I got to Nusa Lembongan on Thursday afternoon, and it’s really quite different from Nusa Penida even though it’s only 15 minutes away by boat. One of the most obvious differences is it’s quite a bit flatter, and there is a lot of seaweed farming which the island is known for.
The hostel I was staying at was nice but definitely different. It’s a much older demographic and kind of antisocial to be honest which surprised me. When I arrived, I booked a snorkelling tour for the next morning and made friends with some people who I went to watch the sunset and get dinner with.
Snorkelling
I did a classic 3 hour snorkelling tour of Manta Bay, Crystal Bay and Mangrove Point. It was a super hectic tour with massive swell of 1.8m which was really rough. There were some Manta rays in the water, but they really don’t like people so whenever you jumped in the water near them they would swim away. I actually felt quite bad for them as there were lots of people in the water chasing them, and it felt cruel. We saw a few turtles though! On my dive I met a girl from Luxembourg called Noa, and spent the rest of my time in Nusa Lembongan with her.
Nusa Lembongan and Cenegan Island day tour
The next day Noa and I decided to hire a bike for the day to tour the island and see some different places that were further away from the main touristy bits. Here’s a bunch of photos that I took.
Cooking class
On Sunday morning I decided to take a little cooking class at a local warung where I had been eating a lot. The owners were two sisters who worked together with their brother in law to run the place - they were so sweet. I learnt how to make a tofu tempeh dish with sweet soy sauce, and tofu balls.
Gili Trawangan
I left for Gili Trawangan on Monday morning for two nights, with the ferry ride being over 3 hours. When I arrived there, I don’t think I was really ready for the culture of the island.
To summarise my experience on Gili T: incredibly dodgy and the locals were constantly trying to rip you off. Lots of drugs, and I felt unsafe a lot of the time, especially at my hostel and left the island after one night. Part of my mistake was that I stayed at a party hostel that really enforced binge drinking, which can be very risky when you’re staying in a large, mixed gender compound where no one knows each other.
I actually had an experience on the one night that I stayed there where a drunk man entered our dorm at 4am and stood over me in bed with a flashlight, staring at me. He had entered what he thought was his room, and thought that I was in his bed but I had to gently guide him out. That freaked me out enough to never come back. The snorkelling was nice though!
Noa was at Gili Air during this time and also really disliked it, so we decided to go to Tetebatu in Lombok. I took the local boat over which was really fun, and will write about Lombok in my next post!
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