Bali to the Gili Islands by boat
Padangbai, the Lombok Strait and the public boat out of Bangsal — the slow way, against the fast boats that skip it.
3 legs · 2 days · 0 borders · about $38 all in
Open this route in the planner Change the pace, the beds or the passport and the numbers follow.
Lasthib · CC BY-SA 4.0Pragmatic routing
Bali Gili Islands overland
Bali to Gili Islands is as much a boat journey as an overland one: 3 legs (2 by sea, 1 by road) across 1 country, with 0 frontiers in between. The one to watch: Padangbai needs 4 hours, not a connection. The water is the point here rather than a gap in the railway — this is a journey people take deliberately, and the slow version is the good version.
2 timezones: UTC+7, UTC+8
Convert every published time to a single clock in your own notes before you book. Operators publish in their own local time and label it inconsistently.
The route
Durations are typical scheduled running times, not departures, and the figure under each service is how often it runs — the number that decides whether a missed connection costs you an hour or a day. Where a last departure is shown it is the one worth setting an alarm for. No planner in this region can give you a departure time you should trust: the operators publish nothing in common. Take these legs to the booking sites below and read the real clock there.
| Leg & operator | Time | Fare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denpasar Padangbai Local transfer Reported Shuttle to the port on demand · taxis, tuk-tuks and songthaews wait at the station; nothing to time Pay on the spot | 1h 30m | $6 |
| Change at Padangbai allow 4 h minimum Onward ferry reached by road transfer | |||
| 2 | Padangbai Lombok (Lembar) ASDP Indonesia Ferry Reported ASDP Padangbai – Lembar every 1–2 hours · around the clock, but the night crossings are rough Slow, cheap and rolls in the strait. The tourist fast boats do it in under two hours from Padangbai or Serangan. Book with ASDPferizy.com | 4h 30m | $4 |
| Change at Lombok (Lembar) allow 2 h minimum Ferry to ferry at the same terminal | |||
| 3 | Lombok (Lembar) Gili Trawangan Local ferry Reported Bangsal – Gili public boat frequent · public boats leave when full, roughly 08:00 to 17:00 last 17:00 Pay at the pier | 45m | $3 |
What stops running, and when
Not a timetable — this planner will not print a departure time it cannot stand behind, and no two operators here publish in a way that would let it. This is the other half of the question, and the half that strands people: which legs stop for the day, and how late. Nobody misses a connection for want of knowing the 14:05 existed. They miss it because the last boat went at 17:00.
Plan backwards from the 17:00 Lombok to Gili Islands — it is the earliest door to close on this route.
| Leg | Runs | Last |
|---|---|---|
| Lombok (Lembar) Gili Trawangan Bangsal – Gili public boat | public boats leave when full, roughly 08:00 to 17:00 | 17:00 |
Day by day
Shape, not a timetable. This is built from running times, the connection buffers above and your chosen pace — it deliberately states no departure time, because none of these operators publish one this page could stand behind. Use it to decide how many nights to book and where; use the operator sites for the clock.
- Bali Padangbai Shuttle to the port 1h 30m
- Padangbai Lombok ASDP Padangbai – Lembar 4h 30m
- Lombok Gili Islands Bangsal – Gili public boat 45m
Where you sleep
Priced where the journey actually stops, not averaged across the region — the difference between a night in Siem Reap and a night in Singapore is a factor of five, and it is worth seeing before you book. Figures are indicative low-season rates for a room booked a week or two out; the totals below use the simple private room band.
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Lombok night of day 1 $25$8hostel bed$25simple private room$55good mid-range hotel
Where this breaks
Ranked by what actually ends trips, not by probability. A missed last connection costs a day and an unplanned hotel; a missed afternoon connection costs an afternoon.
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caution
Padangbai needs 4 hours, not a connection
Onward ferry reached by road transfer. A gap smaller than this is not a connection — it is a missed train with a plausible-looking timetable behind it.
What to do. Plan an overnight stop here rather than trying to make it in one day.
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note
The Padangbai – Lombok (Lembar) boat is weather-dependent
Ferries are cancelled rather than delayed, and a cancellation costs a day rather than an afternoon.
What to do. Never make this crossing the only path to a fixed commitment. Leave a slack day between it and any flight home.
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note
The Lombok (Lembar) – Gili Trawangan boat is weather-dependent
Ferries are cancelled rather than delayed, and a cancellation costs a day rather than an afternoon.
What to do. Never make this crossing the only path to a fixed commitment. Leave a slack day between it and any flight home.
Booking sequence
Book in order of scarcity times window length, not in the order you travel. The shortest leg on the whole spine sells out first.
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1
Sea legs
Mostly turn-up-and-go
Langkawi and Samui routes are worth pre-booking in season, the Mekong slow boat the day before you sail, and the Philippine RORO crossings not at all — they are grounded or they are running.
Everything else on this route, in no particular hurry:
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ASDP Indonesia Ferry
Ferizy is ASDP's official booking platform. Crossings are frequent enough that walking up usually works too.
Book with ASDPferizy.com -
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Local ferry
Bought at the pier. Turn up, check the last departure when you arrive, and do not be the one still on the dock.
Pay on the spot -
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Local transfer
Taxi, tuk-tuk, songthaew or minivan at the station. Agree the fare before you get in.
Pay on the spot
Where an operator cannot be booked from abroad — the Laos–China Railway above all — an aggregator is the practical route in. They add a fee, and some sell tickets they do not yet hold and buy them when inventory opens, which is a genuine cancellation risk on a scarce sleeper. Prefer the operator wherever the operator actually works, which is most of the time.
No affiliate links on transport. Every booking link above goes straight to the operator or aggregator and earns this project nothing. The operator's own site is listed first because it is usually cheaper and always more reliable, not because of what it pays — that ordering is the most load-bearing judgement on this page and it is not for sale. Booking URLs were last reviewed 2026-07 and are not machine-checked — if one is dead, search the operator name rather than trusting a reseller that ranks well.
Where it does earn. The hotel links in “Where you sleep” and the insurance link below pay a commission, at no extra cost to you. They are marked as paid links. Nothing about them changes a route, a price, or the order of anything: no hotel is recommended over another and no leg is routed differently because of them.
Costs
| Transport, 3 legs | $13 |
| Accommodation, 1 night — Lombok $25 | $25 |
| Total | $38 |
Against flying
2 days, $38, 3 legs versus a flight of roughly 52m gate to gate at somewhere around $33–68. That fare band is estimated from the 97 km great-circle distance, not from live inventory — check it.
On a trip this short the train is genuinely competitive, and it puts you in the middle of a city rather than an hour outside one.
Photography
- Ubud — chensiyuan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Mount Rinjani — Giovari max, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
- Gili Trawangan — Lasthib, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons