As hubby has been working endlessly and spending less and less quality time with our little family, we decided it was time for a quick break to Bintan, a place we hadn't been before.
We had to take a 55min ferry ride from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. Little did we know how sea sick we were gonna get. The sea was just so choppy and rough and the two storey speed ferry was just rocking away. I had a hard time keeping it together (and keeping the contents of my stomach in). Luckily Caelyn fell asleep not long into the journey without much of a fuss, I think the swaying lulled her into sleep. Unfortunately coming back was worse! And poor Caelyn felt the affects of sea sickness. She put her head on my chest and started to sob quietly then grew louder and eventually cried herself to sleep. Poor thing. When the ferry reached Singapore on the way home, as it docked itself at the jetty, it started to rock so bad that I was just praying that I wouldn't chuck all over everyone while waiting to get off the boat. It was a really horrifying experience for me and I hadn't felt this bad of a motion sickness in a very long time. I could even still feel the rocking well after we had left the boat. Sadly, because of this experience, we vowed not to go back on a trip where it requires a boat to travel to (as much as we can help it).
Anyway, we had booked ourselves into the Bintan Resort Hotel which is part of the Nirwana Gardens group. This was a very last minute trip and I had tried booking thru a travel agent who told me that there was no rooms available left at this resort. So here's a lesson I learnt, just because a travel agent says a place is fully booked, it really doesn't mean so, maybe just the block they had reserved had all been snapped up already. So I went home and got online to wotif.com and surprisingly got an even cheaper offer than the travel agent. It helped that there was also a HSBC credit card offer. I then booked the ferry tickets online separately. .Here's a tip, if you want a particular timing for the ferry and it says it's all full, keep on checking because I guess like flights, there are people who drop out last minute.
We had booked for a King Standard room which was supposed to have a garden view. But we had reached there earlier and the King bedded room wasn't ready and they asked if we minded a double room - we could push the beds together so we didn't mind. Turns out that I think we were also bumped up to a Deluxe room with a nice view of the front garden and an angled view of the beach!
The rooms themselves were ok, and I think were newly renovated. But I did have 3 gripes: 1) the aircon wasn't very cold, luckily they had a ceiling fan, 2) the tiled floor was rather dirty and full of sand - tho I guess it can't be totally clean since the beach is just behind. But still, it felt like they didn't vaccum it at all, 3) for 2 guests, I think it was a little stingy of them to just provide one set of shampoo and lotion. In Desaru the place we stayed at provided 3 sets of everything for triple share. But on the upside, Bintan Resort Hotel provided toothbrushes and a razor which you don't often see being provided in hotel bathrooms these days.
Everything at the resort is priced in Singapore Dollars and you can choose to pay SGD or IDR. But if you pay by credit card it will be paid in Indonesian Rupiah. The food on the property weren't cheap but they also weren't excessively expensive thank goodness. For our stay there we managed to try 3 restaurants on property, two meals of which were buffets. Not terribly fantastic either, but edible. We were thinking of going to the Kelong restaurant for dinner but we had to wait 20 minutes for the car to pick us up and as we perused the menu displayed at the hotel, we realised it would be cheaper and turned out to be more worth it to eat the buffet at the hotel.
The staff there are all very nice. The best thing tho would have to be the infinity pool which looked out over the beach. It was just fabulous and Caelyn loved every minute she spent swimming in it.
The beach was somewhat clean because it gets cleaned everyday by some workers. They take away the washed up seaweed and wood. The sand was surprisingly very fine, however the water isn't exactly turquoise as described in the ads, but I must say it's definitely nicer than Desaru beach and much calmer than Kuta beach. The day we arrived we were lucky enough to have gentle waves which allowed us to sit in the shallow water. But the next day we saw they had put up a red flag I think to indicate rough water with bigger waves. But that didn't stop people swimming in it. The only downside to the beach was the water had big rocks in it, which made it difficult and a little scary to walk on.
