Gili Trawagan :: Indonesia
Staying at the pub makes your liver hurt.
Places: Senggigi & Gili Trawagan..
Coolest thing I did: Saw a blokes fighting with sticks and shields in the street, and they were just members of the audience.
Coolest thing I didn´t know: Komodo dragons can apparently kill you.
I'm assuming at some time in the not too distant past the town of Senggigi on the island of Lombok was a tourist hotspot, once the preserve of backpackers and other such lower forms of tourist life (yes, I include myself) but now with nice looking resorts sitting all along the beach. It has a beautiful collection of bays to walk along and you can snorkel right off the beach. There's a picturesque little temple overlooking the whole scene from the point and the sun sets right over the water. What Senggigi doesn't have is any tourists. It's deader than dead, and a little bit dull. Why the empty night club over the road chose to play music until 3am every night is beyond me, but I do like their optimism.
The staff in the shops and the touts and hustlers walking the beach seem just as confused as everyone else as to why it's so dead, making me think it's a recent phenomenon. There are load of half built shopping centres and bars that are boarded up so I'm assuming that is may have tried to expand upmarket too quickly and are paying the result from having neither backpackers or luxury tourists. I had lots of time to chat to the hustlers because they had nothing else to do and I was obviously not going to buy necklaces or fake pearls or pirate DVDs. As an aside one bloke did seem a little concerned when I told him you can download music and movies off the internet for free. Seeing as he has no real moral recourse due to the face that he's also pirating his material to sell I'd say he's looking for a new line of work.
There seems to be a constant contest between individual Indos in the place, everyone can organise any tour, transfer or activity you want, usually because they get a taste of the action if they bring in new customers. I spent a fair bit of time sitting around drinking the super thick gritty Indo coffee with a local bloke who is the caretaker of a villa owned by a real estate developer from Perth who only goes out there once or twice a year, hence this Indo bloke having loads of free time to try and organise tickets for people on the side. There were quite a few older Aussies who have bought up places near the beach there and are in semi-retirement. I ended up having beer with a boat builder my Dad's age (from Perth also) who makes his money selling catamarans all through the archipelago. When I asked him if he was worried about it being quiet he said he was delighted.
In stark contrast the Gili Islands are under-going transition from backpacker dives to upmarket designer hotels and bungalows for Europeans without too much tension, even if the prices are starting to bite a bit deep for the true shoestringers. The diving is a fixed price by agreement on the island and it's about double what I was paying in Belize in April. There are still a slew of grungy bars and beach front restaurants (including the pub located directly in front of my room, I just pay the guy every morning at the bar) but they're starting to look a bit lonely and there's a whole lot more being built all the time.
One day in the water will show you why. In one dive I saw two (!) sharks, half a dozen turtles, octopus, cuttlefish that change colour, all sorts of stuff. It all seems well run, even if I did manage to pick the dive school that cater mostly to French people (though I did learn today that digital camera in French is camera numeric). For the those who absolutely must surf there is a right hander breaking over hard coral but I'd say once the backpackers are driven out for good it won't really get ridden again.
For this whole slew of gentrification I lay the blame squarely at Oprah Winfrey's door. She hyped up a book a couple of years back called Eat, Love, Pray; which I admit I did read passages of and had to stop due to not being able to stomach the big heaping mound of pseudo-spiritual crap it was dishing up. You are now seeing a whole load of Americans reading their emails on their Macs by the beach with that book prominently placed in front of them. There are cafes with the word "organic" in their name and yoga classes on the beach. I imagine pretty soon the guys selling weed and mushrooms (who seem to congregate outside my pub) won't have any backpackers to sell too. I've been amazed that there's even a kickback system for drug dealers. If the guys behind the bar bring in customers they get a cut of the price. It also seems you can haggle over drugs too. Nothing in this country has a fixed price. However, price fixing seems to be on the rise. Getting off the ferry from Bali to Lombok was my first encounter with a taxi mafia in this country and they're fearsome. There was only me and a Dutch couple who had not arranged any onward transport from the ferry "port" in Lombok and after the first guy spoke to us no-one would speak to us or haggle for a price. We walked into the town and were about to get a guy to drive us in his car for half price when the taxi driver came over and threatened the bloke so he refused to take us. He also threatened me, saying he'd find out where I was staying. Nice start. Wonder why you don't have any tourists? We ended up having to pay the full price and he had the cheek to be offended when we didn't tip him on arrival to Senggigi.
I'm about to spend three days on my way out to the Komodo Islands to see the dragons and will base myself on the island of Flores where the diving is supposed to be even better than here. If that's the case then it'll be well worth the trip.