April 25th Cycling Gili Air

The Mirage is a good bar to watch sunset from

We rented dirt bikes of a dubious quality for $3 a day from Ozzie's shop, which is right next to our hotel, Juliantos . We discovered that one side of the island it is too sandy for riding, so you push your bike, while on the other side and interior of the island the tracks are hard enough to cycle. We went around, stopping for a swim, then a Diet Coke. We talked to one resort (Casa Mio) that our horse carriage driver had said was "too far" to reach, and found that the proprietors did not pay a 10% commission to the carriage drivers, so they did not like to take tourists there, although it was only a five minute ride from the port.  Casa Mio had real sweet water in their pool and bath, but only had large super delux rooms left for the next few days at $95/night, a bit too much for our budget, but this hotel seemed to be a good possibility if their smaller $70 rooms had been available.

We then saw a SCUBA school name Karang Divers, and decided to chat with them about refreshing our (very limited) diving experience. We made an arrangement with the manager, Dante', to come by next morning for a refresher in their pool, then go out by boat for a diver. Dante recommended a place for a hair cut.

Lunch as at Scallywags, excellent meal but service is spotty, but can't complain with the lovely beach chairs and towels that you can use if you pay 100,000 rupiah in food/drinks.  Later in the afternoon we went to Natural Spa for David's hair cut ($4) and to get a one hour Balinese massage ($14 each - pay this price in CM for 2 hours).  Differences between Balinese and Thai massages that we can tell are:  in Balinese you are dressed only in your underwear, massage with oil, the strokes are kneading, skin folding to relax you . Northern Thai massage, which originally came from India, is with clothes on, no oil, and with yoga like positions for stretching and accupressure. The Natural Spa has no air conditioning so we decided we did not need to go for another one.