Gili Meno - "The Honeymooners Island"



Local woman prepares a coconut for my enjoyment

This is when we discover we are loosely following the Banana Pancake Trail. A recent term developed to describe the common trail taken by many backpackers in the last two decades through Southeast Asia. It's funny because we have already hit three of the trail benchmarks in Indo, and plan to visit many more of them. Also, due to the fact that all the free breakfasts we've had along the way have in fact been banana pancakes.

Meno is quiet. A vacation from our holiday, if you will try to understand. Not that I'm asking for sympathy, but backpacking can be trying on the soul. You live out of a bag (which will develop an odor at some point and never recover), travel through shoddy transportation systems often with nothing more than a handwritten ticket, trusting your life to people you hope understand what you need and where you want to go, spend 24/7 with just one person, eat some very weird food you hope will not come back to bite you, and spend many a day wandering the planet with no reservations (because nothing here is online) trying to find a bed for the night. It can be exhausting. Wonderful, but difficult as well. So, we are treating ourselves to two days in paradise.

Paradise is Gili Meno. Not the resort kind that I have experienced before (with room service, jet skis, planned activities and air conditioning), but a real paradise. Here, you live in simple grass bungalows like the locals, and there is literally nothing to occupy your time except sunning yourself on the beach, reading a good book, having a snorkel, and stuffing yourself with deliciously cheap local food. No guilt hanging over your head if all you do is swim. All day. Because there is no shopping, no sights, no town really even. Just a few grass bungalows a restaurant or two, and long stretches of white sandy beach with some fabulous reef right off shore. Bring a snorkel. So this is how we spend two days at the lovely Jepon bungalows. We do go see the turtle sanctuary, where 100 turtles are in giant saltwater baths on the beach, until they reach one year and they are released back into the wild. This greatly increases their chances of survival.


Gili Meno turtle sanctuary

It appears our bungalows are next door to a chicken farm, because at 4:45am they all start crowing. Apparently paradise comes with roosters.