Vagabond Tales: The Curious Case Of Indonesia’s Pulau Bintan

by Kyle Ellison on

Of course you’ve heard of Bali, but have you heard of Bintan?

Of the 18,000 or so islands, which make up the archipelago of Indonesia, the same five or six names invariably pop up when it comes to Indonesian tourism. Bali, the Gili Islands, Sulawesi, Java, Flores, Sumatra … but what about Bintan?

Believe it or not, in terms of overall visitor numbers, Pulau Bintan is actually one of the highest visited and most popular destinations in all of Indonesia. Located only 50 minutes by ferry from the urban metropolis of Singapore, Pulau Bintan is a favorite weekend getaway for Singapore businessmen and their families who are looking to leave the city behind and escape to Indonesia for a few days.

The only problem with this, however, is that Pulau Bintan isn’t really Indonesia. Well, part of it is, but then there’s a whole other part that simply, well, isn’t.

Just in the same way that the island of Hispaniola is divided into Haiti on one side and the Dominican Republic on the other, Pulau Bintan is likewise divided into Bintan Resorts on one side of the border and Indonesia on the other.

Wait. Did you say Bintan Resorts? That’s not a country.

%Gallery-161966%In what can only be dubbed a politically curious case of economic colonialism, Bintan Resorts is actually a sprawling, 57,000-acre mega-resort that is essentially an extension of Singapore. There is a direct ferry from Singapore, all transactions take place in Singapore dollars, and even the electrical outlets are wired to accept Singapore plugs.

The reason this is all very strange is that Bintan Resorts is not a part of Singapore. It’s a part of Indonesia. When you step off of the ferry from Singapore, you still need to pass through Indonesian customs and obtain an Indonesian visa. After that little diplomatic formality, however, everything reverts back to Singapore and Western modernity.

Shuttles transport you from one luxurious beach resort to the next. Infinity-style swimming pools lap calmly next to thatched hut bungalows. Waiters offer to bring you a wildly overpriced can of Bintang beer, all the staff speaks English, and there are golf courses, a Club Med, and no fewer than 12 separate day spas.

Ok, so that’s not that weird, lots of islands have overpriced resort districts. What’s your point?

My point is that Bintan Resorts also has a fence around it. That’s right. A fence.

There is a massive fence surrounding the entire Bintan Resorts complex, which separates the high-paying tourists from the low-income locals. There are checkpoints when leaving the resort complex, which are akin to a border crossing. There are guards, there is a guardhouse, and there is a fence.

You know where else has a fence? The border of the United States and Mexico. Fences are not welcoming. They are divisive, and they are meant to keep people out.

Granted, putting a fence around private property is not exactly a strange thing to do. What’s strange about the fence around Bintan Resorts is that it almost seems to have nationalistic indications. While the fence inarguably draws a line in the socio-economic sand, it also appears to draw a line between two nations: Singapore on one side of the line, Indonesia on the other.

What gives me trouble is that I’m not sure if the fence is meant to keep Singapore in, or rather, to keep Indonesia out.

Again, this is all very strange, because despite there being a border on most maps, which delineates Pulau Bintan into two distinct regions, the entire island is, after all, sovereign territory of Indonesia.

So while relaxing by the infinity pool was nice for about a day, I’m not the type of explorer who is content to sit and lounge. I traveled to Indonesia to see Indonesia. I wanted to see what was on the other side of the fence.

Three days later, in the island’s capital of Tanjung Pinang, as the 5 a.m. call to prayer exploded from the minaret of the local mosque, I suddenly knew I wasn’t in Bintan Resorts anymore.

Having already spent two days outside of Bintan Resorts on the muddy beaches of the island’s eastern shore, I now found myself in the frenetic capital of 200,000 people being woken in darkness to a city already teeming with activity. A motorcycle buzzed beneath my window, the muezzin seemed only to get louder, and my hungry stomach actively growled.

It may not be the beachside massage table from four days earlier, but Tanjung Pinang was a living, breathing, Indonesian city, and I was none too happy to go out and explore it.

Ambling to the waterfront amidst a constant swarm of motorbikes, I shouldered up to a food stall for a breakfast paid for with a fistful of rupiah. Despite still being half asleep, I was awake enough to notice the sideways glances and curious stares. There isn’t much Western tourism in Tanjung Pinang, and after having spent 30 minutes on the street I still hadn’t seen another foreign face.

While waiting for my food in a red plastic chair, I was approached by a man with minimal English who simply wanted to say hello. Through the broken words and awkward pauses, I came to understand that I was the first white person he had ever spoken to.

Ever.

Nervous but thankful, after a three-minute exchange, which could barely qualify as a conversation, the man thanked me for my time and continued about his day. The rest of the morning provided much of the same.

Squeezing my way down the motorbike-clogged streets, groups of local children would giggle and yell a “hello!” in my direction.

