Bintan Island

We took our first adventure off the island of Singapore and headed for another island in Indonesia - Bintan! It is actually a huge island, over twice the size of Singapore, and it about 25 miles south. Okay, first things first, it just occurred to me that since we did not even know where we were that some of you may not know where we were either. . .

So here is some geography information, please feel free to skip right on by if you don't care or already know. Singapore is a small island (only about 450 square miles) that sits right off the southernmost tip of Malaysia - another part of Malaysia also sits on the island of Borneo, which is a huge island about 300 miles to the east. Singapore is actually connected to Malaysia by a bridge that is only about a half mile long. Then Indonesia, which is made up of almost 18,000 islands (wow!), sort of wraps all around Singapore from the northwestern side of Malaysia all the way along the south to New Guinea.

So. . . if we head directly west off of Singapore we'd be in Indonesia and then after that we'd hit Kenya, Africa. If we headed northwest, we'd hit Indonesia and then after that we'd hit India. If we travelled directly north, we'd first hit Malaysia, then Thailand, Burma, and eventually China. If we go northeast, we would be on the South China Sea between Vietnam and the Philippines until we're eventually in Taiwan, and then Japan. If we go directly east we hit Borneo and after that New Guinea. Heading southeast we go through Indonesia and on to Australia. Directly south we'd go through Indonesia and maybe hit the tip of Australia but it's pretty much just the Indian Ocean. And then southwest takes us through Indonesia again and maybe the tip of Africa. Whew - a full 360 degree tour! :)

Okay, I'd love to say that all of that geographical knowledge was stored in my huge brain but since moving here I have been relying quite heavily on www.worldatlas.com - it is an awesome website and I'd be lost without it - literally. ;)

So back to Bintan Island. After a rather stressful move and still living without most of our things, we were ready for a little vacation. So not knowing the area, we just asked around and heard Bintan was nice, so we booked it! On Thanksgiving morning we headed to the ferry station and boarded the Aria Bupala, a high-speed ferry that got us to Bintan Island in about an hour. The ferry was really nice, plenty of seats, snacks, a beautiful view, and even a television if you got sick of the view. Once we landed in Indonesia, we got our visas and boarded a bus to the resort - the Bintan Lagoon Resort.

The resort is located along the northern coast of the island and we did not venture far from there the whole three days. There is lots to do and see on Bintan but considering all the "exploring" we had done over the last two months, we were really ready to just relax. So we did. We spent all three days either eating, playing on the beach, or sleeping - perfect! Since not too many people celebrate Thanksgiving around here, there were very few people at the resorts. We felt like it was our island most of the time. The boys loved the water and didn't want to come home. There were some pretty big waves that they rode body boards on and we even got to do some snorkeling! There is some coral right off the beach and Ethan was a natural - he would've happily stayed out there all day long. He saw tons of fish, anemones, urchins, crabs - it was great. We also found a lot of shells in the tide pools. It was a very different Thanksgiving for us but we had lots of fun and had lots to be thankful for. Here are some photos!