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.