Honeymoon Part 4 - Final Instalment! Relaxing on Gili Meno

After our ordeal up Mount Rinjani some serious R&R was in order. Luckily we'd anticipated this, so we'd booked six days of doing nothing at all on the tiny island of Gili Meno. It's the smallest of the three Gili Islands and, like the others, there are no roads or cars. Gili Meno is often billed as a 'honeymoon island' and when we arrived we could see why.


Like Gili Trewangan there's no jetty, but when we waded off the boat we could tell that Meno was going to be much quieter and more relaxing than Gili T. There were only a handful of people on the beach and a few more dotted around a couple of little restaurants. Apart from that, there wasn't much going on - and it was bliss!

For the first four nights we were staying at 'Shack 58 & 59' (well, we were in 59 and someone else was in 58!). This is the #1 ranked accommodation on the island on TripAdvisor; usually you can take those rankings with a pinch of salt, but not here. Every inch of this place helped to earn the fantastic reputation it has, and judging by the guest book there are numerous visitors who return each and every year.

The main cottage itself was beautiful and quite set back from the little path it was on, making it very quiet and peaceful.

Each day we'd walk approximately 3 minutes to the beach...

...and we'd be greeted by this quaint little beachfront shack that was ours to hang out in all day long!

Our breakfast was served here; each morning we'd sit at the little table and chairs and gaze out at the water whilst enjoying delicious banana pancakes or spicy scrambled eggs.

There's not much to report from this part of our holiday, as we mainly swam, read, ate and slept! I had a regular spot on the sand (Dan preferred to lie and read in the shade of the beach shack!) and at the most I think I saw about 10 other people on the entire beach. I read three books in six days and got a pretty good tan, if I do say so myself! Dan also did a bit of snorkelling and he said it was brilliant as the water is so clear.

The only other thing that we really did on Gili Meno was visit some restaurants. There aren't actually many 'restaurants' there - in Indonesia they're called a Warung, which just means it's a bit more of a casual affair. Sure, the service is slow (everyone operates on island time), but the food is good, the setting is beautiful and when you've got a cold beer in your hand and you're watching the sunset it's difficult to get too worked up about anything.

Sadly we were only able to stay at the Shack for four days, as someone else was booked in to arrive (even though we'd booked four months in advance!). It didn't matter though as we moved about 3 minutes up the road to Ana's bungalows, where there are just four sweet little bamboo huts. Granted they weren't quite up to the Shack standards, but they were perfectly lovely and the Warung there serves up a good breakfast with another amazing beach front vista. 

The only slight hiccup during this stay was the fact that I picked up a virus somewhere, so I was a bit poorly for one of our days (Dan then caught the bug off me and was a little unwell when we first got back to Malaysia). But I think we did quite well to spend three weeks in Indonesia and only get one round of upset stomachs! 

After our six days on heavenly Gili Meno we had to get the boat to Bali to fly back to Singapore. The crossing was slightly more tolerable on the way back than it was on the way there but I still hated every second of it. Even Dan complained about it, so that's saying something! I had read on the internet that, because the boats can sometimes get cancelled due to high waves, it's not a good idea to book your flight out of Bali on the same day that you're leaving the Gili islands. Therefore we'd booked our last night (in quite a tacky hotel) in Kuta beach which is on the mainland and only about ten minutes from Denpasar airport. 

Kuta and the surrounding areas of southern Bali (Legian, Seminayak) are extremely popular with tourists; the majority are Aussies but there are a good number of Brits and other Europeans around too. Unfortunately I think this has had a pretty negative impact on the area and it feels about as Balinese as Perth. Although there is a nice beach, it's crowded with sunbeds and when you walk around it feels like you could be in any popular beach destination in the world. The streets are lined with shops selling cheap tat and it's overrun with 'western' eateries. I can understand why the area is like this - restaurant and shop owners are just responding to the demands of visitors, and the economy in Bali must be hugely dependent on tourism, but I can't help feel that Kuta is an example of tourism gone wrong. It's the Benidorm of Bali and I can't say I've got much desire to go back. We did get one last nice picture on the beach though :-)

Overall we had a fantastic time on our second honeymoon (how spoiled, I know!). I would love to return to Ubud and Gili Meno and I'd like to explore the beaches of Lombok in future. I can't say I've got any desire to climb Mount Rinjani again! But now it was time to fly back to Singapore to begin our Malaysian adventures...