we're slack but we're back, day 1 on Bintan

OK, so we have not updated the blog in weeks, I would like to say that we have been far too busy to update, but that would not be entirely true.
So Bintan Island was awesome, it was 28-30 degrees C every day and wickedly humid, at least 90%. We wanted to go scuba diving most of all, but we quickly discovered that it was in fact monsoon season and because of the under current, there would be nothing to see other then sea weed and trash, plus it would be relatively murky. So we set about looking for other forms of entertainment.
The first day on the island, we had seen on the leaflet that we could hire off road bikes, dune buggy's, quads and a monster truck, so we went to the events person and said we would like to book some off road bikes please, we were told that they no longer rent them our to tourists as it was too dangerous and too many people had crashed, so we said ok, we would like to take the monster trucks please, only to be told the same thing, so in the end we booked in to take a dune buggy out for an hour to explore the rougher parts of the island and have some fun. The guide was on a 250cc off road bike with a lose rusty chain, buckled rear wheel and generally well past its last service date, anyway he took us through the safety procedure which consisted of, 'have you driven before?, ok, this stop, this go, follow me' fairly straight forward, only the seat belts were 4 point harnesses which in itself is a good thing, but they didn't adjust and spent most of its time falling off my shoulders like a badly fitted bra (or so I presume) and the helmets we were given were for skateboards and as the sticker advised, not for motorised transport.... .anyway, we were off. It was bone dry which is good, considering it was monsoon season. Rach drove first, much to the surprise of the guide, she did fine following the guide, but the buggy kept pulling to the right, which was the side I was sat on... YAY, we got the first beach at which point, our beach buggy promptly got stuck in that pesky sand, the 4wd system had decided to have a rest and revert to the more useless 2wd mode. The guide was a nice guy and indicated us to stay where we were and shot off on the bike out of site, we wondered around the beach littered with coconuts until he came back about 5 minutes later with another guy in a new buggy for us, so we switched buggy's and were on our way again, we drove through a dried out river bed which provided some great entertainment, the guide kept looking back only to see Rach in hysterics and me looking pretty worried as my seat belts were still as loose as a choir boys rectum. We got to another stopping point, thankfully with no sand, it was a bar of sorts and we were given big glasses full of fresh coconut juice, after 10 minutes of the guide telling Rach how lucky she is and how good looking I was, then asking if I was in the army because I had short hair, we were off and it was my turn. Now it was Rach's turn to be scared, we got back onto dirt tracks after the bar and I soon realised that if you steer hard enough and jump on the gas hard enough, you can get the back to slide out.....awesome. The guide now looked back to see me grinning and chucking the buggy around and Rach's white knuckles on the roll bar, it was at this point that I told Rach to keep her hand inside, in case we rolled :) We got to another clearing and it was another dreaded beach, but this buggy seemed to handle it rather well. We got back to the starting point and as we were walking back to the resort, we asked the guide if they have many accidents, he says 'oh yes, just yesterday, loud American said he can drive, rolled and broke an arm'.... cool.
We were pretty hot and dusty so we went for a swim in the pool.
