recently....

christmas came and went, and the strange-o concept i have of "feels like christmas"  was absent this year, but this might be due to the fact that I was drunk on a plane and then on a tropical island.  and this is totally ok with me this  year, to not have that ever so christmassy christmas feeling.  but just this once ok (I'm totally a sucker for christmas)

So heavenly paradise called Gili Trawangan is where I spent a week, lying in a hammock, eating delicious foods, jumping out of the way of horses and bicycles (no cars or autobikes on the island) getting drunk with amazing friends and having basically the time of my life. We flew out of seoul on xmas day, had a little Christmas dinner courtesy of garuda air. Land in Bali and head to tourist hell for one night, but our hotel was amazing and the taxi driver took us on this great back road adventure to our hotel. Bali is beautiful, clean, green, friendly and Hindu! i felt like i had arrived in a clean india without the traffic and child peddlers knocking at your window

After our adventures at the hotel - with a swim up bar by the way - we went on the fast boat (aka evil boat from hell that made my hands hurt from gripping so hard and my jaw hurt from all the clenching my face was undergoing) to Gili T. I really had no idea what to expect, I'd seen T's and J's pics and heard SO much about the island but everyone has a different experience of travel. i couldn't have wished for more, the clear blue water the coral reef. I became slightly addicted to snorkeling every morning - my back became slightly sun burnt - and seeing giant sea turtles and schools of fish and all the other amazing things that i had no idea where right below my knees when i went swimming. and i totally had winter dry skin hands on the first few days so a lot of little fishes decided to bite my fingers and try to eat my dead skin

Gili T is tiny, and only 300 people live there. And boy do these guys have a brotherhood. they kick people off the island if they cause problems or too much shit (drugs). We actually just hung out with the locals and met only a hand full of foreigners, maybe due to the fact that j already had made a lot of friends on the island or because we never made it past one bar sama sama where after that begins the road to the touristy - resort area. Val and I finally biked around the island on day 5 . so lazy andrea on vacation.

We stayed on Gili for a week (i think, time and dates was just not somethings to even consider) and then headed over to the larger island of Lombok where we rented a private car and driver for the day to take us around the island and then off to the airport to fly back to Bali where we had 2 days and then home to korea. Sounds easy enough right? well no car or diver ever showed up on lombok so we piled into some shanty little bus that took us straight to the airport where low and behold we had no airline tickets. FUCK FUCK FUCK.. you should have seen me panic at the airport where a. the ticket thing just wasn't going our way b. my korean bank card wouldn't work and i was officially out of money c. i hadn't pooped in nearly 3 days and d. i was starving. right

but lion air somehow had 4 tickets on their flight for the next morning so we went to the little resort area of Senggigi for a good nights rest (after some beach and then bar and pool action of course). Lombok is also fantastially beautiful, a palm tree, rice field coloured dream. Off to Bali the next day where we rented a driver and car that SHOWED up - wow how convenient - and spent the day seeing a few major tourist attractions on the island. Lunch at the volcano and dinner on the beach after the scared monkey forest and the fire dance at Uluwatu. The people of Bali are beautiful. Seriously beautiful, friendly, warm and funny. So many people we met, especially those on the island had such a sense of humour. We drove around and walked by people wearing their traditional clothing and sarongs. You would be hard pressed to go there and miss seeing a million temples, people giving offerings or their puja on the ground outside of temples, on their front doors.

Coming back to korea, of course, was hard. It's freezing here and it's back to work, but apart from the loneliness i felt after spending an intensive amazing period with really close friends it wasn't so bad. I did miss Samsam a lot. it makes me want to travel more and more and more and more. which of course will happen. currently feeling warm and happy due to my duty free bottle of baileys and thinking of just last week.

xo