We got up early on Saturday morning to catch the ferry at 7am from the jetty at Boom Baru. We got on and made ourselves comfortable for the three hour journey along the Musi and across the sea to Bangka. It was cool to see life along the river banks which is very industrial, also saw a few ships from Jakarta. When we reached Muntok on the island the first thing we were greeted by was bright blue sky, brilliant blue water and yellow sands. With a cool lighthouse to make it different from all those other paradise beach views. We pointed to a town on the map that looked vaguely large and decided to get a bus there. After making sure that we weren't being ripped off by the driver we were on our way.
About ten minutes in the bus came to a stop. A coffee break. This little pitstop ended up being an hour long, as apparently the driver was tired. This wasn't really a problem because it was fun to chat to the locals, practise my Indonesian and find out a little bit about Bangka. After that the bus trundled along for a further couple of hours, until we stopped again at a roadside restaurant for lunch. It was a self service affair where you could choose from multiple things to accompany your white rice. Pretty good. After lunch it was just another hour into Sungailiat, our town of choice.
The bus driver said we had to go to the police so they could help us find a hotel. The police were very friendly and excited to see us. One of them was called Welly, and one Bagus (which means 'good' in Bahasa Indonesia. He was called Good!). A guy went off to try and find us a hotel, which we stated should be between 100 and 150,000 per night. He came back with a little minibus which took us to a hotel. The hotel was definitely not in our budget so we decided to go it alone. After asking a few people for help we managed to find a place to rent a scooter and set off in search of somewhere to stay. After a while of looking we decided to venture off to find a beach. The light started to fade and we decided we would camp on the beach in Wesley's tent. It was all good apart from the seemingly infinite number of mosquitoes. I never realised how amazing the moon can look before. And it's nice to hear the sound of the waves breaking calmly on the shore. A nice accompanying sound for thinking.
The next day I found I had a message from a friend of a friend in Palembang. She invited us to meet her and a group of others at a coffee shop near Sungailiat. To find the place we asked for directions many times, each time someone gave a different answer. Eventually we found it and ate some food, very hungry after our night on the beach. We also visited one of the group members's house. We ate yet more food and just hung out, also visited a Chinese temple or shrine thingy across the road from his house. We then went to a beauuuuutiful beach, dropping the scooter back at the hire place along the way (on a little bit of a detour).
The beach was awesome. Beautiful clean yellow sand and glistening water. There were no buildings ruining the view inland. On the beach were unusual huge granite stones and prehistoric looking plants lining the beach where the sand finished and things could grow again. We spent the afternoon and evening swimming in the sea and climbing on the rocks. I'm not really a climber but all my new friends helped me gracefully (not really gracefully) get up there, and despite it being a little bit scary to be up that high, it was brilliant from the top everyone was really happy, so nice.
As it started to get dark, the moon came out again, even prettier than the night before. We good back on the motorbikes and headed to Pangkal Pinang, the main city in Bangka. We went to a roadside stall for dinner. They specialised in soya milk drinks and chicken noodles. The milk was sugary and delicous, and the noodles quite good too. My friend of a friend offered for us to stay at her house and we went back to unwind and meet her cute and crazy dog. After a nice shower we all went to sleep after a satisfyingly tiring day.
This morning I came back to Palembang on the plane, and I've done a full day at work since. It all feels like a distant memory now aaahhh. Need to go back there again! Next time Belitung, an island just to the north east. Apparently it's eeeeeven more beautiful.
