Cue anything “Bob Marley”, it’s time for the Gili Islands and Bob can be heard from the moment you step on the boat in Sanur, till all hours at the reggae bars.
It’s Monday morning and I check out of my peaceful oasis in Ubud and jump on a very full shuttle bus to Sanur. I set in for an hour and a half road trip, put on some good tunes and off I go. During this road trip I had fully conjured up a plan to stay in Bali, I had it all worked out in my head. I was going to live in Canggu, eat breakfast at Crate Cafe err morning, write, swim, learn how to play guitar again…picking up where I left off from with “Smelly Cat” and become more enlightened than Buddha. Then this fantasy was smacked out of me pretty quickly when I arrived in Sanur and had to wait around in what can only be described as one hell of an “a la shit fight” aka two hours in the hot sun during the hottest part of the day while our boat was clearly running on Bali time. The boat finally arrives and the bags are loaded first. Everyone starts passing their bags to the guys on top of the boat and my turn rolls around, I look at my bag, I look at him, I look at my bag, I look at him, and say “that ain’t gonna happen buddy”. One of the boat crew members comes and grabs my bag and lets out a grunt louder than a heavy weight lifter in the Olympics. I look at him and say “sorry I should have left the bricks at home”, I get a blank stare (tough crowd) and off I go. The trip takes 1 hour and 40 mins and I somehow manage to drift off, with the movement of the boat rocking me like a baby.
The boat starts to slow down as I wake up and see land and gorgeous blue water ahead, cue in Bob Marley again because we have arrived! Hello Gili T, where the beer flows like wine, where beautiful woman instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano…sorry wouldn’t be a blog by me if there wasn’t at least one Dumb and Dumber quote somewhere. More like where illegal alcohol flows like Niagara Falls and I feel about 80 years old. We pull up on the sand and I haul my 25kg bag (which now feels like 50kg when being dragged through sand) to my hotel, all I can say is thank you google maps. I arrive at Gili Amor Resort and check-in, and by this stage I am starving because I underestimated how long it would take to get to Gili and had missed out on lunch. I do my research and 10 mins later i’m sitting in Trip Advisor’s number 1 cafe on the island Pituq Cafe, which is a cute cafe with an awesome healthy vegan menu. It was 4pm and I still wanted to have a nice dinner, so I opted for a dragon fruit smoothie bowl and it was AAAHHHMAZING! It’s fair to say I came back here a few times and the coconut iced latte’s are to die for. I was also lucky enough to meet the owner Yana who is super passionate about sourcing fresh produce daily, and you can tell. Night rolls around quickly and before you know it, it’s dinner time and I check out La Dolce Vita which has a really nice and new fit out for Gili. There wasn’t much to choose from other than pasta, pasta and more pasta though…so after much thought I ordered pasta. An hour goes by and my meal has yet to appear and we have had 3 power outages. They finally come to my table and tell me they have run out of what I ordered and I needed to re-order…deep breath, deep breath, I was now HANGRY and not pleasant for anyone to be around. Once my meal got there I inhaled it, apologised to my cute Italian waiter for anything I said to him while I was hangry, he gave me a discount and off I went.
The following morning I awake to one VERY VERY loud call to prayer at 5:30am, it seriously sounds like i’m getting a live performance in my room. I drift off back to sleep and I’m up a couple of hours later, I decide to hire a bike and check out the island. You can apparently ride around the island in an hour, so off I go and I’ve gotta say I have missed riding a bike. My inner child was loving the shit out of it! I decide to stop halfway for a quick dip in the ocean and bake at one of the beach bars, before I jumped back on and pushed the bike to the other side of the sand. Once I got to the other side it was bliss and a lot quieter, this is where I came across Casa Vintage Beach. A gorg beach bar on Sunset Beach with hammocks, a swing and lots of different chill out zones. I order a fish wrap and watermelon juice while admiring the view and taking some snaps. The staff at Casa Vintage are so happy and friendly, they genuinely love life and their jobs and I take a long moment to watch and appreciate this. One thing I have noticed over here after talking with a lot of people on my travels is that there are a lot of ex corporate world workers who have either been made redundant, or are taking a sabbatical away from their long term, highly stressful, well paid job. In talking to these people, until you actually peel yourself away from that job for a period of time you don’t realise just how unhappy you are, and how quickly you can get stuck in that spinning whirlpool of “success” until it sucks you right in and also sucks away your soul if your not careful. I know this all too well spending the best part of my working career in large corporate companies. This then got me thinking as a society how we determine what “success” looks like. I think we can all be guilty of linking success to money, and sure we all want to be rewarded for our hard work, but sometimes the best reward is not in monetary terms. For me, when someone sends me a message to tell me that they are going to miss me and my classes when I go away, and thanking me because yoga has changed their life…THAT’S THE SHIT that you can’t even COMPARE to money. Sometimes we need to stop, strip the ego away from the word success and truly ask ourselves does this car, house, clothing and all the other luxuries that I work relentlessly for make me happy? Or do I just feel like I have come too far and i’ve set up this lifestyle of working and spending to jump off? This is how I felt…until I was given no choice but to jump off this merry go round. Guess what? I’m pretty fucking happy! Yes I am on holidays and the reality of life and earning money to pay my mortgage when I get home will kick in soon. But this time, with the stress will also be passion…and that my friends is the big difference!
