PULAU KARIMUNBESAR, INDONESIA

2015-10-15, 22:35, JASON

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Singapore often has tiny transport ships that go to nearby islands in Indonesia. Popular tourist destinations usually include Bintam and Batam, but we decided to go a bit less touristy and hit up this random island we found off of Wikivoyage. Sidebar: if you've not heard of Wikivoyage, check it out. It's like Lonely Planet but constantly updated and useful what?!

The cruise leaves in the morning and comes back. Maybe not a cruise, more like a passenger ship. We buy roundtrip tickets , and head out. Visa on arrival costs 15 bucks USD (OK -- I rescind my statement, Wikivoyage says it was 10 USD so maybe it's not constantly updated. In southeast Asia, be prepared). Paid that and got onto the island.. and then took a taxi (which ripped us off but, we played ignorant), into the more central bit.

It's pretty much not developed at all and has that old Kampong feel to it (Malaysian version of a living community.. think LOST island season 3 in the barracks). Really, there's only a few temples in terms of sites-tosee, but the cultural experience in itself is totally different and worth it. 

Everywhere we went, Thorin is hollered at. "Hello Meesterrrrr!" with that strong Bahasa R-trill. For the longest time, a very cultured Thorin said "good bye" in Bahasa Indonesia thinking it meant "hello." Silly meessterrrr!

The best part came when I ran into a Chinese man who had grown up there, who spoke an accented Mandarin but was speaking some crazy Hokkien/Teochew derivative. Apparently, he'd grown up on the island. I asked him if there were any beaches and he said it was super far away, so we decided to go get a drink on the beachside. The beachside pier was kind of lika an abandoned pier with nought much happening. So this guy leads us there in his motorbike, doing that awkward thing when you have 2 friends walking and one person on a pedestrian bike, except with a motorcycle. We follow him and we grab a Fanta by the seaside.

Later a bit, we meet this random guy and his son while having our drinks. Turns out, it was a holiday in Indonesia so they got the day off. The guy offered to give us a ride around the island and show us around to our surprise, and so that's how we got into a stranger's car. He had a kid with him too, who was interested in the "men speaking Ingerrrrrrisss!". This guy was generous enough to give us a private tour of the island and took us to both main beaches.

Super kind of him. But, the best part was, since it was durian season he invited us to his father's garden (he was talking about it the whole time as if it was some magical place) to go pick some durian. Unfortunately, we got no durian since they'd all fallen. Did pick up some huge mosquito bites though. 

The best part was when we had to go. Apparently, we had to pick up our ticket when we got there since there are only a fixed amount.. our prepaid ticket only guaranteed us having paid for it, not having the ticket. The mysterious man then says, "My brother is the manager of this harbor" and told us to just sit tight. Magically, two tickets for us open up and we hop on the boat and are glad we don't have to spend the night. Terima Kasih, mister mysterious man! You will be missed!