I arrive in Lombok, the next door neighbour of Bali and the rising star to compete with her for the tourism championship. Here me and Coline reunite, Emma has her last couple of days here as they come back from one of the three famous Gili islands. We meet in between the airport and the islands at the seaside tourist town of Sengigi.

Sengigi is a nice enough place, no shortage of restaurants, bars and beaches… thats about it, but we chose a beautiful place to stay with stunning views to send of Emma’s last part of her adventure in luxury and style. We finished her stay with a night in the local posh resort for cocktails and overpriced food.

The next day she was gone and with a depressed coline we move on to start our next chapter.

It was visa extension time as we could get 4 weeks on arrival and would need to use our one possible extension on the last week of the current one. We had read it was best to try in Lombok rather than Bali as its less busy, so we explored the capital of Lombok and processed our application.

Now we had some time to kill, at least 4 days until it was ready to collect our passports, so with the Gili islands so close and all the stories i had heard from Emma and Coline making me drool with excitement we headed there. A short boat trip over the beautiful turquoise waters and we where at the biggest of the three islands, Gili Trawangan. The biggest of the three and the most popular, the place was great as you could walk 30 meters into the ocean and be swimming with wild turtles! To me, it was too much, after some of the paradises we have visited and my natural tendicy to resent other tourists, I felt it was too busy, too touristic etc etc… AND! For people who know me know I am a big critic of all religion, but I will respect them when im not in my country and in this hugely Muslim dominated part of Indonesia there where signs everywhere asking people to not walk the streets in bikinis.. I think a fair request from a people who some can not bear to see a woman’s scalp let alone cleavage and in some cases a bikini bottom so small you can see what they ate for breakfast. But this was not respected and I could feel the discomfort of some locals and it made me almost ashamed to be a tourist sometimes. Now I rant on this as being English of course I did not criticise the people to their face, behind my screen to people this will never affect is much more comfortable.

So with my sights set on more traditional and rural island life we did the 5 minute boat ride to Trawangans neighbour.. and boy was it a good choice. A handful of home stays and small hotels. One or two resorts but far enough away to not feel to gawdy. Crystal waters and the whole island fringed with white sand beaches… Heaven. There was a very small number of tourists here in comparison which made the place much more relaxing, no nightclubs and bars like the obnoxious neighbour. My grandpa and Crusoe genes where sataisifed.

We stayed in a beautiful bungalow dead in the centre of the island, this is still no more than 5 minutes walk to the water, which i hope shows how small this island really was, you could tour the perimirter in maybe just over an hour.

With snorkelling just a walk to the ocean away, with all kinds of tropical fish, underwater statues and turtles within such easy reach… What more could you ask for? Maybe cosy wooden restaurants with mini bungalows on the sand, candle lit dinners watching the sun set with an ice cold beer.

This was Gili Meno.