When I first set foot from the boat onto Gili Trawangan to recover my dumped half buried bag from the perfect soft sands in which it lay, the initial impressions were good. After quickly taking in my surroundings and clearing the crowd of other disembarkers, I took a minute to attach my bags together again before switching my phone across to display a map of my current location and waited for my gps to pinpoint my exact position. Before I had left Ubud in the morning I had entered the place where I was due to be staying, so after just a second or so wait my GPS location was locked onto and I started to make my way to the marker on my map. Within a minute or 2, or by the time I was ready to come off of the main tourist street however my impression of the island had changed a little.
There are very few motorbikes on the island, and the few there are electric powered. Everyone else rides pushbikes if they have them, or walks if its convenient. The local taxis come in the form of a cart pulled by a small pony, usually to take new arrivals to their accommodation or do a lap of the island. Heavy goods are also transported by cart pulled by a pony, with bags of rice, building materials and the like being hauled to their destination in an eco friendly way. Some of the people I saw in carts being pulled by a pony could probably be classed as both passenger or heavy goods, but I don't know if the rates of carriage for each are the same. While this all may sound rather quaint, the main gathering point for these mule carts is as you first reach the road after leaving the beach, and it doesn't take long before your breath is stolen away by a upper cut nasal punch of beach donkey urine that wafts up in the dry air from the hot and sandy street. Luckily it's a smell that quickly passes by and one that I only encountered occasionally over the next few days, but still, welcome to paradise.
Now, I have nothing against people's beliefs regarding their gods, and I have nothing against the call to prayer even if it does kick off in the morning at 4:30, but I just wish for 2 things. Firstly, If your god requires you to use an audio system to reach out to his devoted flock, please get one capable of relaying the message at the audio quality your god deserves. Secondly, and this might be pushing it a bit, but is it too much to ask for someone who doesn't sound like a hundred and ten year old Max Bygraves muttering woefully into the microphone? The poor man on vocal duty sounded like he was dying a long and painful death while being forced to recite passages from a holy book. Think Cliff Richards Millennium Prayer on 45 turned up to 11 and slowed to 33rpm, then you maybe able to get close to my distress that this was causing.
And there is no escape. The call to prayer is 5 times a day and is audible all over the island through distorted audio.
After a late afternoon swim I decided to wander the strip looking for a place to eat. It was a little early and the beach front bars and restaurants were mostly deserted with the exception of the eager staff waiting at entrances to try and get you to eat in their establishments, but the thing is about the smell of donkey urine is it can really kill an appetite. I venture down further until the bars and clubs became less frequent and then stopped, turned around and walked back, hoping that something would jump out at me a little and persuade me to go in and eat. When eventually I did have something it unfortunately fell some way short of the excellent food I had been eating until then. So rather underwhelmed, I finished my beer, grabbed some overnight supplies from the shop opposite and slowly made my way back. Back past the still empty, still brightly lit bars now playing pumping beats to non existent crowds. Back up the dimly lit recently watered sand / mud road and back in to my not so humble abode and promptly fell asleep. This was my first nights rest in a cool environment for a good couple of weeks and I don't think I stirred even once.
In the morning I headed out, stopping on the front in an cool little place called the Kura Cafe which also sold a range of natural products based around well being, at a premium cost of course. Still, the breakfast Burrito here is a work of inspired genius and after washing it all down with the requisite Iced Tea I decided to head up north and do a loop of the island, a journey which the guy at the stay reckoned should take around 3 or 4 hours, but adding helpfully that he'd never done it himself. I estimated the distance to be around 3 miles or just over so a couple of hours limping max.
A few minutes into walking up the buildings become less frequent and the area starts to feel a little more rustic and run down, with some of the bars seemingly made up of a few boards chucked together with brightly painted signs declaring happy hour times and other roughly daubed slogans. It's always nice to read the one that states “Come in as a stranger, leave as a friend”, but when you're mind instinctlevely changes that to “come as a stranger, leave in other people's bellies” it's best to not not stop moving, unless your into that kind of thing of course. I just kept on walking.