After a couple of hours swimming, we went to do some archery and air gun shooting. The shooting guide asked where we were from and when we said NZ, he said 'Kia ora' and then began asking questions in Maori, we gave him a blank look and then informed him that we didn't know any Maori, the poor guy looked heart broken, he must have been waiting ages to impress some Kiwi's with his Maori.... oh well. His English was not great, so he may as well have been speaking Maori the whole time after that as well. He took us over to the shooting range, showed us how to use the air gun, then let us go wild on some cans that were set up at the end of the shooting range. I hit 5 and Rach got about 3 the first time round, I felt quite happy with that until the guide asked my count and laughed when I said 5. I suggested he go and pick up the cans and I could keep shooting......... he didn't laugh at that so much. On the second lot of pellets we did much better, I can't remember the count, but it was good, lets just say a round 100. So we moved onto the archery, neither of us had done this before and we expected poor results, as it turns out, we rock with a bow and arrow, I got 2 arrows straight through the centre and another one on the line of the bulls eye and the next score zone. Rach did awesome too, but the bow was tight and it was hard to pull it all the way back, so it was a good shoulder workout. On the way over we saw a lizard, about 10 inches from head to tail, I wasn't sure what type of lizard it was, so I presumed the guide would know, since he lived on the island. I told him we saw a lizard on the way over and indicated with my hands how big it was, he nodded and said 'small one', 'ok' I said, 'but what type of lizard do you have here, what type do you think it might be?' He looked at me and said 'lizard' 'I know, lizard, but what bread, what type? maybe a water dragon or something?' the guide said 'no, lizard' ..... I looked at Rach for help, but it wasn't coming, so I said again 'yes, lizard, but what type, what is it?' the guide looked half confused but half pissed off, like I was taking the piss, so he opened his eyes wider, made sure I was looking at him, and said very clearly and slowly 'liiizaaard'. We thanked the guy and made our way off trying not to laugh too loud at my telling off from the gun guide. That night we went to one of the restaurants for dinner and we ordered the most ping pong tiddly in the nuclear sub (most alcoholic beverage available) which happened to be a bintan illusion, or more commonly k now as a long island ice tea. We managed to get through about half of the drink before the food came, by which point, Rach was well on her way to drunkshire, the drink was strong but it was good, but Rach could not do it all in one go, so once it was about half gone, we ordered some pineapple juice to top it up and hopefully make it more drinkable for our little Rach. By the time the food was finished and Rach's ONE cocktail gone, Rach was well and truly on the road for a hang over, I honestly have seen wine flys take more alcohol on board.

10-03-07
We’re on a ferry on our way to Bintan Island to spoil ourselves; the trip from Singapore to Bintan Island takes "just under an hour" according to the ferry driver person. The sign says 55 minutes. Racheal has been rocked to sleep by the waves and so now seems like a good time to start the first blog entry.
Bintan Island is an Indonesian Island so we had to go through all the immigration malarkey before boarding the ferry, and we are actually traveling back in time as Bintan Island is one hour behind Singapore. We have plenty planned for Bintan, including a trek up a hill, MX bikes, monster trucks, go karts etc….. I think Rach mentioned something about a spa or massage!!
The ferry has a TV with news scrolling along the bottom, it just ruined the MotoGP of Qatar result for me, that annoys me slightly, still it’s a surprising result but I was trying to wait till I could see the replay in the UK.
Back on track, so we arrived in Singapore at 7.30pm local time, the flight was 10 hours but in all honesty it felt like 2, the in flight entertainment was spectacular, we had 80 on demand movies to watch which we could start and pause at will, lots of games to play, on demand TV and lonely planet guides. The food was great and the Singapore sling cocktails were even better, Rach and I decided to drink our air fair in cocktails, we are doing OK but we still have another 12 hours to the UK to try to consume the rest. Singapore airlines are bloody fantastic. Singapore airport is amazing, clean and efficient. We got to the transfers desk and with in no time we were on a bus to our hotel. As soon as you step out of the air con the humidity hits you almost as hard as Chuck Norris, it must be 150%. The bus ride to town was fun, we noticed that the roads were in great condition and well lit and all the cars were spotless, almost like it is law to have a dirty car. A lot of the cabs are old 1985ish Toyota Corolla’s, but in absolute as new condition,(I later found out that these are actually Toyota Crown's and were only 3 years old). There was probably a lot more to observe, but we were sat at the back of the bus and every time we went over the slightest bump, I was amused by Racheal’s chest region having its own little party as the suspension on the bus was..... firm.
