My great Arventure

Chinese New Year

Near the beginning of February is the Lunar New Year (aka Chinese New Year) which is celebrated through many parts of Asia. However most of the city shuts down for a couple of days, including the university, so we decided to go to an "resort" island called Bintan. But based on what some other friends who had been there had said we thought it would be more fun and rewarding if we stayed away from the main resort area. Plus it would have been too expensive :P. We heard about a resort called Trikora Beach Resort, which was basically a resort that was being developed on Trikora Beach but the developers had an argument and abandoned their plans. So basically right beside this rural fishing village is a wonderful (and cheap) fully furnished resort with all the amneties that one would need right along the beach but is completely empty most of the time. It is frequented mainly by a bunch of expats in Singapore that go for the kite surfing.

So we headed to one of Singapore's harbours where we got aboard our vessel.



After a quick 45min boat ride we arrived at the main Bintan pier.


Of course when entering any new country one has to go through customs. Unfortunately I couldn't bring in a few of the items that I had brought with me :P




Our friend Mark (from Iowa) was waiting for us (cuz he came on the boat that arrived one hour earlier) with a taxi ready to take us to Trikora resort. After the hour long trek we finally arrived. This place was splendid :) The place was COMPLETELY isolated and the complete polar opposite of a tourist destination. Really glad we went. Here is the view from our room.



(Portrait of a Brown Man in Trikora beach resort hotel room)

So on the first day we basically just walked around the beach. The sand was a little course, and wasn't that well manicured but saw some cool things nonetheless.





This was part of the nearby fishing village. It is very common to see houses built on stilts in the water. The reason for this is because of the high tide and low tide cycle.








Some local fishing methods and delicacies.






(Portrait of a Brown Man somewhere)

This photo was cool cuz it kind of looked like the fish was out of the water.




(Portrait of a Brown Man in the sun)

This was the main road.



Later on I'll add day 2 & 3. Take care everybody :)

posted by Arvind @ 10:33 PM