Men waved. A few took photos. Sure, there were festering garbage heaps in the alleyways, stray cats, clouds of cigarette smoke, a foul stench, the perfect combination of diesel fumes and fish, and a cacophony of motorbike mufflers, which provided an overall soundtrack to the squalor. All in all, however, this was still a port town with some charm.

Hours before needing to catch my ferry back to Singapore and modernity, I was lucky enough to watch local teams participate in dragon boat races down by the harbor. Expertly navigating their lightweight craft, crowds cheered as a different boat took the lead and groups of schoolchildren played on the rocks. A live band performed traditional music to an appreciative crowd of local passersby as a barefoot merchant did his best to hawk a bucket full of dried fish.

Sitting back and examining the scene, I realized that here, on the other side of the fence, I was finally nothing more than a fly on the wall examining the whirlwind culture of everyday Indonesia.

Maybe, it seemed that fence around Bintan Resorts serves a different purpose; it keeps the manicured luxury of Singapore out, and the authenticity of Indonesia in.

Want more travel stories? Read the rest of the “Vagabond Tales” over here.

28 Climbers Summit K2 In One Day

by Kraig Becker on

Standing 8611 meters (28,251 feet) in height, K2 is the second tallest mountain on the planet behind Everest. It also happens to be one of the most difficult and deadliest peaks as well, which has earned it nicknames such as the “Savage Mountain” and the “Mountaineer’s Mountain.” But last week the savage was tamed when a record-setting 28 people managed to successfully summit on a single day.

Located in a remote region of Pakistan’s Karakoram range, K2 is only accessible for a brief period of time each year during the summer. Climbers usually arrive in Base Camp around mid- to late-July with the hope of taking advantage of a narrow weather window to reach the summit. In years past Mother Nature has not been so cooperative, often keeping anyone from reaching the top. Last year, only four climbers managed to climb the mountain and they were the first since 2008 when 11 people were killed in a tragic accident.

2012 has not been a particularly good year for climbers in Pakistan, as unusually cold and wet weather prevented many teams from achieving their goals. But for those climbing on K2 last week the conditions were nearly perfect for making an ascent. As a result, a record number of mountaineers were able to reach the second-highest point on Earth and add one of the toughest mountains in the world to their resume.

So far this season there have been 30 total summits of K2 with a few climbers still hoping to top out in the next few days. To put that in perspective, there were nearly 500 successful summits of Everest this past spring, which is an indication of the difference in difficulty between the two peaks. Everest may be 237 meters (777 feet) taller but K2 is orders of magnitude more challenging.

[Photo credit: Kevin Mayea via WikiMedia]

Young Tourists Killed In Vietnam In A Tragic Mystery

by Jessica Festa on

Last week, two young teachers were killed while on a weeklong trip to Nha Trang, Vietnam, in a tragic mystery.

According to news.com.au, Canadian-born Cathy Huynh, 26, and American Karin Joy Bowerman, 27, fell ill only days apart from each other. Last Monday, Ms. Bowerman was taken to Khanh Province General Hospital for respiratory failure and a zero blood pressure. Only two days later, Ms. Huynh was taken to the same hospital for shock before going into cardiac arrest and passing away.

Authorities believe the friends, who were sharing a room at the Son and Daughter guesthouse, may have been poisoned. However, police are also speculating it may have been the result of drinking too much alcohol, a theory the women’s families are rejecting.

It is not yet known if autopsies have been completed.

The case resembles an incident in Thailand last year, where four tourists and a Thai guide died in northern Thailand’s Chiang Mai region over the span of five weeks. Investigators deemed the deaths a coincidence.

[Image via Arian Zwegers]

A Traveler In The Foreign Service: How To Avoid Posts Where You Might Get Eaten Alive

by Dave Seminara on

Have you ever received a phone call from someone who was hoping to entice you to live in a country where cannibalism is still practiced? I have.

“I have a great opportunity for you in Port Moresby,” said Hollis, my State Department Career Development Officer (CDO)/used car salesperson.

I Googled Port Moresby from my office at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, and the results weren’t encouraging. And when I asked a more senior person at the embassy what he thought, his first reaction told me all I needed to know about the place.

“Papua New Guinea,” he said. “Don’t they still eat people there?”In the peculiar world of the Foreign Service, diplomats are always obsessing over their next post. No matter whether you’re in Paris or Bangui, it’s hard not to think about what’s next, thanks to the unique bidding system, where State Department Foreign Service Officers (FSO’s) typically bid a year or more in advance of taking up a new post.

The practicality of this system is that if you’re in a two or three year assignment, you typically know where you’re going next near the midway point of your tour. If you love your post and are heading somewhere dreadful next, you have plenty of time for the apprehension to build, but if you’re excited about your onward assignment it can make even the worst job or post seem bearable.