Digression at it’s finest right there. So back to Gili, I jump back on the bike and with some instructions from the waiter, I take the cross road to drive back down the middle of the island back to my hotel. Ummm….no, I get around 1km down this cross road and come to a dead end. I find myself in a small community where some of the locals live, and decide to stop for a moment and watch the kids play. They are so happy with absolutely nothing and it really makes me think about children back at home that can have a million toys and still complain about not having the latest and greatest toy, phone, iPad etc.
I finally make it back home, have a shower and it’s dinner time. Ko Ko Mo come at me! I jump on the bike and can’t help but sing in my head the whole way there… Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama Key Largo, Montego, baby why don’t we go Ooh I want to take you down to Kokomo, we’ll get there fast and then we’ll take it slow, that’s where we want to go, way down in Kokomo. Good luck getting that one out of your head! I sit down and the menu looks awesome, they have sashimi and when you are this close to the ocean its gotta be good. I order sashimi and a salad and it feels odd to order a cocktail with seafood, so I opt for the overpriced shitty wine that Bali has on offer. Bali is probably one of very few places where cocktails are cheaper than wine, and the wine they have on offer is usually Jacob’s Creek or Yellow Tail at $40+ per bottle (and thats in the bottle shop). I settle for a Plaga Rose, which is a local wine and after the second glass it’s not tasting too bad. I get stuck into my book in this super romantic setting and I couldn’t be happier. I’m sitting there and I can’t help but notice the random playlist, all of a sudden it goes from something super pop to an oldie that I haven’t heard since I was a kid, and dad comes into my mind. I feel an overwhelming sense of emotion as this continues to happen, I felt him around me. I notice a butterfly start flying around my table and don’t think much of it and continue to read, all of a sudden it lands on my arm and sits there for about 10 seconds and at this point “James Blunt – High” starts playing. I was messaging my sister in-law at this point and said to her, can you go and check if dad has the James Blunt album in his car. She comes back and says YES…WHY? I was on the verge of tears at this point, and lets face it James Blunt makes you want to eat a whole tub of ice-cream and go through a box of tissues at the best of times. My sister in-law comes back and sends me a message saying that my nephew has started standing up and playing with the Foxtel box. He has somehow managed to series link MASH and they now have 10 episodes of MASH recorded by a baby (this was my dad’s favourite show). She then went on to say that my brother went down stairs the other day to find my niece watching MASH, and when asked why she had put that show on, she said “I like this show!” What four year old little girl likes MASH??? It’s fair to say that he is still around us and I love it.
The following morning I check out The Yoga Place and do a 90 minute Vinyasa Flow. It was just what I needed as my practice had gone a little out the window the last couple of days. After the class, I ate breakfast at their cute little cafe that has all things healthy available on the menu. I had the smoothie bowl and iced coconut latte, although I think Wayan misunderstood me and gave me an iced long black with some coconut cream on the side…what eventuated when I added the coconut cream was one lumpy coffee, nonetheless it still tasted good. I started chatting to some German guys about their Bali experience so far and their partying escapades on the island, which made for a good laugh. After the boys left, I couldn’t help but overhear two of the staff (expats) talking…ok I was Eavesdropping, or as my beautiful bestie calls it Ears-dropping (apparently eavesdropping doesn’t make sense). I introduced myself to Isabel who runs the yoga studio and she offers for me to teach a class there which was beautiful of her, although this trip I would like to be completely and utterly selfish and be on the other side of the mat (or yoga room?).
The following day consisted of waking up early to find a snorkelling tour to jump on. I walked straight to the end of my road and managed to stumble across a tour desk and booked in straight away to the 10am tour. We stopped at 3 snorkelling spots in total and I way amazed at how badly damaged the coral was! I was only snorkelling in Lembongan 2 years prior to this and the snorkelling was great. I had been warned earlier in the morning by a guy I got talking to at breakfast who does a lot of diving. He mentioned to me that in the past they have done a lot of blast fishing on the island which has caused long term damage to the eco system.
Some more restaurants and cafe’s to note on Gili T:
Pearl Beach Lounge – one of the nicest and newest resorts on the island and the restaurant here is right on the beach, with the option of a sun bed to have lunch on and swim in the ocean directly in front. I came here during the day for lunch/bake/read and had a prawn salad, and I also ate here twice for dinner and had the lobster tail risotto one night and the grilled salmon the other. All dishes were amazing and great value! The only thing is they sting you on the drinks here, but thats because they use “non-illegal alcohol” nice to know!
Kayu Cafe – AAAAMAZING view, go for gold and sit on the bench seats on the beach. If you go nice and early in the morning, you will beat everyones hangovers and guaranteed to secure a cracking spot. Smoothie bowls, health shots, bagels, pancakes…they cater for everyones needs. The best thing about them, is they also have a fridge inside with goodies from Bali Buddha and raw chocolate to die for.
Pizzeria Regina – nothing exciting to look at, but the chef is Italian (a wild guess) and he knows how to cook a traditional wood fired pizza. I took the French girls there that I met while out snorkelling and they loved it.
So this pretty much sums up my week on Gili: Sleep, yoga, eat, swim, bake, eat, swim, eat, cheeky cocktail, repeat. No crazy nights out, just rancho relaxo and lots of ocean time. I am hanging to get back to Ubud though so I can breath and have some peace and quiet.
Until next time…peace love and Bali bliss hugs,
Legsy xxx
Live Light Yoga & Wellness 
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