All in all, it was a great getaway, just too bad about the rocky boat ride.
We had to take a 55min ferry ride from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. Little did we know how sea sick we were gonna get. The sea was just so choppy and rough and the two storey speed ferry was just rocking away. I had a hard time keeping it together (and keeping the contents of my stomach in). Luckily Caelyn fell asleep not long into the journey without much of a fuss, I think the swaying lulled her into sleep. Unfortunately coming back was worse! And poor Caelyn felt the affects of sea sickness. She put her head on my chest and started to sob quietly then grew louder and eventually cried herself to sleep. Poor thing. When the ferry reached Singapore on the way home, as it docked itself at the jetty, it started to rock so bad that I was just praying that I wouldn't chuck all over everyone while waiting to get off the boat. It was a really horrifying experience for me and I hadn't felt this bad of a motion sickness in a very long time. I could even still feel the rocking well after we had left the boat. Sadly, because of this experience, we vowed not to go back on a trip where it requires a boat to travel to (as much as we can help it).
Anyway, we had booked ourselves into the Bintan Resort Hotel which is part of the Nirwana Gardens group. This was a very last minute trip and I had tried booking thru a travel agent who told me that there was no rooms available left at this resort. So here's a lesson I learnt, just because a travel agent says a place is fully booked, it really doesn't mean so, maybe just the block they had reserved had all been snapped up already. So I went home and got online to wotif.com and surprisingly got an even cheaper offer than the travel agent. It helped that there was also a HSBC credit card offer. I then booked the ferry tickets online separately. .Here's a tip, if you want a particular timing for the ferry and it says it's all full, keep on checking because I guess like flights, there are people who drop out last minute.
We had booked for a King Standard room which was supposed to have a garden view. But we had reached there earlier and the King bedded room wasn't ready and they asked if we minded a double room - we could push the beds together so we didn't mind. Turns out that I think we were also bumped up to a Deluxe room with a nice view of the front garden and an angled view of the beach!
The rooms themselves were ok, and I think were newly renovated. But I did have 3 gripes: 1) the aircon wasn't very cold, luckily they had a ceiling fan, 2) the tiled floor was rather dirty and full of sand - tho I guess it can't be totally clean since the beach is just behind. But still, it felt like they didn't vaccum it at all, 3) for 2 guests, I think it was a little stingy of them to just provide one set of shampoo and lotion. In Desaru the place we stayed at provided 3 sets of everything for triple share. But on the upside, Bintan Resort Hotel provided toothbrushes and a razor which you don't often see being provided in hotel bathrooms these days.
Everything at the resort is priced in Singapore Dollars and you can choose to pay SGD or IDR. But if you pay by credit card it will be paid in Indonesian Rupiah. The food on the property weren't cheap but they also weren't excessively expensive thank goodness. For our stay there we managed to try 3 restaurants on property, two meals of which were buffets. Not terribly fantastic either, but edible. We were thinking of going to the Kelong restaurant for dinner but we had to wait 20 minutes for the car to pick us up and as we perused the menu displayed at the hotel, we realised it would be cheaper and turned out to be more worth it to eat the buffet at the hotel.
The staff there are all very nice. The best thing tho would have to be the infinity pool which looked out over the beach. It was just fabulous and Caelyn loved every minute she spent swimming in it.
The beach was somewhat clean because it gets cleaned everyday by some workers. They take away the washed up seaweed and wood. The sand was surprisingly very fine, however the water isn't exactly turquoise as described in the ads, but I must say it's definitely nicer than Desaru beach and much calmer than Kuta beach. The day we arrived we were lucky enough to have gentle waves which allowed us to sit in the shallow water. But the next day we saw they had put up a red flag I think to indicate rough water with bigger waves. But that didn't stop people swimming in it. The only downside to the beach was the water had big rocks in it, which made it difficult and a little scary to walk on.
All in all, it was a great getaway, just too bad about the rocky boat ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment