Pommie Travels

Getting to the Gili Islands

To get to the Gili Islands you must take a boat from the fishing village of Padangbai on the East Coast of Bali, but it can seem like a bit of a mission.

The most advertised way of getting to the Gilis is on the fast boat which goes directly from Padangbai and this includes a free pick-up bus from any hotel or accommodation in Kuta. However, if you’re on a tight budget this can be costly, as it costs around 600,000 Rupiah each way, so a return ticket is about $120 USD. Looking for a cheaper alternative, I researched methods of getting there on the internet but found the information to be ambiguous and vague.

The only other alternative seemed to be taking the local ferry to Lombok which is a considerably longer journey. The ferry goes every hour from Padangbai harbour but takes over four hours to get there. It costs around 15,000 Rupiah per  person which is a lot cheaper at around $1.5 USD and a motorbike costs 36,000 Rupiah. However when you get to Lombok you have to take a 2 hour journey from Lembar harbour to Bangsal on the north of the island, from where you take a wooden boat over to Gili Trewangan, Gili Air or Gili Meno.

Our original plan was to do this and take our bike on the public ferry, drive to Bangsal and then take the boat over, but we figured it would all be rather exhausting. We have a rental car so we drove to Padangbai and stayed overnight and the following day we were trying to decide what to do when we were approached by a Balinese man who offered us a ticket with Haman Tours. Our ticket was 250,000 Rupiah one way, or $25 USD and included a fast ferry to Lombok, a shuttle bus to Bangsal Harbour and then a boat from there to Gili Trewangan. The Suranadi Express fast ferry to Lombok takes around an hour and half which is much quicker than the local ferry and departs at 10.30am. It actually took a rediculously long time to get there because the fast ferry was late by an hour or so, and then when we got to Bangsal we had to wait another hour or so before the boat took us over to Trewangan, but it took the stress out of the trip. We had heard that it is more expensive on the return journey, but when we arrived on Lombok we booked an open ticket back to Bali for the same price. In total our trip cost 500,000 each and it was much quicker on the way back with no delays.

If you want to cut costs I would recommend this option and it’s definitely a scenic trip.