With Ellen and Sharon leading the way - we took the Penguin ferry to Tanjung Pinang, not to be confused with Sharon's home town (Penang). Below are the GPS tracks for out trip - to the east of Batam in the morning and west of Batam in the evening. About a 2 hour ride each way.
GPS Visualizer provides some neat tools for converting from GPS file formats to Google Earth / Maps format. Here is a presentation with Google Maps. The map is interactive and you can click and drag and magnify to see the correspondance between the GPS tracks and Google's satellite imagery.
The blue line is from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal to Tanjung Pinang via the direct route - south east to Bintan. The red line is from Tanjung Pinang to TM Ferry Terminal by the scenic route - south of Batam to the east and then up to Singapore and North east to Tanah Merah.
A Google Earth view of our track up the Snake river and ships in the bay
A view of the Bintan mountain - where I took the panorama (near the bottom of this page)
THe photos of the trip: - leaving Singapore, and ships everywhere
Passing a ferry returning from the north coast of Bintan, a weekend get-away place for many Singaporeans.
Indonesian coast guard
A large ship and a small ferry boat
Entering the bay - a ship
Here is Bintan
Leaving the ferry terminal and walking out to the main street. It is clean - as spelled: CLEAN.
We picked up our return ferry tickets then went for lunch. Edy, our guide and organizer picked very nice place for a typical Indonesian lunch. The main idea is no menu. The restuarant team brings you a tray of different dishes. You choose the one's you want and that is how you are charged. An alley on the way to lunch
Here is our lunch with the plate-based menu.
After lunch we headed to another dock where Edy had organized a small boat for us - and here is Rainbow row
Our ride from the Bintan dock into the bay, up the snake river, then back to China town, then to the island (Bentang?) and then back to Bintan.
We enterer what I call Bintan Bay. Filled with ships, boats, micro ferrys, you name it - its there
A cargo something
And multi modes of travel
The hill where I took the panorama photos (near the bottom of this page)
An interesting ship
And a ferry boat
with a friendly wave
As we moved up the snake river, we passed a beach home - of sorts
From the other side
Here is Sharon, Ellen and Edy
These guys had a water problem -
And an empty tree
A crab with a red claw
A black crab
The Chinese Temple after the crab place
These painting show Chinese hell - I was told. The punishment for whatever
More paintings
The inside
from another angle
and a small room to the right
Crabs with curious eyes wide open
Edy took us back to Bintan bay - and we passed more boats
Boats at the dock
The vege man
A Thai vessel - captured
Next - we docked and walked through China town
A bit of reconstruction
A bean and shops
Then passed mini-Venice, at low tide
This was a very interesting temple - built under part of a Banyon tree
Another view
Happy New Year and prosperity, in my best Mandarin
A Chinese temple
With a happy man
And the ladies of prosperity
Brought to you by the local Ferry company
More statues
with many hands
And a group of guys
The signs of the zodiac - starting with the rat
And back to Bintan Bay - at least that is what I call it. From here we went to Penyengat Island, a small island to the west.
We passed a fisherman
And passed under clouds
Our island tour with a next visit to Penyengat Island. Up the hill to the cannon park with cannons at the ready and made in 1842.
Looking north across Penyengat Island toward Batan
The harbor
A Malaysian style cemetary
Looking at Ellen
Ellen and her chariot
Overlooking the approaches
1842 - the date the cannon was cast
Another canon with the date stamp
Another cannon
And another
The park sign - with Texaco present - May 2001, Pulau Penyengat
Our chariots
Stopping for a cool drink
A young girl and father working on homework
The end of the day
Rainbow row at the harbor
Walking out to our boat for the ride back to the main Bintan
Returning to the main part of Bintan, Edy organized a ride around the island as well as a side trip to the top
And here is Bintan panorama from the top of the hill
There was a small restaurant at the top with a clear view of Bintan and surrounding areas. Here are some scenes
The bay - with homes built on stilts with concrete walkways
A looking to the side
These four photos were stitched using Hugin, an open source photo stitcher, to create the panorama
Looking north west - toward the ferry terminal and channel. In the distance is Batam
To the left with Bintan mountain in the background
To the right - in the background is the island with the cannon park on the top
Our team
and Bintan panorama
C. Frank Starmer