Out on the tiles

Think of going to Gran Canaria for a weekend.

Well, this is not Gran Canaria nor Tenerife, but Pulau Bintan on the Indoneasian side about 60 km south-east of Singapore.

There were about 30 students from NTU and maybe 10 from NUS, all of them accommodated in the same small beach resort. Several kinds of water sport activities were available, but besides that, there was nothing else than the resort bar at which people spent their time. Combined with reasonably priced Bintang beer (IDR38k a pint) it of course ended up in extensive drinking.

 

 

The transportation and accommodation were cheap enough so that staying for only two nights was sensible. The boat from Tenah Merah ferry terminal to Bintan was S$60 for a return trip, and an hour taxi drive from the terminal to the resort in Bintan was S$43 per car. There are different kinds of rooms and bungalows in Nostalgia Yasin resort, but as we booked ours quite late, only the more pricey rooms (S$40 per room per night) in the larger building were available. It was like a typical basic hotel room with a sea-view from the balcony, so good value for the money anyway.

I didn't want to sit in the beach bar drinking beer from 10am onwards -- like some of the finns did -- so I took a walk to Ocean Restaurant and Resort about a kilometer down the main road. Luckily there was still one 125cc scooter available for rent (S$5 per hour, no licence required) so I hired that one and drove some 15 km to the nearest village. The village was built around the outlet of a river and mostly seemed to be a local fishing port. There were no tourists in this poor village and people didn't speak much English, but they were happy to pose for photos anyway.

 

 

Then I drove about 30-40 km in the other direction, but there was nothing but a couple of quite empty tourist resorts and an extremely small village consisting of only 20 houses or so. I didn't dare to try any dirt road leading to the jungle...

Some of us took a boat to the nearby islands to do some water sports and to lie down on those beautiful white beaches -- the beach by the resort was not that good actually. The food, on the other hand, was really delicious, the all-time favorite being tasty and affordable chicken satay. They had excellent pizza as well but that was on the expensive side. It seemed like they were not really prepared for this many tourists appearing just suddenly there as sometimes it really took a long time to get the food or even placing an order. The staff was very friendly all the time despite the rush.

One especially great thing in Nostalgia Yasin is that you can put everything on your room bill and pay it on check-out. So there's a competition of course, that who can break the 1 million rupiah boundary during a weekend.. That is about 20 pints and 10 chicken satays.

For more photos see my gallery.