As I walked around the beach at the northern tip of the island several booming claps of thunder echoed around, at least I hoped thats all it was. Being that this is a region with recently active volcanoes, again your mind does start to think “or is it….?” , especially as a bit further west in Indonesia is where Krakatoa used to stand, a volcanic island that basically blew itself apart back in 1883 and something of which I know both too little and too much to be comfortable. I was relieved then as the rain started to patter down around me making little dents in the sand that indeed it was nothing more sinister than thunder and I headed to the nearest safe looking bar, ordering an ice tea to sit and wait out the coming storm which stopped before my drink had even arrived.
I made it about 1/3rd of the way down the west side of the island before I became bored of walking the nearly deserted road, past luxury villas, unfinished building projects and buildings just seemingly abandoned to the elements. When the opportunity arose to cut back up the hill to my accommodation I decided to take it, walking along dirt track roads sheltered with coconut trees, littered with an alarming amount of discarded waste including non perishables such as plastic bottles and cans, perishables such as discarded houses and a particularly aggressive turkey. The sad thing about this island is that it's devastatingly beautiful in places, and almost just devastated in others. Usually in finding a picture perfect location that would be able to grace any postcard, widening your scope of view just a little out of that shot will also reveal a less appealing view and whichever way you look at it, it's a slant on what we are, what we do to places.
On a different note, one of the great things about travel nowadays is that you are able to buy a whole bunch of items which should make your trip safer / more manageable. Waterproof cameras and phones and IP rated waterproof bags all give you the illusion of safety that at least your important documents will be safe if the boat sinks, or you get caught out in a tropical storm. As a solo traveller this also allows you to keep your important items on you rather than risk leaving it alone on a beach somewhere as you head off for a paddle. With my diabetes I like the idea that I can keep my phone close so in the case of a medical emergency I would be able to at least put a call to someone. I haven't had the need yet but it's a situation that could occur especially as I struggle in the over 30 degree heat. To this end before I left the UK I brought a few waterproof bags and also invested in a sony Xperia z2 waterproof camera (ip rated to withstand 4 and a half foot of water). This I thought would give me a little bit more of the safety I wanted. The only thing that keeps the x2 waterproof are a flap each side of the phone, one of these flaps is held nicely in place by my camera case, the other was more exposed and as I didn't want to risk this flap accidentally opening up, I added an extra level of protection by sealing the flap down with some of the heavy duty gaffer tape I had brought with me in order to do any emergency repairs to bags etc. With everything sealed tight what could possibly go wrong?
Entering the water I had a small amount of money tightly sealed in a water proof bag and the reinforced waterproof z2 zipped into my pocket, this I felt was the safer option than leaving said items alone beach side (on display or not) and I was was only planning on having a quick dip after all. After just a few minutes cooling down I was happy enough head back out, doing an almost perfect “out of sea stumble” as my legs made the uncomfortable transition from water to sand, continuing uneasily back up to my beachside table where, now nice and cool again, I ordered myself a nice strong balinese coffee, complete with all the bits.
You see, the nice thing about paper money is that it doesn't take long to dry back out in the hot climate. The girl on the table next to me looked on inquisitively as first emptied the water from my waterproof bag before I laid each note onto my hand towel and patted it dry, as gently as it was my own new born child. I did think about making a quip about money laundering at this point, but most the other tourists I have encountered so far haven't been fluent enough in English to get the reference, you know, Germans, Americans, Australians, people from Birmingham etc, so I decided to save my breath and concentrate on just getting some money into a dry enough state to at least pay off my tab without feeling like an idiot.
Pressing the button to wake my phone back up caused the familiar vibration to occur of the phone switching on, immediately concerning as I hadn't switched it off. Then the familiar Sony logo came into view before graphically glitching out and going black again and I tried in vain repeatedly to wake it back up. It was now that the phone decided to get hot and with no way to shut it off thanks to its faux waterproof design and sealed in battery, it just got hotter and hotter and hotter. I ripped off the tape to get access to the sealed flap to see if there was any sign of water, and although nothing was immediately apparent the sim card when I removed it did have a cold / damp feel which indicated to me that water had somehow got in. When I got back to my apartment I laid it down on the floor, as far away from anything flammable as I could, fearing the thing was about to combust through an internal thermonuclear malfunction. After 2 technical failings in one afternoon, I'm left pondering as to whether I have misunderstood the term “Waterproof” for the last 40 years, or whether over that same period of time the term itself has come to mean something different?
