One of the best parts about living in
Singapore is you’re right in the hub of Southeast Asia. You have an amazing airport that is a short
taxi ride away and a number of budget airlines you can jump on to take you anywhere
in the region. We’ve flown on Tiger,
Jetstar and Air Asia and knock on wood, so far so good. Everyone seems to have a horror story about
getting overcharged for baggage, a flight getting cancelled without advance notice
or even the pilots not showing up for the flight. That hasn’t happened to us yet, but I guess
it will at least make for an interesting story when it does.
All of this is great, however, at the
same time one of the worst parts about living in Singapore is all these great
places are within reach, but you’re on an island so you can’t just hop in a car
and go somewhere. What if you want to
get away for the weekend, but haven’t really planned ahead and it’s too late to
hop a flight at a convenient time somewhere?
The answer we found out a few weeks ago is Bintan!
Bintan is an Indonesian island about an
hour ferry ride. You still have to go
through customs, but the process is pretty minimal, even compared to the
Singapore airport. The motivation for
this trip was a friend’s 30th birthday whose only request was a
hotel with a swim-up bar....check. To add
to the fun, one of Sarah’s good friends from back home had made a detour from a
work trip and was joining in the shenanigans.
So after a breakfast of fresh pineapple and mangoes and some banana
prata for substance, the 3 of us strolled down to the street to find out if a
taxi could actually get us to the ferry terminal. Based on a normal taxi ride in Singapore to
someplace I had never been before, I was highly skeptical. Usually the driver gives you a blank look and
you get prepared to pull out your phone out to provide directions, human GPS
style. Who would have thought after
saying “Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal” he nodded and we were off.
Most of the rest of our party had
purchased the ‘Emerald Fare’ class of ticket, so they were able to board the
boat first. I would highly recommend
this for anyone as they were able to exit first and fly through customs on
arrival, but for this trip we were stuck with the normies. Luckily, our friends took pity on us and left
us with a "treat" to make the trip go by faster.
To top it all off, once we were done weaving in and out of ships the
size of small skyscrapers, they started playing classic Disney cartoons! I’m talking Mickey, Donald and Pluto that
were hand drawn and had to be on a VHS tape.
Of course, considering where we were it was likely a hot DVD from some
back alley street market, but whatever.
The only way it would have been better is if they would have shown the
episode with old school Mickey Mouse gang in a camper eating corn on the cob. What topped the ferry ride off even more was
the snack booth on the boat was called the “BRF Canteen.” I fully understand we were on the Bintan
Resort Ferry, but reading ‘barf canteen’ on a wavy boat ride out of the corner
of my eye resulted in a lot of internal laughter.
Once we got through customs and rejoined
the group we hopped in the hotel’s bus for what was a pretty short, albeit
rocky ride. The bus actually felt more
like you were on the ocean than the ferry did.
Somehow, after waking up in Singapore around 8:30 AM we were sitting by
a pool staring at the ocean a little after noon. For being as close to a major shipping lane
as we were, the water was pretty clean.
Seeing large ocean tankers off in the distance was a split between entertaining
and unsettling, but you got used to it.
The Bintang beer (another Asian beer crossed off the list) wasn’t bad
either. After playing beach volleyball
and hanging out in the pool, we wrapped it up with an open air grilled seafood
dinner in which I may or may not have eaten an entire grilled squid, followed
up by the requisite Filipino cover band.
After getting up early and with a full day ahead on Sunday, we called it
quits after the first set, besides they were showing NBA playoff basketball in our room. In terms of a short little holiday away from
our island, on another island no less, not a bad way to spend a Saturday.
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