A few hours ago, I got back to Singapore from a weekend in Bintan, Indonesia. It was a last minute decision that Janene and I made on Friday, to go to Bintan with a group of about 35 fellow exchange students who are studying at our school here in Singapore. It was a really good decision to go, because we had a lot of fun, and got to meet a lot of great people.
Our journey there started with a ferry ride, which was a little over two hours long, and pretty rough. Thankfully I had gravol with me, so it was okay.
After arriving in Indonesia, we stepped off the ferry and into a blackout. Apparently the power just goes out for certain chunks of certain days, to save energy. After a few minutes, it came back on, which was pretty good timing. We stood in line for customs, and to get our temporary Visas, for about half an hour. After getting what we thought was our whole group through customs, we found out that one of the guys travelling with us had been taken to the interrogation room, and was having trouble getting into the country, because he had to have obtained a different type of Visa before going to Indonesia, and wasn't aware of this. We ended up waiting for an hour, trying to negotiate with the customs officers to let him in, which didn't do much. Then all of a sudden, all of the officers grabbed their belongings, shut off their office lights, and left the terminal, leaving us unable to get G into Indonesia. Because our ferry was the last sailing of the night, they made him (and a few other guys who decided to stay with him) SLEEP on the DOCK until the 7am sailing the next day, at which time he had to sail back to Singapore. Pretty brutal.
When we left the ferry terminal, we had to pile a huge crowd of us into an 8 person van, because the place we were staying didn't send a big enough vehicle. This would have been not so bad if we were staying nearby. We weren't . An hour later, we arrived at our resort.
Janene and I had booked our room that morning, and didn't really have any idea what it would be like. We were pleasantly surprise to be assigned to a Garden Villa, which was much cleaner and larger that the beach bungalow we thought we were going to be put in.
After checking in, everyone headed to the beach where we spent the rest of the evening, and then some, hanging out and getting to know each other. Everyone was really nice, and really easy going, and we met some great people.
The next day, we slept in a bit, had some breakfast, and then we all headed to the sister resort, where we layed on the beach, which some went banana-boating, played volleyball, played soccer, and went kayaking. We had a late lunch at the restaurant on-site, and then headed back to our resort. That night was pretty much a repeat of the night before, and it was lots of fun again. It was a pretty low-key weekend, and exactly what we needed.
Some of our friends at home call me "Soccer Mom" due to my usual preparedness, and it was a pretty appropriate name this weekend. I was literally like the school nurse this weekend, as I think I'm the only one out of all 35 people who brought any kind of first-aid kit. I bandadged, tensor-wrapped, bactrobanned, and aloe-d more people that I could keep track of. Great way to meet people, I guess. :)
Today we got the 12pm ferry back to Singapore. I can't even put into words how rough the ride was. It was really windy, just like on the way over, but the sea was very, very, very rough. So much so that the crew passed out barf bags halfway through the trip, because there were SO many people getting sick. I, again, had taken gravol, thankfully, and was able to lie down most the trip, which really helped. Janene managed to make it through okay as well, but we both didn't feel great. A few of the girls that we were with on the trip back were violently ill. Instead of the typical rocking back and forth motion you would normally expect to experience in a boat, the front of the boat (where we were) was literally lifting off the water every few seconds, and smacking back down REALLY hard. It was next to impossible to walk on the boat, without getting thrown into someone, and there were times that I thought we'd never make it to shore. It was probably the longest 2.5 hours any of us had experienced in a looooong while.
When we got out of the ferry terminal, we felt like we had gotten home, just like when we returned from Thailand. It's amazing how different Indonesia is from Singapore, even though it's only a few hours away. Indonesia is pretty third world, and Singapore is so developed, they are literally worlds apart.
Before we left for Bintan, we booked our 10-day Chinese New Year trip to Vietnam, which we leave for on Thursday afternoon. We fly into Ho Chi Minh city, then we'll make our way up north, and end at Hanoi, where we fly back to Singapore. I'm really looking forward to seeing Vietnam, and this is a great chunk of time to be able to really see it.
I finally somewhat figured out my class schedule. It's not my ideal schedule, since it now involves class on Thursday mornings (and I was going for a Mon-Wed sched), but it'll have to do. The classes I'm taking are: Services Marketing, Malay, Corporate Lending, Financial Risk and Insurance, and Strategic Management. I was hoping for some more "fluff" courses than what I got, but there's not much I can do about it.
So, that's about it, it was a really fun weekend that I'm glad I took part in. Janene and I got to be-friend people from all over the world, which was awesome. I'm sure we'll travel as a big group like that again.
xoxox Terra
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