North Bintan Tour (part 3)

We hopped back inside the car nearing the end of our North Bintan Tour. Which tour?? I know right? re = wind = > part 1 and part 2. Seriously? you're planning to click those parts?. Don't get back to me to say I haven't warned you! haha.

I felt so relieved and pure love gushing all over my veins for our tour guide/driver when I found myself on the above photo of our next stop.. . my dear guide/driver, I forgive you and willing to forget the wasted hours we spent on those  and these boring places.  (*/%$#@?) eeerm, sorry wrong image. This one belongs to another tour which I'll share a post on it later. whaaaaaat??? grrrrr back.




Instead I found myself ... in the market area of my hometown???




Hello, wake-up!!! You ( yes me!! ) in Bintan, Indonesia. . not in Quezon Province, Phils. Clear?? Ok.




The tour guide pointed us to this alley and said we go check the beautiful scenery. Right away I doubted his suggestion but we went anyway.

Whattaf? The gas odor was so offensive and saw nothing but a tiny dirty boat embarking at the seaside. It was so not scenic and undeserving of a shot, hence we didn't take a single photo of the sea.




So as just to gain something out of this scorching noon in this alley to a sea, I asked my brother to take this photo of me infront of this house which I thought was the only one that had character.

We ran back to our rented car which was parked infront of these stores. I wonder which part is this of our itinerary. At this point_ we were supposed to be in a town- Tanjung Uban or in a shopping center- POO. This must be the town cos what on earth would I shop here (if this was the shopping center)??? Eggs, dried beans,dried chilies, dried fish??? I didn't get here to do my marketing for my kitchen, helow!!!

But our next and last stop was the Chinese temple, that's why I got confused. I should have had asked the guide, I know right. But I had lost my interest in this tour early on our first stop that I almost slept all the way through.

Our final stop was a Chinese Temple. Again, this one was so disappointing. Try to take the Dora (pink and red) paints of this flat structure and you get what? a rectangular structure! Forgive me, it's just that we all see how grand Chinese temples are and this one was surprisingly very flat compared to those I've seen.

In fairness it had the necessary elements which are usually present in a big temple. Only, here were small versions.

This would pass as an altar (?, don't know how is it being called in a Chinese temple) of a usual temple, even though the Buddha is of small version. .

. .  but on a bigger picture, this is how it looks. Set-up in a hall. Always, the kindness of the Indonesians struck me most.Never without a sincere smile, the staff of this temple pointed to us the back door towards another temple.

Surprisingly, there was another temple on a higher ground.

This seemed to be the main temple. Not sure. No one spoke English there and neither we could understand the Chinese characters written around.

Buddhas here were larger and seemed to be more permanently looking than the first temple which at this point I assumed was a reception temple, if there's such a thing:))

Outside I saw another temple. .

. .still under construction, across two roads away and it's definitely not a Chinese temple. Most probably a Muslim mosque and definitely not included in our itinerary.




Here ends my North Bintan tour. So boring in many ways but it was still an experience I would surely have fun looking back. At the very least, I was able to collect some glimpses of this Bintan Island in Indonesia.