Our little weekend get-away!

Last month we celebrated our 2nd anniversary and to reward ourselves for being such good spouses [:) phew! its hardwork!!], we took a quick trip to a little resort town called Bintan in Indonesia. Its your usual resort place with hotels on the beach, water sports, loads of holidayers...but a lot quieter and fun.


So we started on a Saturday morning by ferry, which took abt 40 mins and in an hours' time we reached Bintan. The ferry was in fact a Catamaran....man it was big and lots of fun. Every time the boat hit the high waves, we could feel the thundering drop. Thank goodness neither of us had problems of sea sickness. And btw it was pouring outside, the fact that we couldnt see much outside made the trip much more exciting!






Well when we arrived at Bintan, a big eagle statue stood with its wings spread to welcome us. Known as "Garuda" as in our Ramayana, the eagle is the official symbol of Indonesia. From here our hotel bus picked us up for a little trip through what looked like forest area to the hotel itself. Looking at the dense cover, we were a bit apprehensive about how the hotel was going to be like...the area looked nothing like the photos...but once we reached the hotel, it turned out to be just perfect. In fact, we were welcomed by traditional Indonesian dancers and a cool refreshing drink.



Well, once inside we first hit the beach...and then after a bit of lunch, we changed and went straight into the lovely pool. Am very frightened of water, but only when I need to submerge. My husband tried his level best to teach me swimming but I, being the coward I am, didnt learn much. Anyways the only achievement for me is I learnt to submerge for 10 secs after an hour!!! Drum rolls.... my hubby was too exhausted to teach me anything further [:)].


Later in the evening, strolling by the wonderful beach, we came across a beautiful rocky part littered with corals. All sizes and shapes, so we climbed over the slippery rocks and retrieved some of the bigger corals we could find. Hopefully I will someday use them in decorating an aquarium. And did I mention the beach sand was a so soft and fine...and so white! I wanted to carry some home to use in handicraft but the thought of explaining this to the customs put me off.

That night we were treated to some fine Indonesian dance-song sequences at the hotel. After a cocktail, my husband settled to have the barbeque buffet while I sheepishly stuck to my sandwich. After dinner, we went back to the beach, by now everyone had left so we felt as if the beach was totally ours. Spending some time sitting in the dark, hearing the soft waves hitting the shore was a the highlight of the day for me.

The next day, we decided to take the Bintan Mangrove tour. A 2 hour ride in a small boat along the river into the thick mangrove trees. It was a wonderful experience on the speed boat. We did see 2 species of snakes, one poisonous and another non-poisonous and a monitor lizard. The banded black and yellow was the mangrove python, this we saw atleast 3-4 and one was nicely coiled and looking down at us. The boatman took us right under the snakes just to give us the scare. As we were having thoughts of jumping out of the boat to escape the snake, our guide told us about the fresh water crocodiles in the water. Phew!

Back from the trip, we just had time to checkout. And then it was a quick trip back to the ferry terminal and before I could realise it, we were already on the ferry back to Singapore. This time too we couldnt see much outside as it was already evening, but we were treated to a good display of nature's fireworks. With loud booms and bangs, we could see spectacular lightining in the horizon.

On the whole the trip was very memorable. A short but sweet trip. Am already looking forward eagerly to our next trip.