Bali’s last paradise

In the lukewarm waters between Lombok and Bali are three of the most picture-perfect islets you could possibly imagine: teardrop- or circular-shaped, covered in greenery, and ringed by bone-white beaches and indigo-blue waters that are a marine sanctuary for endangered turtles. They are the Gili Islands or ‘The Gilis’ for short.

The biggest, Gili Trawangan, is party central for backpackers in Indonesia. The first time I went there in 2006, it was intimate and uncrowded, a hippy place.

Today, it’s a madhouse, where loud techno music rings through the air until 3am daily.

With hundreds upon hundreds of guesthouses, restaurants, beach bars, massage joints and tacky souvenir shops — no breaks whatsoever on development — it looks and feels like Kuta Beach in Bali: overdeveloped, over-commercialised, paradise lost.

The second-biggest island, Gili Air, is the most populated of The Gilis with 2000 residents, most of who live in a tidy village in the centre of the island. They sold most of the prime coastal land to investors ages ago, and it is now lined with cheap guesthouses and restaurants, some still broken to bits after the devastating 2017 Lombok earthquake.

Worst of all is all the rubbish and construction waste.

The last time I went there on Christmas of 2022. I was so disgusted by the place that I left one day into what was supposed to be a one-week vacation.

This year, I visited Gili Meno, the smallest of the Gilis, for the first time. With no access to groundwater, only a salty lake in the centre (most water has to be shipped in by boat), it’s the least populated and least developed of the Gilis.

That has turned out to be a blessing because Gili Meno is still a slow and unhurried place ringed by clean beaches and coral reefs. It’s the only islet in the Bali universe that still has a Robinson Crusoe feel, like something out of a postcard. Out of a dream.

Much of that can be credited to a simple but well-oiled rubbish collection system run by the community. Organic and inorganic waste at the household level: one of the most effective ways to reduce the quantity of trash to landfill, as it allows inorganic waste to be recycled.

“The village leaders asked the children in the school to separate the organic from inorganic rubbish in their houses and put it out in different bins on the street,” explains Semuen, a Gili Meno local who works at his family business, Malfina Beach Bar & Resto, a hippy bar on the beach. “Twice a week, they come to collect it and it’s shipped to the mainland.”

Locals make small financial contributions to the program while business owners on the island cover the rest. The biggest financial contributor is Greg Meyers, the Australian owner of Bask, a small luxury hotel and beach club on the island.

“We contribute one of those little rubbish trucks you might have seen running around the place,” he said.

“But the community here has always been environmentally friendly. The central government recently tried to give them an incinerator and they rejected it based on sustainability grounds. Instead, they’re getting a more sophisticated rubbish sorting machine. We’re also hoping to get a recycling machine that turns plastic into diesel. It’ll be the first in Indonesia.”

Greg takes me for a ride on his electric scooter (motorised vehicles are banned on the island) to the local school, where a big plot of land has been put aside to store a long row of rainwater tanks, part of a long-term plan to make the island water independent. He also shows me the beginnings of a big organic vegetable garden.

“They’re starting a program next year where the kids will be taught sustainable farming and sell produce to me and other hotels on the island,” he says.

“Hopefully, it will create generational change, an example of how income can be made sustainably instead of just selling off to the highest bidder.”

“But isn’t it inevitable?” I ask him. “Twenty years ago, Gili Trawangan was just like this.”

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” he said. “But because this island is so small — you can walk around the island in an hour — and the community has always been anti-development, we have a really good opportunity to keep it as it is.”