Indonesia - Gili Air to Lombok Airport

First off, thank you to Lisa from chasethehorizon.com for their useful blog on this. This is really an update to their own blog article to reiterate the current way to get from Gili Air (or another one of the Gili islands or Senggigi) to Lombok International Airport. It is easily done in a day, or half a day if you push it. Our flight wasn't until 7pm so we stopped at Senggigi half way.

Our end goal... the airport

Indonesia - The Gili Islands

The Gili Islands are located in the north west of Lombok, just off the coast. To get there you either travel by boat from Bali, or fly into Lombok and travel up overland. We decided to get the boat across from Pagan Bai, to save on time, cost and have a nice boat journey.

The crossing was really nice. The sea was flat calm, the sun was shining and we could sit on the top deck and relax. Soon the three little islands of the Gili's came into view.

The beach on Gili Air

Indonesia - Beautiful Bali

Everyone is aware of the small Indonesian island of Bali, made even more famous by the book, come movie, Eat, Pray, Love. So as we were planning to head north from Australia, we felt we had to add this to our list of destinations. 

Lovely Bali

Indonesian Free VISA - Arriving in Bali and leaving from Lombok

There was much debate and a lot of searching about visas, but we didn't find anything concrete so here is a quick summary for UK citizens.

If you are intending to stay as a tourist only for less than 30 days get the FREE Tourist VISA. You DO NOT need to pay the VOA  (Visa on arrival) fee of $35. However, from what we understand, you can only enter at the following crossings/airports/ports (as taken from UK Indonesian Embassy website).

In the past you had to also leave from one of these airports/ports, but this is NOT the case. We arrived into Bali Ngurah Rai airport and left from Lombok International Airport using the free VISA with no problem at all! We checked this with multiple immigration officials at Bali Ngurah Rai, and all say 'new rules'.

If we come across a full list of these exit points we will update this post, but please feel confident that you can arrive in Bali and leave from Lombok as of January 2015 (but things may change).

This makes things a lot easier if you want to combine Bali and Lombok, as you no longer need to travel back to Bali.

We found the Indonesian Embassy information out of date but here is the link non the less - www.indonesianembassy.org.uk.

Hope you find this useful.

Happy travels...