The rest of Bintan and the start of Jakarta

So our original plan was to spend a night or two at the most in Bintan. However, after meeting our new friends we decided to extend our stay indefinitely. Each day they would ask us when we were leaving and our response was always "not sure...but probably tomorrow." That went on for 6 nights 7 days (which is the longest we have stayed in a single spot yet). It was just so nice to have a local connection and they were so good too us and really showed us a good time. One our second or third day there they came to our hotel and got us up early (9am) and told us they were bringing us to some beach. We piled 10 of us into one of their cars (free ride is always a beautiful thing) and headed off. They first took us to some run down park type place where we went out a small lake in paddle boats and crashed into each other for a while. We then continued on in the direction of the beach (it was about a 45 min drive...and they were blasting American love songs the whole way so naturally we belted them out). The beach they took us to was amazing. Totally secluded, white sand and crystal clear water. We couldn't believe our eyes when we arrived and we were able to drive the car right up to the beach where there were a few wooden bungalows to hang out under. We spent most of the afternoon there playing frisbee, soccer, and walking through the shallow water looking for random sea creatures (which we found plenty of). That night we went and watched their basketball game (Jesus and Tom played with them...Will and I decided to be lazy and watch) then they took us out on the town. The rest of our time spent in Bintan was just about the same...lots of basketball, pool, and just hanging around with our local crew. It was so nice and relaxing that we couldn't resist extending our stay repeatedly. By the time we were ready to go we realized we couldn't due to Ramadan coming to a close which means every shop (including tourist shops) were closed so we couldn't book a ferry or even a flight. We finally ended up finding a place that told us about a ferry leaving the next day (ferries only leave for Jakarta twice a week which further complicated the whole process) but we would have to arrive at the pier at 6 AM meaning we would have to leave our hotel at 5 AM. With this information we did what any intelligent traveller would do to prepare for the 28 hour ferry ride...we went out with our friends and didn't go back to the hotel until it was time to catch our taxi. We said goodbye to our Indo companions and were off to catch our ferry.

The boat that we were one was huge...definitely the largest boat I have been on. We bought the cheapest tickets so we were in the hull of the ship with hundreds of people and there were large wooden platforms for people to lay down on. We left port at about 9 AM and Will and I decided not to sleep at all because we wanted to sleep that night so we forced ourselves to stay up by continuing our backgammon world tour out on the deck of the boat. The trip was actually very easy and comfortable (it's nice to be able to get up and walk around) and because it was such a large boat you could hardly feel any rocking from the waves. The low point of the trip came at around 8 PM when one of the ladies sitting across from us (literally 3 ft away) came back stumbling drunk (actually she was being carried by two others because she couldn't stand on her own). After laying down for about 1 minute she starting groaning loudly and then started to cry hysterically. Her friends were helping her but there wasn't much to be done. She began vomiting all over herself and the surrounding area (we are talking projectile vomit) and it smelled very much like the brandy she had been drinking for the past few hours. The weird part was no one tried to bring her to the bathroom (literally 10 steps away) or get her a trash can (literally 7 steps away). They just let her go. That was our cue to head to the upper deck to enjoy the night air. We spent about an hour or 2 out there hoping that things would be all cleaned up by the time we went back which they thankfully were. We slept well that night despite being on straight wood with no blankets or pillow (although Will did have his luxury item pillow that he brought which I was very envious of at that point). We arrived in Jakarta today at about 2 PM. We haven't seen much of the city as of yet but I'm sure there will be more to report in the upcoming days.

-RBC