31 Destinations in Time #5: Gili Trawangan, Lombok, 1994

Photo: Jos Dielis on Flickr

The journey to the Gili Islands begins with a wait of up to several hours in a beach restaurant on the larger island of Lombok. When the boat is full, there is a shout and up to 18 people head for the water’s edge, fighting the waves to climb onto the wood fishing boat with two stabilising wings. Then it is all sparkling seas, flying fish, lurching waves and getting doused in spray for around 40 minutes, before skimming across the dark blue line into a shallow coral-rich fringe of aquamarine.

Gili Trawangan is an island off an island, which has that dropout from a dropout feel, or it did in 1994. Behind the tree-lined beach, the musical talent here is remarkable, the guitar skills honed in the many hours to kill between guest house or restaurant chores, and played by island men with the longest hair you’ll ever see on a man, some with a frangipani flower tucked behind their ear. Cat Stevens, Bob Marley, Eric Clapton – lead guitar, rhythm guitar, pop songs, local songs, mashups, reggae – obviously.

Meanwhile, the catchphrases were all sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, despite it being an island of predominantly Sasak Muslims – ‘No woman no cry, no mushroom no fly’ and ‘Long hair, long life, long dick’. It seemed Trawangan was where Indonesians went to drop out, too.

I went for three days in the summer of 1994 and stayed for five weeks, enamoured of the gentle hippyish and musical lifestyle. It was that kind of place.

There was only enough recorded music on the island for one night’s party, so every night, the same music played, either at Rudy’s or at Paradise. Led Zep, Rolling Stones, Arrested Development, Men At Work, House of Pain, Bob Marley, Ace of Base, Haddaway, Lenny Kravitz – 15 years later I still remember the tracklist because of the sheer repetition of it. The music stopped when the generator went off and then the oil lamps and the guitars would come out. I have never seen the sunrise so often as on that island.

Gili Trawangan was where I picked up the guitar for the first time and the friends I made there inspired me to carry on when I got home. It was thanks to them that I bought my first guitar at the age of 28 and that I ended up doing a pop music degree at the age of 35.

No place before or after on my travels affected me so strongly. I remember one day looking in the tiny, broken bit of rusted mirror in my hut and seeing a different, much happier person looking back. Gili Trawangan actually altered the shape of my face.

First time snorkelling

Yesterday, I kicked off my Top 31 Destinations in Time list with my 1994 solo trip to Bali. Which got me digging in the diaries. So expect a new category and a few Dear Diary moments over the next little while, in fulfilment of New Year Travel Resolution #5. It’s the first time they’ve seen the light of day in 16 years and I’m a bit of a travel ingenue in them, as shown by my first ever snorkel…

5th June 1994, Lombok, Indonesia:

Did the most AMAZING thing today – snorkelling. Heidi, A German guest [at Pondok Santai, near Senggigi in Lombok], wanted to offload some stuff so she gave me an excellent snorkel mask. I borrowed the tube bit from Pearl and started paddling out – after spitting in my mask and rubbing saliva into the visor, of course.

With the snorkel on, the view above water, was hazy but as soon as I put my head down, it was incredible. The sharpness and clarity of life below the waves. I followed Doug and Julie out over the reef, about 75m from shore, and suddenly it was like swimming in a vast fish tank.

There were hundreds of fish – none of which I could name – fluorescent blue, flurorescent green, bright yellow, black stripes, black spots, fat fish, thin fish, small medium and very occasionally arm’s length-sized fish. There were puffer fish, angel fish the size of your hand, trigger fish, fish with long pointed noses. No sea snakes or tiger sharks today though, but there were regular stingers – tiny little painful stings, that Doug later told me were sea mites, or bits of broken-off jellyfish, who knows.

The coral, though mostly reddy-brown, threw up the occasional bright green clump or a vivid blue-edged one, or soft wavy coral blowing in the water currents. It’s really hard to describe things with no names!

After an hour, we were nearly past the headland so we started to head back in – which was a hell of a lot more difficult than the float out there. Suddenly all the front crawl in the world was ineffective. I was going nowhere.

Only the occasional incoming waves helped shunt me on my way. I was breathing heavily through the snorkel and trying not to panic. The tide was going out and with the water levels very low, the reef was a lot closer to the surface. I didn’t dare swim a stroke for fear of scraping across the poisonous coral and cutting myself.

I tried to look for depressions to swim over, but in between waves, the water sunk to inches above the reef.

It was a huge relief to find the deep, wide boat channel – a clear underwater road back in to shore. I was disoriented and dizzy with the exertion and over-breathing. But also completely exhilarated. I can’t wait to go out again and watch fish television.