With B being EXTREMELY busy - we decided to take off on a very short trip to Bintan, Indonesia to hit the beach. The kids and I were very excited because this was to be our first "true" beach vacation. I loved going to the beach as a kid and I was sure that my water monkeys were going to love it as much as I did.
Bintan is a short 1-hour ride from Singapore by ferry. We left the house at 9am to catch an 11am ferry. It was really neat to travel by boat - very easy and convenient. It was also pretty special to see so many of the cargo ships that pass through the Straits up close and personal.
We arrive in Bintan, no hitches. In fact, as we are getting through immigration, I see someone I had met once at the kids school at baggage claim. It turns out that she and her family are going to the same resort that we are. Since she also has a 8 yr old boy, we decide to try to meet up while we are there.
We get to the hotel and it is really pretty.
It is 12pm local time and the hotel tells us that check-in is not until 3pm. They did say that our room would probably be ready early, so we decided to walk over to the golf club for some lunch and then head back. It was quite a steamy day and after eating in the open air, we were starting to feel a bit wiped.
We get back to the hotel and find that our room is still not ready - so we hunker down for the duration. We were guaranteed a room at 3pm, so when our room was no ready then, the staff started to scurry a little in order to get us settled. What we didn't know was that they put us in a room that had not been used in a while. The aircon was streaming water, leaving a large puddle of water on the floor. The toilet was running constantly - and our so-called "private" terrace had no fence at all. (Although all the other rooms around us had one). There were no towels, soap, or iron in the room. After bothering the poor man cleaning some of the other rooms around us about a thousand times and after engineering came and fixed the toilet and the aircon, we decided to unpack a few things and go down to the beach. As we leave out our back patio, something large with a 3 foot tail, hightails it into a foot-wide hole about 5 feet from our back door. Ummmmmm....
The beach was clean, the South China Sea clear - we really enjoyed ourselves. The kids were just in awe of the waves and eventually found themselves wanting to go in deeper and deeper until I had to pull them back. It was a lovely evening and we decided to go wash off in the pool. So back to the room we go to get the goggles. The back door does not work because the lock is jammed from the outside, so we have to walk around the side to get back to our room. We get inside and...
The aircon has started to leak again. I bend down to the bag and drop one of the goggles so that it has scooted slightly under the bed - when I pull it out, part of it is covered with cigarette ash. B tells me to take the kids to the pool and he will meet me there after getting engineering to come to fix the aircon again.
He finally comes to meet us there and tells us that we need to get back to the room to pack, he got the hotel to switch us to another newly renovated room.
It's all the way on the other side of the resort and by this time it is also 8pm and we have not had dinner. The lizards and the beetles are out in full force and one decides to dive-bomb right into the front of my bathing suit. As I scream and drop EVERYTHING I am carrying, I freak the kids out enough that S is frozen in his footsteps. I finally manage to extract the beetle (the size of my big toe) and we make a beeline for the room. After we get into the room and shoo out 2 more beetles, S is finally calming down, I am nursing my wounds, V is starved and B is trying to figure out how much we would have to pay to change our ferry reservation to leave the next day. Each room carries a can of bug spray in it - if that shouldn't have told us anything. We notice that our lock doesn't work on the door and the safe will not close - we again wait for engineering to come and help us out.
We decide to tough it out and B sprays the opening for all the rooms with bug spray. We order room service and settle in for the night - although by this point none of us are feeling the least bit "settled".
The next morning, we wake up and get ready for breakfast when B says "I don't have my glasses on, can you come tell me what this is on your slippers?"
OMG, OMG, OMG... It's some sort of reddish brown millipede looking thing that is about 1 inch fat and 8 inches long. We DOUSE it with bug spray and B gets it out of the room. We never showed the kids - which probably was a good thing. We navigated through the dead and slightly alive beetles (the lizards had gone home for the day) and get breakfast. By the time we venture back to the room, the staff has done an amazing job of sweeping up the beetles.
We take the resort bus to a little place called Pasar Ole Ole to do a little local souvenier shopping. Hot day - but it was nice overall.
We had another amazing day on the beach and saw the people that we knew. We decided to meet for dinner at their villa. We had a great time at their place and came indoors when the beetles and lizards started coming out again.
We left feeling as if we had made some wonderful new friends and braced ourselves to get back to the room through, as B put it, "National Geographic". S freaked out again and I carried him half way to our room - but I seemed to think it was much easier that time back. No issues that night with critters.
The next morning we pack, relax (it's raining cats and dogs), and get ready to check out to go home. We have major issues with our bill and decide that although we truly had a good time - our relaxing vacation didn't turn out to be so relaxing. Although I hope we will go back to Bintan, we will never stay at that hotel again and have decided to write the manager.
All in all, we are HAPPY to be back home and spend the rest of the week here in Singapore. If you ever plan a trip to Bintan - we can definitely tell you where NOT to stay ;-)
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