It’s a great ferry ride over and we are staying at the north western tip at a hotel called The Pink Coco.
Hotels on Gili are more expensive than Bali – mostly because they can charge more (captured audience) and they have to transport all the goods to the island.
I like the Pink Coco. It is pretty laid back, set out like a hotel but only 2 stories high, and lots of privacy from your deck.
We don’t spend a lot of time in our room anyway, Gili is an island for exploring and having little adventures.
The breakfasts are good – choice of local fare, great juices (try the dragon fruit juice) and they will top up your room with water when you request it.
The only caution about this hotel is the chlorine in the long pool. It turned my hair green. Well blue-green as my friends reassured me!
For a bit of fun I thought I would try the cooking school on Gili Trawangan at Sweet and Spicy.
As I said it was a bit of fun.
You get to cook five dishes but eat six.
Sweet and spicy cooking class
It was good for me being a nutritionist seeing how food has been bastardised to suit the Western Palate. Loads of MSG (salt) and loads of other things that just are not healthy but it was fun and for two girls in the group it looked like their first cooking experience. Including stirring something in a pot!
Green sticky rice balls – the green dye was banana flavoured!
We made some green sugar balls in sticky rice…. I think they call this food but I could debate that.
We also made gado gado (frozen vegetables with a chilli peanut sauce).
My favorites were definitely the chicken Lai (recipe from a Lombok village) and the steamed fish.
For all the herbs we used it lacked the same dynamic taste sensations that other countries have in their foods – that or the herbs were old and had lost their kick.
Flaming HOT!
The most fun by far was flaming the chicken.
I had a scary kitchen incident growing up and we accidently torched my friends kitchen when cooking popcorn. The fat caught on fire, then exploded. I ended up with stitches in my leg (after diving through a window to escape) one girl ended up in hospital with concussion and the girl closest ended up with nothing as the flame died down pretty quick! Oh that’s right. She threw water on the burning fat. An absolute no-no.
Anyway getting comfortable with flames in the kitchen was cathartic and fun.
Would I recommend it – sure. It was only 350,000 (35USD) and you got to eat the food. Times were at 11am, 4pm and 9pm.
