I knew very little about the Gili Islands before we went. All I knew is what other people had told me which was Gili T is for parties and Gili Air is for ‘hippies’. This didn’t give me a whole lot to go off, especially considering we’re not into the party scene at all and I wouldn’t consider myself a hippy. All I knew was it was the best place to see wild turtles (spoiler: we only saw one and it was from the port as we were leaving).
Gili Trawangan
Gili T is so much more than just a party scene it’s known for. There are lots of bars that offer movie nights every night on the west of the island, best being royal regency, but it depends on your movie preferences. Snorkelling is super easy to do here as it gets deep fairly quickly so swimming out is much easier compared to many spots off Gili Meno for example. However, it’s definitely worth taking as little as possible with you down to the beach if you want to snorkel so that you can go further out without worrying about stuff. We noticed that there’s a lots of people walking up and down the beach trying to sell things and going close to unattended items on the beach and it made me at least very uneasy. The reason I say it’s worth swimming out further is because the reef drops off relatively close to shore and it’s absolutely teeming with life.
When looking at places to stay in Gili T, stay closer to the port to avoid using the horses as I noticed the ones on Gili T don’t look as well treated as they do others on the other islands. You can then easily rent bicycles to explore the island, it takes about an hour to cycle the full island perimeter. I would suggest staying maybe 2-3 nights here depending on your personal preferences when it comes to snorkelling and partying.
Gili Meno
Compared to the others, Gili Meno felt a little like a ghost town. There is very little to do here other than snorkelling, the famous underwater statues are here but you could very easily do this as a day trip from the other islands. It’s very good for a budget though, we were £20 under budget most days which was needed after all the budget blowing activities we did in Bali. There aren’t that many places to eat but we found they were all really nice and super affordable. We also found that no one will harass you here, no heckling at you and beckoning you into bars. Not a single person came up to us, they just let us come to them and it was refreshing.
If you plan on staying here I’d recommend not staying too close to the temple, especially if you’re a light sleeper unless you have earplugs, if you don’t it’s a very loud 4am wake up call! However if you don’t mind noise or are a heavy sleeper, I highly recommend Sari Laut (they even provide the earplugs!). I would suggest maybe staying in a resort here as you’ll have full use of a pool etc, however Le Pirate allows you to use their pool if you buy drinks so it’s still easy to access pools on the island. Le Pirate also offers movie night every other day on the beach. If not, I’d recommend going to Saska cafe a 3 minute walk away to watch Brotherhood band play. I’d recommend either a day trip or 1-2 nights to Meno as there’s really not much to do beyond that.
When snorkelling in Meno, be wary of the low tide. The ‘turtle bay’ area is VERY shallow for a long way out, especially at low tide, and involves walking along dead coral for about 70m and then you have to cross a live coral reef before it starts to get deeper than your knees. DO NOT walk on live coral, there are a few areas you can sneak through but if it’s too shallow it’s impossible and you will end up scratched and grazed. I would suggest going to the port side of the island or the south during low tide. You will also need some form of shoe (flippers worked fine) if you try to snorkel in the turtle Bay area.
DO NOT go to the turtle sanctuary, many reviews online talk about how unethical it is, so make sure you do research. This sadly is common in many areas in Indonesia.
Gili Air
We did Gili Air as a day trip and regretted not staying here. It’s far more than just the ‘hippy-vegan paradise’ so many people told us about. Lots of people come here to dive and free dive and we definitely would’ve done some diving had we stayed longer. I recommend going to SharkBites restaurant for food at least once, the potato wedges were phenomenal. This is where we saw the turtle and we actually stopped at the port on the way to Lombok and I saw the same turtle. Apparently it hangs out there a lot. I would recommend staying here maybe 2-3 nights unless you’re doing lots of diving in which case I’d recommend longer. The horses on this island looked much better kept than on Gili T, so depending on your own personal views on horse carriages, you’re not necessarily restricted to the port area.
Getting between islands
We booked a boat from Gili T to Gili M on 12goasia.com for about £7pp and then found out you could book the exact same boat at the pier for around £4.50pp which we then did every other time we caught a boat. There’s also an option to catch the public slow boat twice a day (around 8am and 3pm depending on the island you’re on) for around £2pp but these are tiny and full of locals and there’s a small chance you won’t fit on.
Heading away from the islands
I would definitely recommend doing your research, we were going from Gili Meno to Nusa Penida and the tickets online were £26pp which was basically the entire budget for the day gone so we asked around and most people then started to quote us around £20pp which was better but I’d hoped to find cheaper but that would be plan B. Instead I looked at prices from Lombok and it said £12pp so with the £4.50pp from Gili Meno to Lombok it was £16.50pp which was a much better deal and I would highly recommend looking for similar deals to go to Lebongan or Bali main land.
Other things to note
We discovered on Gili T a free app being publicised to help you find free water refill stations across all the Gilis and it was a game changer. We’ve often found that staying in home stays and hotels rather than hostels although cheaper as a couple, they don’t tend to offer water refills so being able to find refill stations all around the islands was so handy. Especially if we were spending the day on the other side of the island away from any shops, we could still find water.
There are no motor vehicles on these islands, maybe the odd local has a very old battered scooter but that’s about it. Everyone gets around on bicycles or use the horse drawn carriages. I’d recommend the bicycles, just make sure to haggle the prices, you should really be looking at no more than 50K per bike per day, but there’s a little leeway in this.