What a place. Clear waters, beaches, bars, food, time of your life. Here’s our guide to Gili T.
Gili Trawangan or Gili T as it’s more commonly known is the biggest of the three Gili islands and the most developed. The main road at the front of the island where the ferries come in is lined with bars, restaurants and dive shops. This is where you’ll find the majority of the eating options, with only a handful more scattered across the island.
You’ll probably be aware that Gili T doesn’t have normal transport and the two preferred modes of transport are bicycle or horse-drawn carriage. The later comes at a premium, I’m assuming because of the novelty factor, but I daresay, convenient depending on where your accommodation is located. Because ours was only around 500m from the ‘port’ we opted to walk to our accommodation and found it relatively easily.
During our stay we hired bikes from our guesthouse, but there’s a fair amount of bike hire located across the island, so it’s not hard to get your hands on a bike for a day or two. The roads are basically packed dirt and a bit of sand, so give a unique feeling to the islands.
Getting to Gili T
There’s heaps of ferry companies that leave from Bali to take you to the Gilis and unfortunately planes don’t seem to be an option anymore. We opted to go with Scoot Cruise, as they left from Sanur and went via Lembongan, where we stayed for a couple of nights on our way to the Gilis. Check out our post on Lembongan for more detail.
Where to stay
We stayed directly back from the main road a few blocks, well away from the late night party-goers, but close enough to the mosque to be woken up by morning prayers, although not sure if there’s anywhere on the island you won’t hear these. It was instead the noisy neighbours that kept us awake until 3am on the terrace next door. Our accommodation was Ricel Homestay, which we found on booking.com and was more than adequate for our four-night stay, serving breakfast on our terrace each morning.
Gili T has a large range of hostels, homestays and flasher resorts, with many of the finer establishments further round the island away from the party goers, but the party goers, we in fact found to be pretty tame and not nearly as bad as we were expecting. You’ll definitely be able to find a good time on Gili T, or a laid back holiday if that’s what you’re looking for. You also might be offered drugs. Say no to drugs.
www.booking.com/ricel-homestay
Things to do on Gili T
Our favourite things to do on Gili T are varied and probably a little cliché, but that’s ok. You can check these out in more detail here.
- Snorkelling trip
- Hire bikes and ride around the island
- Photo at the swings
- Sunset drinks
- Cooking class
- Le Pirate Beach Club.
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