Gili Trawangan main strip (above Blue Marlin Dive)
★ 4.5(1,480 reviews)
Blue Marlin Bar sits above the long-running Blue Marlin Dive shop on Gili Trawangan's main strip and anchors the island's Monday party night. The first-floor open-air bar opens at 4pm with a dive-crew happy hour and peaks 11pm to 3am on Mondays. Drinks are 55,000 IDR Bintangs, 100,000 IDR cocktails, and the dive-instructor crowd makes this the most divemaster-heavy night on the rotation.
# Blue Marlin Bar: The Dive Crew's Living Room
Blue Marlin Bar sits one floor above Blue Marlin Dive, one of Gili Trawangan's longest-operating dive shops, and that single architectural fact explains everything about the bar's character. The dive shop's instructors, divemaster trainees, and just-finished-the-fun-dive customers funnel up the stairs for happy hour at 4pm and most of them are still there at midnight. If you want to feel like you're inside the actual Gili T dive scene rather than just visiting it, this is the bar.
Gili Trawangan's rotating party-night calendar starts the week at Blue Marlin. Monday is the official Blue Marlin party night, and it has become the unofficial reset ritual for the island's working dive community — instructors who had Sunday off, freshly-minted Open Water graduates from the weekend courses, dive shop managers comparing notes. The bar puts on a guest DJ slot Mondays from 10pm and runs to 4am.
If you want to meet dive professionals on Gili T (job leads, course recommendations, gear advice), Monday at Blue Marlin is the single most efficient venue. By 11pm you can find someone from every major dive shop on the island in the same room.
The 4pm to 6pm happy hour is the best cocktail value on the strip. Bintangs drop from 55,000 to 35,000 IDR and cocktails run 2-for-1 — meaning a standard 110,000 IDR cocktail effectively costs 55,000 IDR each. The bar fills steadily through happy hour with a post-dive crowd in flip-flops and rash guard shadows.
Sunset is around 5:45pm to 6:30pm and Blue Marlin's west-facing deck catches it nicely from the upper level. It's not a destination sunset bar (the beach-front options are better) but if you're already at happy hour the sunset is a free upgrade.
Standard pricing outside happy hour: Bintang 55,000 IDR, draft Bintang 50,000 IDR (when available), cocktails 100,000–150,000 IDR, shots 40,000 IDR for arak or tequila. The cocktail program is decent rather than exceptional — solid mojitos, margaritas, and tropical sour drinks made with fresh ingredients but no innovative menu.
A small food menu serves bar snacks (chicken wings, nachos, satay) at 70,000–120,000 IDR. The food is for soaking up beer rather than dining; most people eat dinner downstairs at the dive shop's restaurant or elsewhere on the strip and return to the bar after.
Heavy dive-crew presence — instructors, divemaster trainees, freelance underwater photographers, and the broader ecosystem of people who work the Gili T dive scene. Mixed in are dive customers (Open Water students, certified divers staying on the island for fun dives), backpackers who happened to wander in, and a steady trickle of returners who liked the vibe last visit.
The vibe is conversational and slightly tribal — dive talk dominates early in the evening and you'll hear a lot of "what dive site did you do today" small talk. By 10pm the conversation widens and the dance section in the back fills up.
Solo travelers integrate well, especially if you've done any diving and can talk about it. Solo female travelers report Blue Marlin as one of the more comfortable bars on the strip — the dive-crew regulars set the tone and they're protective of the room.
Cash works best (card terminal is hit or miss). The stairs up are unlit at the bottom — watch your step on the way out. The bar closes earlier than Sama-Sama and Jiggy on most nights (last call usually 2:30am except Mondays which run to 4am).
Walk-home logistics are the standard Gili T story: 5–15 minutes to most accommodation, generally safe on the main path, use cidomo horse-carts (50,000–100,000 IDR) for longer rides.
If you want the dive-scene side of Gili T nightlife — Monday is mandatory and any happy hour is good. If you want cheap cocktails — happy hour 4–6pm. If you want a club night with energy — go Monday or look at Jiggy on Thursday. Skip Blue Marlin if you have no interest in diving and find dive-shop talk dull, if you want late-late-night options (it closes earlier than competitors), or if you can't manage stairs after a few drinks.