Potentially better than Bali?
A few weeks ago I went with some fellow exchange students to Bintan. It is a pretty big island in Indonesia that's very close to Singapore. We took a ferry to get there (less than 2 hours) and we spent the weekend in a place that turned out to be AMAZING, despite our expectations. See, I would estimate that every other person I meet in person or online talks about Bali being on their 'MUST VISIT' list and how everything is so great and zen there but they wouldn't mention anything else about Indonesia. We chose to go to Bintan because other exchange students told us that the beaches are nice and is super closse so why not, right? But the thing is, most of us (us who went to Bintan) went to Bali as well before and were a little disappointed with the overall experience so we were thinking: "Well, if everyone says that Bali is THE place to go and we didn't like it that much, and very few people mentioned Bintan, is it going to be even worse than Bali?" But you know how they say in movies, you'll never know if you never try, so we tried!
Bintan was very different from Bali. First of all, the predominant religion is Islam.We saw a few beautiful mosqes along the way and we could hear the prayers from our hotel every day. I personally fond it very peaceful hearing the prayers in the evening and the people were so friendly and welcoming. Definitely not the kind of Muslims we hear about in the news.
We took a taxi from the ferry terminal and got to our hotel in ~30 minutes. I was shocked during the entire road! Never before visiting the island had anyone ever talked about how it has actual good roads and how it is not overcrowded (the exact opposite of Bali). We arrived a little early and our host made us free drinks that were actually tasty (coconut for the win). We wandered around the island and it looked so beautiful. There weren't many people in that area so we had the beach to ourselves pretty much. We were amazed by the calmness, beauty and nice weather. I remember one of us saying within 10 minutes of arrival "I like this place more than Bali" :D
After we settled in, we asked the owner to give us a ride to the White Sands Island departure point. We heard that this private island (surrounded by South China Sea) has awesome clean beaches and the mood is even more relaxing. There's an entrance fee of 125k Rupiah, but considering that they provide us with a round-trip boat ride we thought it was worth it...and oh boy it was worth it! I finally found an island worthy honeymoon-ing in a very calm heaven-like setting. The island is so small you can walk around it in 30 minutes probably and they don't allow visitors to come after a certain hour (5pm I think). Oh and the cottages there look amazing and the Beach Club is super relaxing and fun at the same time. I would definitely like to go back there one day!
We found some turtles in a pool on the island and apparently these are rescued turtles from the ocean. They are so so cute!
The sand on White Sands Island was indeed white!
The DJ was doing a great job with the music as well, which was like a bonus gift for already such a wonderful afternoon spent there!
Olivia took some very cool candid pictures when we were walking around the island and collecting a little too many sea shells.
And then we took the last boat to return to our hotel where we had dinner.
On the next day, Sunday, we went to Trikora Beach, which was pretty close to our hotel. The water was very clean and warm but weedy in some areas. We also tried to do jet-skiing for the first time. That was pretty cool! Also, that's when random Indonesian people started to ask us to take pictures with them :D I don't think any of us were ready for this, although it has happened a few times in Malaysia. Some would approach us and ask if they can take a picture with us, others would just come by our side, tap on the shoulder and point to the camera and tell us to smile, and others would just take picture and videos from the side without asking or anything. We had our star moment I guess? :D Also, when we were at the ferry terminal ready to take our boat back to Singapore, there were 2 or 3 men filming us as we were passing the security. At that point I was looking for something to cover my face with and people working at the ferry terminal would also ask us to take pictures or say hi in a video for their YouTube channel although I highly doubt they actually have an YouTube channel.
Only 5 minutes away from the place we jet-skied in there was an Italian pizzeria, apparently opened by an Italian. We tried it out and the pizza was actually very good.
After lunch, we decided to go visit Danau Biru Kijang, or how I like to call it: Blue Lake. This was the highlight of the whole trip. An amazing place filled with the bluest waters I've ever seen and not one tourist in view. After Bali I couldn't believe it was possible to visit a nice place without being overcrowded but Surprise Surprise! However, it wasn't very clear why the water was so blue. We saw some huge pipes that seemed to empty in the lakes so it looked like there might be chemicals in the water thus making it unsuitable for any kind of fish. The water was suspiciously clear, wish there was an information panel about this place.
In the evening, we returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the day at a nearby restaurant and enjoyed the nice weather.
As you can probably tell by now, I really really liked Bintan, it was beyond our expectations and even imagination (especially the Blue Lake). I would highly recommend it to people who travel around this region (Singapore, Northern Indonesia). This was not a touristic trap like Bali and it was very relaxing.
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