Bintan

Bintan is a island belonging to Indonesia located at two hours drive from Singapore . It's three times bigger but 20 times less populated than Singapore. It's famous because of it's many resorts which are near to beaches and these are result of direct investment by Singapore .We decided in last minute to go to Bintan so most of the hotels were booked . We finally zeroed in Bintan Agro beach resort which is one hour away from the tanjung Penang city of bintan .

We left early as it was long weekend and there will be high demand for tickets . In order to reach Bintan ferry should be taken from tanah merah MRT and a round trip ferry for a person will cost 50 SGD . We left Singapore at 9 and reached Bintan at 11 am . On arrival visa is available and it is 40$ per person , the price of visa is very high compared to Singapore standards also . It's a 30 day stay visa, the earlier visa of 20$ for 10 days has been removed by the govt . From there the hotel had arranged for travel to the resort and it was 12:30 by the time we finally reached the resort.

Food and Naveen --good combo :)The check in time to the resort is at 3 pm and they don't allow you to check in before that . We decided to explore the resort . It's a calm place facing a beach . Since we had come for only one night we decided to spend time enjoying the beach and the resort .


The beach is not as good as shown in the pictures . Actually during high tide the water from the sea flows all the way to the resort and gives a illusion that the beach starts near resort . But during low tide the water recedes and you can see the actual beach which is quite far away from the resort.

Low Tide

High Tide

What is left near the resort is muddy sand . Even during high tide the water is not that clean . The high tide starts only after 12 noon . Nevertheless we had fun.

There were water games which were available near the resort during afternoon .

There was snorkeling too in the nearby beach which the resort arranges but because of lack of time we couldn't go there . Moreover Naveen told that it's not that great here so we decided to try it out on our next trip to some tioman
island .
So what did we do in Bintan ??? We played in beach , dozed off near the sea in nice small enclosures with a beautiful view of beach , explored the resort , played our favorite game - and ofcourse ate like there is no end .

Look at the menu ,the denomination are so high bc of the currency value

For those of you who don't know currency in Indonesia an be quite confusing bc there 7000 Indonesian rupiah = 1 SGD= 35 INR . We were so confused with the denominations that Naveen gave 100000 note instead of 10000 to shopkeeper which he realized immediately !! But if you plan to go to any of the resorts in Bintan don't bother taking Indonesian currency , they accept SGD and the rates are also equivalent to Singapore because most of the tourist are Singaporean . Bintan is like a weekend getaway to people here.

On the way back home, rows of ship near singapore port.They all are standing in a queue