We were toying between Batam and Bintan and decided to go with the latter since I'm more of a beach bum and rocky wanted to see if she's a beachy person (she is not, btw). I've been tan for the longest time I can remember and I've always enjoyed being out in the sun, to my mum's dismay. I've started to turn yellow, due to the lack of vitamin D, which is horrible. I know I may sound insane, but somehow I feel that I just look better with a tan. Haha
Many of our friends told us that if we wanted cheap seafood and cheap everything, we should go Batam, but we decided to stick to our original plan of Bintan since we both have never been there. For a first-timer, the only natural thing to do was to google and see what are the good deals available. There were several groupon deals for Bintan, that were going pretty cheap, but it is really important to read the fine prints. One of the deals was $98 per pax at Nirwana hotel, which include ferry and land transfer. However, in the fine print, you'd need to pay an additional $55+ if you're going over the weekends, and there's a compulsory tipping for the staff there. So it turns out to be not so worth it as compared to say, purchasing directly from the website.
After much googling and researching, we decided to go with Cabana Beach Resort. Pictures online promised white sandy beach with clear blue sea, as though its your own 'private beach' and there were several good reviews about the resort. There was a spring break promo for the ferry tickets, only $54 inclusive of all taxes and we booked the hotel room from Agoda. It came up to $98 per pax for ferry and accommodation.
Well, by the time we arrived at Bintan , it was already in the late afternoon. We requested for a land transfer from the ferry to our hotel (which you'd have to request in the 'special request' tab on Agoda, but being the kiasu fella I am, I emailed the hotel to make sure we do have the land transfer), and luckily we did, cos it was a good one-hour ride!
After checking in the resort, the first thing we did was explore the beach. The beach was amazing! The water is so so clear! I'm not sure about Rocky, but all I really wanted was to just jump into the sea!
Cabana Bintan Beach Resort has a sister resort - Argo Beach Resort, and there's a free shuttle ride to and fro at certain timeslots which you have to book at the reception in advance.
The resort is reaaally far from the other hotels and the touristy area, so our entire trip was circled around Cabana and Agro. Argo has a restaurant - Sun Moon Lake Kelong restaurant - that serves chinese Zhi char food, so that was where we had our dinner. We over-ordered cos we wanted to eat everything. Greedy, I know. The food there generally is not expensive, we spent about $30 for 2 pax?We had grilled prawns, french fries, belachan kang kong,ayam penyet and salted butter squid.
We brought a bottle of wine over and spent the night sipping wine and watching Stardust. Rewatching the movie just reminds me how magical the show was. Good times!
Since it was just a 2D1N trip, we spent the next day bumming at the beach. We had the intention of playing water sports at Agro, however, we completely forgot about the whole high tide and low tide issue. We wanted to do the water sports in the afternoon, where the sun is more forgiving, but that was the low tide period and they were closed by then.
So do remember to check with the hotel staff when is the most appropriate time to hit the water sports! It was a shame cos Roch has not taken the Banana boat and Flying Fish before and I was dying to let her try it!
Ah wells, the next time then.
We ended up soaking at Agro's swimming pool and spend our remaining hours there.
As you probably noticed, we spent an awful load of time at Agro and you must be wondering why don't we stay at that resort instead. Agro is actually about 20% more expensive than Cabana, and their beach is not as clear and clean. Cabana was way quieter, so it seemed as if we had the whole beach to ourselves. Given the choice, I'd still stick to rooming at Cabana and then just hop onto the shuttle to Agro.
This is only my second time travelling with Rocky, our first being a school trip to Cambodia, so I do hope that the next trip we hit, it will be longer at least.. Hahaha
More information about Cabana could be found here.
I know I have not really been updating this space, I've gotten lazy. Meh
Will try to spruce up this blog more often.
Till the next time then.
Here's a gui lan photo of us saying bye.
Ciaos~
P.S. I was so tickled by the photogrid app. Now they have this 'movie' function, where they will throw in random quotes into the photo. I had a good laugh while looking through the quotes. Here are two of my favourite..
(As any usual 'beautiful' and 'life' quote)
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