Indonesian smiles - Bintan

A Dutch, a Finish and two Spaniards dancing a Korean song during a buddhist celebration on an Indonesian island? That sounds really random but... let’s start from the beginning!

Bintan was the first trip of our 4 months exchange program in Singapore. Only 45 minutes away by ferry, this island receives many Singaporean tourists during the year. The north of the island is actually leased to the government of Singapore and it’s quite touristy, with many expensive resorts to chill out, play golf and do some water sports. Looking for a bit more of adventure than that, we chose to go to the east. Improvisation was the motto of our trip so without booking anything in advance we just took a taxi once we arrived to the island – yeah, there’s no public transport there… - and headed east. 

Our driver Jimmy made a stop to a local food court with a fruit market where bought some cheap and sweet pineapple and we ate a local dish based on chicken and rice on a banana leaf. “No spicy, sir, no spicy!” - but hell don’t listen to them, it’s always damn spicy.

We got to a hostel in a very calm zone in the east coast next to white-sand beaches and coconut palm trees.  Authentic Indonesian wooden bungalows with a bed on the ground and a mosquito net, cold showers and a ‘toilet’ – a hole in the ground- and a pancake breakfast for less than 12 euros was not bad. There were no tourists to be seen around the whole place so we enjoyed the calm of the beach and its soft breeze that afternoon swimming in the warm sea, jogging around the long beach and relaxing with a cold beer on the hammocks during the magic sunset.

The second day of our trip began with the doubt if we should take a taxi to Gulung Bintan Mountain to do some trekking or if we should rent some motorbikes to explore on our own the entire east coast of the island. Since there was no driver available, we took the second option. Two cheap old scooters were more than enough to discover the secrets of the island. Overcoming the initial difficulty of driving on the left lane instead of how we’re used to do it in Europe we began our incredible route following the east coast. We stopped every time we saw a nice beach, a temple, a fisherman village… Oh my god THAT was FREEDOM! 

After over 30km way we got to a village called Kawal that was celebrating a religious party. It was a once-a-year Buddhist event in which every citizen of the village took part. We started walking around, everyone looking at us with surprised faces, and we met local people that insisted in inviting us to some food for lunch. We appreciated their hospitality and we enjoyed some noodles surrounded by all the smiling kids that came to see the ‘western foreigners’.

Suddenly ‘Gangnam Style’ sounded in the background and we made a short performance of the dance just for fun, but everyone was cheering us, laughing and giggling. Then they introduced us the ‘Big Boss’ of the village – they called him this way because he is the owner of the company that employs almost everyone there – and he told us they were very happy to have us there as special guests, insisting that we should come at night again because the big party was later on. We told him we only had the motorbikes was the afternoon and we couldn’t come but he told us he would pick us up by car… 30km away in our hostel!

So there we were, after having visited the rest of the east coast of Bintan, back in the village of Kawal. Yet it didn’t seem to be the same place: over 1000 people were sitting around the lightened red Buddhist temple in front of a colourful stage where live concerts – with actors dressed in shiny strange suits singing- were taking place. They invited us to a wonderful dinner with rice, shrimps and spicy meat and they started bringing us beer and wine – from Valencia! They brought us to the temple and taught us how to pray and the entire ritual – consisting in lighting wooden sticks and leaving them in different holy places of the temple.

Suddenly ‘Big Boss’ came to us with a suspicious smile on his face… somehow we knew we would have to do something in return to their generosity. But…we didn’t expect to do it having to dance!!! Yeah, ‘Big Boss’ asked us as a special favour to come out on stage and dance ‘Gangnam Style’ in front of ‘his’ village! So after some initial useless bargaining efforts – “Oh no, I’m definitely NOT going to dance Gangnam in front of so many people” - we finished the remaining wine and went up on stage to be crowned as the ‘kings’ of the party! We did our best and the delighted crowd cheered us, taking pictures all the time, laughing and giggling, as they probably had never seen a Dutch, a Finnish and two Spaniards dancing an Asian song in Indonesia before… Of course not, it was the most random thing we had ever done and, who knows, we’ll ever do. The only sure thing was that we would never forget it again for the rest of our lives. Yeah, the first trip of our exchange was pretty awesome!