Sailing – South China Sea to Batam

We happily left Pontianak behind – without a backwards glance – as we began our journey across the South China Sea. We soon arrived at Pulau Pengiki-Besar.

We arrived late in the day and were promptly visited by the island’s people and invited to shore. We were tired, hungry and just wanted to rest. So we told the visitors, “besok pagi kita akan mengunjungi desa” (tomorrow morning we will visit the village).

We got up early and began our chores, thinking we’d finish them before heading to the village. As soon as I started the washing, the first of many visitors arrived. They kept coming all morning in twos, fours and we had a group of twenty children in the end! Chatting with all the visitors slowed down getting our chores done, and we ended up having a bit of lunch before heading over to the village in the afternoon.

Once ashore, the children took us to their teacher, who spoke some English (she was learning English as she taught it to the kids). The teacher and the village children took us to the school for a look. We were then invited to play volleyball and swim (which they do every afternoon). Neither Dwayne nor I are very good at volleyball, so we watched instead.

The next day we continued our journey across the South China Sea towards Batam. Once we crossed and had reached the area around Pulau Lingga, it was just day hopping from island to island. We enjoyed the water, the islands and the snorkelling, knowing that soon we would be back amongst the brown waters of the built-up towns and cities. Our best snorkelling was at P. Penohlaut and a tiny little cay not far from it. Heaps of clownfish!

We spent a couple of nights at Pulau Benen. This place has a small village and accommodation (they called homestay), popular with people from Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. There is an excellent little warung on the pier where we ate dinner and chatted with the proprietor, family and friends.

We spent some time exploring the island on foot, and that is when we met Mr Johnny and Unis. Mr Johnny worked in Tourism at the “home stay”, and Unis was in the Navy. Unis had an office on the wharf. Neither could speak English, so I was translating for them and Dwayne. We asked Unis what he did at work (what does the Navy do on this little island)? I’m not sure that he could understand what I was asking, and we could not understand what he was saying, so we still have no idea what he does all day. He did say he watches… Watches what, I don’t know.

Mr Johnny and Unis wanted to visit our boat. We took them to Thorfinn for a coffee before returning to lunch at the warung, where Mr Johnny joined us for some nasi goring.

As we got closer to Batam, we decided to spend a few hours on the beach cooking up the last of our Aussie sausages and sliced potato. We enjoyed a traditional Aussie BBQ complete with coleslaw, beer and bubbly!

We stopped at a few more places before finally reaching Batam. Our last stop was a tiny little island near P. Bakau.

Next up… Batam, and we catch up with some Aussie sailors!

Like this post? Please share or pin using the image below… thank you!