Gili Air- fantastic tropical island, just be careful with the mushrooms

We are not the most enthusiastic beach bums on the planet but after a few months on the road it was time to kick back and stare blankly at sand and sea. We stocked up on good reads in Ubud- Laura picked up a couple of mystery novels and I dug out a couple of light reads Andrew Marr’s ‘History of the World’ and Daniel Kahnemann’s ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’. I am looking forward to exchanging these two fine books for some equally cerebral tomes at an island hostel. ‘Oh, wait…what are these ‘Shades of Grey’ books I am seeing everywhere.’ Damn…you get a different class of traveler around the world these days. When I first traveled, it was all Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Neruda, and Borges. Now, it is all lame soft porn…no wonder, everyone is practically naked in Indonesia!

Getting to Gili Air was extremely easy. We booked a fast boat online and the company (Blue Express) picked us up in a shuttle and took us to the port of Padang Bai, about an hour from Ubud. The sea voyage took about 90 minutes. All very painless, ruthlessly … Read more