The ship’s excursion brochure to Gilli Trawangan an island north of the island of Lombok promised a nice walk around the island, time for snorkelling or a donkey taxi ride with a lunch later and some stopovers for tea and cakes and a visit to a pottery making place. However, it fell far short of our expectations as you’ll read further below.

Lombok is an island east of Bali that is less spoiled and beginning to be more and more a tourist destination. It has a looming volcano called Mount Rinjani and is mainly agricultural in nature. Rice fields, corn, tomatoes and even grapes are grown alongside the road.

We left the ship at 8 am to catch the 20 minute tender to shore and then boarded a large bus to take us to the island. Lombok traffic is not as busy as it was in Bali but there are still many motorbikes and donkey led carriages. 

Predominantly Muslim, we saw many mosques with towering minarets. They say that Lombok has as many mosques as Bali has temples. 

Children dressed in school uniforms jumped with glee and grins as we waved to them passing by.

An obligatory stop to sample Indonesian coffee, tea and cakes was set up by the sea. Inside the restaurant, you could sit right by the sea and look out at a beautiful beach. 

But dare to set foot a meter or two outside and you were assailed with vendors trying to hack there wares such as necklaces, clothes etc…

Already past 10:30 we set out again on the bus to the top of the island to catch out boat ride. We arrived an hour later to a beach where we caught a 20 minute boat ride to Gilli Trawangan island.

We arrived at 11:50 where our guide then explained that lunch would be served at noon and that we need to get back on the boat at 1:15 pm to catch our boat back. What?!! Wait a minute. What???

It took us almost 4 hours to get here and we only have 1:15 minutes including lunch to snorkel, swim and view the island. The natives on the MS Paul Gauguin were NOT happy. When confronted with anger, Indonesian people will tend to laugh or giggle which didn’t please one of our fellow traveller who confronted our poor guide Nasrun who really wasn’t at fault. That belonged to the cruise line.

We gobbled our lunch buffet which was very nice at the Villa Ombak and after listening to our fellow travellers’ disappointment in the snorkelling in front, we opted to walk along the road a bit for a better spot but everywhere was crowded with boats and broken white coral mixed with cloudy sand making for very bad visibility.

A swim and a beer at the Villa and then we were off back to the ship. On the way we could see many beautiful beaches.

We next had another obligatory stop at a ceramic place. It was interesting to see how they use egg shells to paste on the ceramic vases to make intricate patterns.

Upon our return to the ship, many made a beeline for the ship’s travel concierge desk to complain and get back compensation. We were offered back a measly 25%. A fellow traveller refused to accept it and sent an email to the President of the cruise line. Stay tuned on the response!