Bintan, Indonesia

Last Weekend it was about time to visit another island and in fact another country. This time the destination of our journey was Bintan, Indonesia. Bintan is an island nearly twice as big as Singapore and reachable within an hour's ferry ride. However the population is with about 120,000 slightly lower compared to S'pore... Even if the island belongs politically to Indonesia the culture and the language there is mainly Malay.

We started the trip Friday morning (no courses on Friday :-) in a group of four exchange students. The weather wasn't very promising - it was very cloudy and slightly raining. We didn't let us bother by it and took a cab to Tanah Merah (not to confuse with Guantanamera) ferry terminal. From there left our ferry to Bintan Resort, that is a privately owned tourist resort on Bintan. At the boarder we got our first real visa - looks very nice and costs 10US$ (!). But of course we didn't stay in that kind of resort - we wanted to see the "real" island. So we took a cab and within another hour ride we arrived at Mutiara Beach Guesthouse, which is situated on the famous Trikora Beach (well at least famous in Idonesia).

The first impression was really amazing - there were only few little wooden houses in the midst of hundreds of palm trees. We were welcomed very friendly by the staff and each of us got a freshly opened coconut as welcome drink. We liked the place at once! Our bedok (chalet) was simple but very nice. It was basicaly a little wooden house on poles with a straw roof and the walls were made of a kind of reed. The bathroom was in another little house and there was electricity only from 6pm to 10pm. It was not very comfortable but we liked it very much because it had a very original atmosphere. After moving into our new home we had a look at the beach and it was even better - kilometres of lonely, white sandy beach in front of a light blue sea. In fact there were only two other bedoks and one kelong (a floating house) belonging to this guesthouse - so the place was really solitary. We mainly passed the day with eating, lying on the beach and swimming in the sea. The weather wasn't exactly sunny but nice enough to enjoy all that. We could only find on bad thing: mosquitos and sand flies. The mosquitos were only active in the evening but the sand flies (very tiny flies living in the sand) bit you at every time of day. So we had to use plenty of mosquito repellent...

The next day the rest of our group arrived (they had some classes on Friday they couldn't skip). They stayed of course at the beach, but we four wanted to go to Tanjung Pinang, the biggest town on Bintan - I think most of the population is living there. A friend of our host brought us there and explained us quite a lot about the place. After an hour ride in the car (everything seems to take one hour) we reached the centre of Tanjung Pinang. We took a walk trough the streets which seemed to be a single huge market. They were selling everything there - from clothes (faked brands of course) via fuel in bottles (!) to all kinds of food. It was very crowed with pedestrians, cyclists and motor scooter riders. The atmosphere was really very different from Singapore and we felt like animals in a zoo because everybody was gazing at us. Apart from the exhaust fumes of the motor bikes there were power generators running in front of every shop - so the air was kind of dirty. Apparently the power grid is not very reliable there... When we had enough of the city our "driver" took us to a nice seafood restaurant. We wanted to invite him to join us but he had to fast because of Ramadan. The food there was really excellent - we ordered prawns, scallops and a two crabs. It wasn't exactly cheap but I think in S'pore you had to pay much more. The payment got a bit embarrasing because we counted the money wrongly - the many zeros are very confusing... After that we headed back for our guesthouse to enjoy the rest of the day at the sea.

In the evening there was another highlight: Barbeque at the beach. All the guest, our group and 4 other people, gathered near the beach and the staff prepeared a nice barbeque with chicken and fish for us. We sat there for a long time, chatting (the others were very nice) and drink beer and wodka (duty free). Since the generator broke down the only light sources were 2 kerosene lamps - very romantic! :-)

We passed the Sunday again at the sea. We went snorkeling (I spotted a little stingray!), jumped off the kelong, fooled around in the water and took a nap under the palm trees. In the afternoon we had to head back for Singapore. The whole trip was again absolutely superb. Apparantely we alway choose the right places. The only flaw is that the sand fly bites still itch and that I got a little sun burned on the last day.