us to a hotel promising that the plane would leave at 9 am the next morning. But it didn't. Hill and I were among the lucky ones because we insisted on getting the cell phone number of the manager and we were able to get on the following day's flight, a mere 24 hours delayed. Unfortunately the majority of the other passengers were stuck back at the hotel and left to wait yet another day.

The following Monday, we were back at work and we heard people talking about a boat that sank off the coast of Bali the same afternoon we were crossing. Apparently one of the other fast boat shuttle operators, Lian Senggigi, started taking on water and the boat sank, luggage and all, 700 meters from Bali! It was really lucky that the boat was so close to Bali because many people had to swim to shore or were picked up by local fishermen.