The problem I have now is that if I try to return it under warranty (a difficulty in itself being I'm thousands of miles away from where I brought it and it's receipt, and I'm in a county with no Sony Centre that I am aware of) then they will obviously say that the flaps were open, and therefore not covered for the fault under those circumstances and no doubt show me proof of water damage inside the unit. However I would argue that I have no doubt at all that it has suffered from water damage, I would just question as to how water managed to get into that waterproof unit, when the moveable flaps in question were definitely shut tight. So whats the point. Anyway you look at it I'm now a helpful device down and a couple of hundred quid out of pocket, with that unit lasting me just over a month of a lifespan i expected to be much longer. It serves me right again for buying into a sellers claims. Side street market or big multinational corporations are interested in your money after all, fabrication of the devices capability just goes to sell more in the long run.
Luckily I have a back up phone with me, It's not water proof and has never claimed to be and the GPS is often inaccurate showing me as being several streets away from where I actually am. Not a the best then for finding a location in a hurry or in dimly lit streets where signs often don't even exist, but it is better than nothing at the moment and at least puts me in a very rough area, but hopefully not in a very rough area. I can see that its only a matter of time before I need to seek out another replacement though. this time I may be seeking proof of any claims before i walk away with anything.
The last couple of days on the island I completed a full lap around its shore, taking just over 2 hours to complete including a couple of drink stops on the way, much perspiration and giving me little bit of sunburn on my underexposed shoulder which in turn led to me snorkeling the next day with a t-shirt on to keep said shoulder covered. For one and a half hours I snorkeled up and down just off the North West tip of the island hunting for turtles, past schools of tropical fish, too many species to remember but all breathtaking, stopping occasionally where the waters became too deep to see into and my fear of Jaws came back to haunt me. Eventually I started to feel exhausted and queasy which led me head back to land and check my blood sugar levels which had dropped from around 15 before entering the water to a reading of 1.8 (dangerously low), know wonder i felt a bit off. I no longer have (or never did have) the safety net of a waterproof phone to use in the case of an emergency, so It's really a warning for next time that I need to keep my timing in check and not get too carried away enjoying myself. Diabetes is only a step or 2 away from biting you on the arse…...harder than a great white rubber shark ever can.
So I got to see loads of cool tropical fish, but alas I didn't get to spot any turtles. As I sat there sipping on my iced orange juice and chomping on Menthos to recover I reasoned with myself that I had still had a really enjoyable swim and seen an abundance of marine life and coral. It was then that the couple next to me pointed out a large boulder like object slowly moving under the water just a few meters from the shoreline and I quickly grabbed my snorkel again and dove back in for closer look, spending a minute or so just swimming with this creature as it watched me and I watch it back before I finally stood up to let it leave. It decided it would instead just swim around me again, only this time much closer and then tapped me playfully on the back of my left leg with its front right flipper before finally carrying on it's way. "What is it about that bloody left leg?" I thought, "what the bloody hell is it??"
But try as I might I really can't hide my disappointment at not being able to find a turtle to swim with in its natural environment. I guess finding a gigantic marine tortoise with flippers instead of legs is still pretty special though, it's just, you know, not quite the same now is it?
To round it off then, My feelings towards "Gili T" are pretty much as I described earlier, a beautiful island let down by mans ability to mess things up although hopefully not critically. The food isn't as universally good here as some of the other places I have been and the whole thing feels like it's divided into 4 main areas, busy tourist, quiet tourist, abandoned tourist and living quarters surrounded by some breathtaking scenery and unarguably beautiful clear waters.
There is a chance that I could be being little bit harsh on the island though, maybe I just visited it at the wrong time personally as I'm still struggling to get fully into things, let myself go and get really absorbed. A young couple I spoke to who had been travelling for a couple of months around Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia answered “here” with resounding certainty when I asked them where their favourite place that they visited was and to say that the place hasn't got it's charms would also be treating it unjustly. However I just feel that to every positive here, there is also a negative within a clear line of view.
Another way of looking at it is that maybe I just need to worry a little less too and just get in to what I want to do. The last time I travelled I would have made the Money Laundering quip anyway regardless of the chances of it being understood, just because I would have found it funny to do so.
At the moment however I'm still a little bit off of that mark
*"The man with no name" was actually called “Joe” but I guess that was less marketable in america”
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