CAIT AROUND THE WORLD

May 7, 2023 — The morning that I headed out to Nusa Lembongan, I woke up for real shortly after 8:00am. (I say “for real” because I was woken up at 5:00am when prayers started — there is a large Muslim population in Indonesia and temples on Gili T, Gili Meno, and Gili Air. Gili Meno and Gili Air are both so small that it’s easy to hear prayer songs from the temples. The music is amplified and even though I’m a pretty deep sleeper, it usually woke me up pretty early.)

I went down to breakfast that morning and enjoyed some apple cinnamon oats for breakfast with an iced latte. I’ve been enjoying coffee while in Indonesia, although sugar and other syrups like vanilla and caramel are hit-and-miss, so I’d almost gotten used to lattes without sugar!

I checked out after breakfast and after packing my bags up, then walked down to the Gili Air pier to get transport to Nusa Lembongan. Let me explain how I understood this was going to work:

• I booked my transportation through my hostel in Nusa Lembongan. It was 350,000IDR (or about $35CAD) to transfer from Gili Air to the hostel in Nusa Lembongan. That price covered the boat and the shuttle from the dock in Nusa Lembongan to the hostel.
• All I had to do that morning was go to the ticket office at 11:30am to get my ticket.
• Then, I assumed that I would be on the boat to Nusa Lembongan at 12:30pm (since I figured that I was just showing up an hour ahead) and would arrive a few hours after that. Looking at Google Maps and the ferry routes, I thought that it was a direct route to Nusa Lembongan from Gili Air.

Boy, was I wrong. But allow me to preface by saying that it was absolutely an adventure and I actually really enjoyed this kind of crazy travel day! I’d been told by a dorm mate in Cairns, the night before I left, that it takes longer to get anywhere in Indonesia than you think it will take. That’s so correct and this travel day proves it. Another thing it taught me is that you really just have to go with the flow and trust that the people around you are going to get you where you need to go. And have fun!

Back to the beginning of the story, though —

I arrived at the ticket office at 11:00am — a bit early, but I figured showing up early never hurt anyone. I had a picture of the ticket office from my hostel on Nusa Lembongan that I was supposed to be looking for and when I found it, I headed up to the counter, he asked if I had a ticket, and I showed him my WhatsApp chat with my hostel in Nusa Lembongan, saying that’s all I had. After a few minutes, he sorted things out with the proprietor of the hostel via phone (or at least I assume that’s who he was talking to) and I got my ticket, my boarding pass, and sat down on the pier to wait for the boat.

It was just after 11:00am when we figured everything out, so I knew I had a couple hours to wait. I called home and talked to Mom and to my little brother while I did, and then finally — finally! — I saw the boat that I was looking for based off the picture on my boarding pass. (Side note: Even if I hadn’t been paying attention, the guy I bought the ticket from was up and telling the people who had bought tickets for that boat that it had arrived and to queue for boarding, which makes it that much easier to make sure that you get on the boat you need to be on. Trust. They’ll get you there.)

When I did finally get on the boat — after 1:00pm — it was absolutely packed. It was taking people to a few different spots — the first port was Bangsal, which is on the island of Lombok, just about fifteen minutes east of Gili Air by boat. It was standing room only for several people, myself included, until we made the stop at Bangsal. After everyone bound for Lombok disembarked, though, I got to take a seat for the remaining two hours in the journey as we sailed from Lombok to Nusa Penida.

Nusa Penida, Nusa Lembongan, and Nusa Ceningan make up the Nusa Islands just off the coast of the island of Bali in Indonesia. Nusa Penida is the larger of the three islands and is the more popular destination for most people. I had also heard that it was pretty hard to get around and that Nusa Lembongan might be a better choice to stay on, so I decided to spend a few days on Nusa Lembongan and planned to do a day trip to Nusa Penida (that didn’t happen, but that’s a story for another day). Now, even though I wasn’t staying on Nusa Penida, that was still the next stop for the boat, and, as it turned out, the last stop for this particular boat. But it was not the end of our journey.

Anyone moving onward to Nusa Lembongan was instructed to gather and sit in the lower seating area for further instructions. The boat we were currently on was not going to Nusa Lembongan and we were going to be handed new boarding passes, follow representatives of the fast boat company we were travelling with, and transfer to a different harbour on the island of Nusa Penida before getting onto another boat for the last leg of the journey to Nusa Lembongan.

