Tulamben is a pretty non-existent village. The US Liberty shipwreck is essentially the only reason a couple of resorts have popped up here. The US Liberty is an easy dive ranging from 10-30 meters depth with lots to see. Excellent introduction for Court's first ever discovery dive :)
During the past 2 months I've heard great things about the Gilis so we decided to go check them out. We opted for the slow/cheap ferry to get over to Lombok ($15 instead of $70) and MAN IS IT SLOW! After 5 hours on the boat (4 of which I was blissfully asleep) Court picks up the Lonely Planet and reveals that Lombok is in fact only 25km away from Bali. Let's do the math on that one: 5 hours, 25 km means we are only going 5 km/hr! No wonder it's cheaper.
Gili is a set of three islands. We decided on Gili Trawagan because gili Air is suppose to be family friendly and gili Meno apparently has severe electricity issues and no internet, which really isn't job application or blog friendly. Trawagan, according to the Lonley Planet, is suppose to be a nice party place with good diving. I must admit I was very disappointed with Gili. It did have some really nice diving (Court got to see a shark which she was esctatic about), but other than that the beach near the hotels is crowded, the turtle sanctuary is a sad sad sight with a couple of turtles floating around in a glass enclosure, the hotels are either expensive or disgusting, the food and drinks are overpriced and the average tourist is either 18 or acts like an 18 yr old (thrilled to be away from Mom's supervision). It is a nice place to hang out for a couple of days, but is definately no better or cheaper than Kuta beach Bali. Another not so charming quality about Gili Trawagan is the surplus of Magic Mushrooms. They are in shakes, on pizza, in the bars, on the streets, etc. etc. One night Court and I were sitting ina quaint little hut with an awesome view of the water when the waiter came over to ask us if we wanted magic mushroom shakes. When we said no thanks he replied 'it's fine, everyone else is doing them. No problem!' Thanks, but no thanks buddy. I'm not going to be peer pressured into taking drugs on some island, hours from any kind of medical help, days from my country just because a bunch of other people think it's a good idea. We had to laugh at his attempt. Overall I'm glad I went to check it out, but would definitely pass on going there again. Happy to be back in Bali and moving on to Phuket, Thailand for some great diving.
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