We got to the hotel and found out that we had been dealing with monkeys when we dealt with the Flight Centre, for some reason we thought that a travel agent would be able to book a hotel but we were wrong. We were supposed to have been given vouchers for our hotel but we had not been, so we got to the hotel, we were booked in but as we had no voucher, we had to pay for it ourselves until it was confirmed that it was already paid for. No worries, we shall not let this glitch hinder us. A quick email to Chrissey (Rach’s mummy) to see if she can help organise the Flight Centre, then up to the room for a shower and change. One of the strange things about our hotel was the location, that being China town….. in Singapore, it’s like having a Scotland town in England. Anyway, off to town and it was buzzing, heaps of bars and restaurants lined the two Quay’s. We took a walk and found the Ministry of Sound and a few local Singapore clubs, we settled at a place called the forbidden city, it was a club with heaps of fish tanks everywhere, it even had a massive fish tank with a metal lid and a man was on top of it hitting a bongo drum along to the beat of the dance music, he didn’t seem to have a great sense of rhythm, but it sounded good all the same. We had a look at the drink list and after seeing the cost of a pint of beer at an eye watering $14 (the Singapore $ is worth 93 NZ cents) we decided to have some cocktails at $15. We sat next to a fish tank and Racheal spotted a fish swimming upside down, it was either plastic or dead.
We finished up at the Forbidden city and went for more walk abouts, actually it felt like we were swimming, it was that humid, I can only compare it to sitting in a steam sauna, wearing a 10mm wet suit. So anyway, on the way back to the hotel we herd a clown horn honker sound which happened to catch my attention, I looked around (as I herd Rach advise I should be avoiding eye contact) to see a cheerful fellow peddling a rickshaw, he asked if we would like a ride, my first thought was "sure, I 'm hot and tired, a lift would be great" but for some reason, something felt a little off. The fella had a slight "I’m stoned" look about him, but since Singapore has the slogan "Death to drug trafficars" on the declaration card, I decided that the guy is probably dehydrated and although he looks 86, he is in fact 12. All of a sudden, I realised what the apparent concern was for, the guy was on the wrong side of the road, peddling towards on coming traffic, mostly made up of city cabs and Honda Repsol NSR 125’s, oblivious to this, he was still trying to convince myself and Rach to ride with him, we politely declined and continued back to the hotel. We got back at 1.30am local time and worked that out to be 5.30am NZ time, which our bodies were still working with, so it was defiantly time for some zzzzz’s.
11-03-07
We woke up at some time, who knows what clock we are supposed to be on.
The day was a corker outside, and being a lovely Sunny Sunday morning, we decided a quick dip in the hotel pool was in order before breakfast. They called it the paradise pool………. it was really just a pool on a roof and didn’t really represent paradise to me. The breakfast was described as an American breakfast, it was spot on, pancakes and maple syrup and something they called bacon which not only looked like sun dried playdoh but actually managed to taste worse…. so in conclusion, American breakfast = tasteless, fatty and without nutrition, then spot on. It was at this point that we decided to see if we could call the ferry terminal to check if Rach and I had been booked on to a ferry to get to Bintan Island, the phone rang and rang but alas, no answer, so we checked with the resort if we were booked in, and the answer was good. So, now we knew that we had a bed for the night, we tried in vain to contact the ferry terminal to confirm our ferry crossing was booked, no answer and by now, we had wasted over two hours trying to confirm our ferry crossing. This should have been sorted out by the lovely and always competent Flight Centre but clearly, this task had proven to large. We were supposed to have been given vouchers for the ferry crossing before we left NZ, but this didn't happen. We called the Flight Centre in NZ but they could do nothing and other then pretend to care, they did nothing. We got in a cab and went to the ferry terminal and found out that we were booked on the 1.30pm ferry, the time was now midday and we had to check in one hour before departure, luckily we were allowed to change our trip to the 5pm cruise, any later and we would have had to pay for another ticket each. We arrived at the island and got to the resort with no trouble.
We are now safely in the UK, we had a great time in Bintan Island, we were shooting, did archery, rode some death quads, chased local wildlife and drank plenty of cocktails, but I'll continue this tomorrow and post some pictures.