Boarding pass in hand and luggage gathered (on the fast boats they strap the large luggage to the top of the deck under tarps to protect it in case it rains), I followed one of the ladies to two trucks they had waiting for us. One was for the luggage and we handed our things off to the driver so that he could stow them appropriately. Then we got into the back of another truck, this one with a roof, and benches lining either side. We packed in, sat, and watched as the rest of the people bound for Nusa Lembongan piled into a couple of vans. There were a couple stragglers who had to bed down with the luggage.

Then we started the drive to the other port. I’ll tell you, there’s nothing quite like sitting in the back of an open truck bed as the driver accelerates and decelerates at will, dodging other drivers and having scooters and motorcycles overtake you on either side, and occasionally pulling off to the side of a barely-there road, having a pothole nearly bump you out of your seat, before finally arriving, with shaking knees, at a new port nearly a half hour later. That said, I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. I’d seen videos and pictures of people riding in just these kinds of trucks all over Southeast Asia on Instagram and it was my avowed hope that I would experience one for myself. I did!

And so, we finally arrived at the other port. This one was smaller than the main port in Nusa Penida and there were no large boats, only two small ones that awaited us. They tucked the luggage into the bow of one of the boats and told us that to sort twenty people into one boat and another twenty into the other. I sat near the bow of the first boat and we disembarked for the ride to Nusa Lembongan.

It became clear pretty quickly why we couldn’t take the fast boat to Nusa Lembongan. For one thing, we weren’t headed to the side of the island that I thought we’d take the boat to. We were headed, instead, to the side that joins with Nusa Ceningan instead of open water. That side is separated from Nusa Ceningan by a fairly wide, but extremely shallow channel of water. There are numerous seaweed farms on either side of the channel, which means that the water was only about waist deep, if not shallower. We slowed to a crawl through that channel, the men manning the tillers navigating carefully so as not to run aground.

When we finally reached land, there wasn’t actually a dock at all. They simply beached the boats as close to the shore as they could manage, then waded through the shallows, carrying the bags to shore, while all of us passengers disembarked carefully, one by one, to greet drivers and taxis or to arrange other transportation to their hostels and hotels and other final destinations. For my part, I met the woman who was there to pick me up. When I was in Gili Air that morning, they’d taken my picture so that the person taking me to the hostel knew who to look for, and it was also to my advantage because, when she showed me my picture, I knew I wasn’t getting picked up by a completely random stranger! (Win-win!)

By this time, the sun was starting to set. I’d left Gili Air just after 1:00pm that afternoon and finally arrived at the hostel at 5:30pm that evening. Over four hours of travel, and that’s not even counting the time I spent waiting at the dock. Factor that in, and it was a six-hour travel day. But it was certainly an interesting one!

I got into my room at the hostel and curled up on my bed for a few minutes to detox a bit and wind down. Then, though, I couldn’t ignore my stomach’s insistent growling any longer and got up to get dinner. Thankfully, there was a little spot not even ten minutes from my hostel and I walked there, had a lovely dinner, tried Indonesian beer — Bintang — for the first time, and then headed back to the hostel after paying.

Back at the hostel, I showered. And up until now I’d had no wildlife issues while in Indonesia, despite having a couple of places with open-air construction. But here, I had to deal with what I’m telling myself was a caterpillar. I’m pretty sure it was a centipede. But I’m telling myself it was a caterpillar. I was very proud of myself, actually. I didn’t scream, I didn’t freak out, I just calmly turned the shower tap back on and flushed the freaky little dude down the drain.

Then, I finally crawled into bed for the long haul and called home. I waxed rhapsodic about the mattress because these were the comfiest I’d ever had in a hostel — they were actually Hotel Diamond mattresses, which I found out when I lifted the fitted sheet and saw the label emblazoned with those words. I video chatted with home so I even gave them a little room tour. After we said goodnight, I brushed my teeth.

While I was looking in the mirror, being careful to use only bottled water because the water out of the tap is not usable in Indonesia, the thought came into my mind that I’m really excited for what is coming up in my life. I was looking forward to it all (and honestly, I still am): the rest of Indonesia, seeing Singapore, heading to Greece, finally seeing my family in Ireland…all of it. The last few weeks, the last few months, have held some tough times, but I was thinking about how I’d really started bouncing back and the excitement for everything to come welled right up inside me.

And so, I headed to bed, looking forward to everything still to come.

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