If you have a one-year assignment to a danger post, you typically bid right before or after arriving in say, Kabul or Baghdad. And since serving at a post like that gives one some serious bidding equity the next time around, nearly everyone manages to go somewhere they want after serving in conflict zones. So your ticket to Afghanistan can be tempered by a ticket to Sydney or Rome that’s already in the bag by the time you land in Kabul.

If you’re a traveler who has thought about joining the State Department’s Foreign Service, but want to know more about how likely you are to be able to live in the regions you prefer, this is a primer on what to expect if you join the Foreign Service.

First tour: FSO’s start their careers in a class called A-100 and are given a “directed assignment” to their first post. Officers can express bidding preferences but whether you get what you want is a real crapshoot. If you have a foreign language proficiency, your chances of going to that country/region are good, but don’t bank on it.

Career development officers (CDO’s) take a variety of factors into account in deciding who goes where: job/career fit, family and school considerations (i.e. they are less likely to send someone with school age children to a post with no accredited schools), health considerations (if an FSO has a family member with health issues), language ability and the timing of when the job is open versus what job and language training the person would need to fill the position.

Second tour: The second tour is also a directed assignment but here’s where things get really tricky, as far as bidding strategy goes. Junior officers can only get one full language course in their first two tours, and they have to do a consular job as well. So if, for example, you exhaust your language training on the first go around, or don’t fulfill your consular obligation, your bidding options can be severely hampered.

In my case, I was given Albanian language training prior to departing for my first post in Macedonia, and since I wasn’t proficient in any other foreign languages at that time, I could only bid on jobs at English speaking posts and jobs, which didn’t require foreign language proficiency.

The second assignment is supposed to be based upon bidding “equity.” Those who are at the toughest posts – and here, toughest is defined by those with the highest hardship and danger pay ratings – have the most equity, and should get the first pick of assignments.

But in reality, FSO’s with connections or good karma sometimes manage to float by from one good post to another while others go from bad posts to even worse ones. I loved living in Macedonia, but since it was rated as a 20 percent hardship post at the time I was bidding for the second go-around, I thought I would have plenty of equity to get one of the 20 jobs I bid on for my second tour.

But then I got the Port Moresby phone call from Hollis, who explained that I didn’t have enough equity to get any of the 20 posts I’d bid on, and would have to take my chances with the leftovers. CDO’s are very much like used car salespeople, so he was trying to push the places that no one had bid on. After weeks of wrangling, I was given Port of Spain, Trinidad, which wasn’t at all up my alley, but seemed quite acceptable compared to Port Moresby.

Mid Level Bidding: Once FSO’s get tenure, the directed assignment process is over and officers lobby and interview for jobs based on their own merit. The equity system is still in play but less so. In decades past, some FSO’s managed to specialize in one geographic area, but these days, with huge missions in Baghdad and Kabul, no one can get away without at least bidding on hardship posts, and many officers are getting sent on unaccompanied assignments in dangerous places against their will.

Tips: In an A-100 class, it’s essential to try to find out through the grapevine as much as you can on who’s bidding on what. The most important thing to gauge is what jobs everyone is putting at the very bottom of his or her list. Let’s say, for example, that nearly everyone has Khartoum as the bottom of their list, but you have it somewhere near the middle of your list. Well, guess who’s got a pretty damn good shot of spending Christmas in Sudan?

In general, you want to present bid lists that make sense and that you can defend rationally. Trying to tell CDO’s you prefer Dublin, Sydney and Prague because they have good beer in each place is a sure way to get a one-way ticket to Dhaka. And last, but definitely not least, if you have high-level connections, use them, and remember that you can always negotiate.

Bottom line: Joining the Foreign Service is a little bit like joining the military, in terms of signing your fate over to the government. It’s obviously far cushier, pays better and is less dangerous, but you can’t completely control where you go and you can get sent to places you do not want to go without your family members. If you’re flexible, adventurous and not extremely risk averse, it might be a good career option for you. But if you’re just hoping for an easy way to live in Sydney or Rome, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Read more from “A Traveler in The Foreign Service” here.

[Photos by Dave Seminara and friar’s balsam on Flickr]

Air Asia Passenger Jumps From Moving Airplane

by Jessica Festa on

I guess some people need to think their travel plans through a little more carefully. On an Air Asia flight from Miri to Kuala Lumpur, a passenger decided he did not want to be on board anymore. He took matters into his own hands and actually opened the emergency exit door, jumping out of the airplane while it was taxiing on the runway.

According to news.com.au, the drastic move caused panic among other fliers, and emergency procedures were activated.

“The raft automatically opened when the door was opened. The passengers inside the aircraft started screaming. The flight attendants immediately alerted the pilots and the plane was stopped in its track,” said passenger and Environment Department chief Siva Nathiran.

The plane was delayed for over an hour and the man, believed to be in his late 20s, was later arrested. While he was taken to the hospital, he did not suffer any injuries.

[photo via Deanster1983]