we are all born mad. some remain so.

back from bintan!!

bintan's not very different from malaysia actually. and it was the fact that i got to spend some time with my huiguan friends in some place away from all the buzz that made the trip quite a nice experience...

we met at around 7.45 at bedok mrt and took cabs down to tanah merah ferry terminal. as expected, our 3 infamous drinkers couldnt let slip the chance of getting SOMETHING from DFS...

they got held up by the bintan officials who detained them and their 36cans of heineken eventually. they got off the hook (there wasnt any hook to begin with) by er, $114987, rupiah.

we took the ferry "wavemaster8" for a 2hours ride to bintan...

i got the middle seat... could have mistaken this view to be one from the plane... but the sea is a dead giveaway.

we cramped into a van that took us from the ferry terminal in bintan to our kelong destination...

a back seat view

reached the shore

this was the bridge we had to walk along. 800m boardwalk! see the kelong at the, er, VERY far off background? yep thats the kelong.

reached the kelong!

here's the view FROM the kelong back to shore... the stretch of trees is it! thats how far it is!

canoed! second time ive ever canoed since sec1... the rest went on the banana boat. check out the waves we met during this monsoon season while canoeing

this was taken from the kelong, the waves were like minature tsunamis in the sea. came right at us... fantastically frightening. SHIOK!!!

played air rifles:


and foosball:


and mahjong:

while miss world was being crowned, i was, too, a newly crowned mahjong princess :D

the "swimming pool" at the kelong is:

a partition. swimming in there definitely makes one feel like an inbred fish about to appear on the dinner table.

speaking of the dinner table...

again...


and again...



and that's just three of six meals we had!! *looks at tummy*

on our way back to the ferry terminal, i took some photos of the buildings there... shall not bore you all with the stuff intellectually, so i'll just feature one interesting house i went past:

this is what i call, a treehouse. they made use of the trunks of 2 trees as the main columns, ingenious!

then back again to singapore... a nice goodbye from bintan: