Bintan, Indonesia

Bintan is an island off of mainland Indonesia. It is only a 45 minutes ferry ride from the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. We met up at the Terminal to take the Ferry over to Bintan. The second deck of the boat featured nice tables and lounge chairs for small groups of people. We claimed two areas for us and enjoyed the trip over to Indonesia and passed time by talking about our Muslim host families.

We staid at the Mana Mana Beach Resort located on Bintan's north shore. The beach was amazing and we played volleyball, read books, and swam in the coves of the South China sea. We had a pretty intense game of Volleyball in the pouring rain!

We cleaned up for dinner and took a free shuttle into town to eat an Indonesian Seafood Restaurant. We split a set meal of spicy crab, rice, squid, fish, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruit. We had a few dinner drinks our favorites where the Black Russian and Grasshopper. The town that we visited was built for tourist and featured small shops selling Bintan Souvenirs. We purchased a few 1.5 liter Cokes to take back to mix with our duty free Jim Bean and Barcardi Gold Rum. I found a few t-shirts that I liked for Souvenirs.

We hung out in the room for awhile and I played bartender for the group mixing up Rum/Jack n cokes. We then decided to head up to the resort bar where we could hear music playing for the dance floor. We had a great time dancing the night away. We staid up extremely late and closed down the bar and then took the party to the beach where we hung out in the moonlight.

I met a girl named Ica a local 25 year old girl who was originally from Jakarta. She worked at the Bintan lagoon Resort, about 20 minutes away from Mana Mana, as a massage specialist. She gave us her contact number to come to the Spa. Triv, Alicia, and myself took a taxi over and all got awesome massages. Ica gave me a 90 minute Japanese Massage and it was so relaxing. The Bintan lagoon Resort was totally awesome and featured many relaxing activities for the guests.

Breakfast at Mana Mana featured an all you can eat breakfast of eggs, franks, beans, hashbrowns, pancakes, rice porridge, fresh fruit, juice, muffins, and cereal. It was an enjoyable meal. When I was getting my food a gentlemen asked if I was really an Aggie. I ensured him I was and we talked about his son, Brian, from Rice University, who was in Singapore interning without many friends. I met his son a little later and exchanged Singapore numbers with him so we can include him in our outings.

Sunday morning featured lots of pouring rain showers, but I guess this is to be expected with the unpredictable tropical climate. It was an enjoyable experience and we all got to hang out, talk, and write postcards. Word of advice don't send too many postcards from Indonesia. It is about just in postage to deliver it from Indonesia to the US. The four that get these postcards should feel rather lucky!!

Alicia, Triv, and I barely made it to the port to take the ferry back to Singapore. We made it there just in time for the last call! Nick and Stephen Haynes didn't make it from their spa in time and had to wait for th 8PM ferry.

Indonesia was an awesome experience. The people where friendly and beautiful scenery was abundant. Bintan is an island that is twice as big as Singapore, but with only 1 million people living there. The biggest city has 300,000 and was located about 1.5 hours away from our resort.

The resorts all took Singaporean Dollars. I was able to get a few Rupia notes to take home as Souvenirs. I have a 1000 Rupia that's worth about a quarter.