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.
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.
