Buger King

I title this blog quite appropriately "Buger King" because at 9 pm Sunday that is exactly where we found ourselves. After a long weekend vacation at the popular resort destination, Bintan, Indonesia, there was no where else, or nothing else really that any one of us wanted except to be in the Home of The Whopper. Let me explain...

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To celebrate our first official weekend in Singapore, us internationals decided that a trip abroad was in order. Left with the task of organizing, planning, and recruiting, the trip was to have some specifically Sarah Howell, or if not, girl flavour: i.e. one girl, eight boys.
So, one plus eight we set off on Puke Ferry to our exotique beach getaway.

Upon arrival, all thoughts of exoticism flew out the window. For those laboured in the backpacker travels-- you know what I'm talking about... 'nough said (Except for Shit River-- more on that later).

You may wonder, as I did and still do, what it's like to be a girl travelling with a Troop of young men. Like anything, there are high's and low's. (On a side note: luckily The Island was not void of other beach-seeker-girls.) However, normals aside, I truly don't think our weekend would have unfolded the way it did given the prescence of more estrogen...

I have never in my life counted minutes till death:

Unfortunately this weekend we were all reminded of the power of the Ocean. What started off as a peaceful afternoon sun bathing on some rocks by the sea, turned into a frantic rescue mission for Bass.
Three of the boys had ventured out past the Break in chase of the waves. The mid-day change of the ocean's tides suddenly caught them off guard. Before they knew it, things had gotten really real, real quick. Bass was unable to outswim the under swell. Too fatigued to fight the current, he had to be held up by the other two (also coincidentally trying to hold themselves up).
From the time the others on the beach had clued on to drowing Bass to the time that Bass was pulled out of the water something like fifteen minutes had gone by. Under normal circumstances, this would have been an embarrasing time lapse on our part, but we had picked a near deserted spot to swim.
Seeking out the locals was our first obstacle, then getting them to understand us without speaking our language was our second. We were given one life jacket. For three guys. As Will set out in the water with the one and only safety floatation device we had, I hoped on a motor bike with one of the locals, Bikini and all (or nothing.... keeping in mind this is a Muslim country), in search of other life vests.
By the time I returned with the only other two life vests for miles, Will had managed to hand Bass the life jacket and luckily the others were able to muster up enough strength to swim past the swell and back to shore.
I walked back onto the beach to find four boys, panting, but luckily, beached.

While holding the two extra life vests I thought to myself what a mess this would have been if help had only arrived now. I could see on Bass' face that he had been counting minutes.


Then, one fell down:

On our last morning some of the boys had decided to rent motorbikes and ride around the Island. Somehow-- and yet unexpectedly at this point-- within the first half hour of their departure Mike comes roaring back for help: Shane had crashed his bike.

After setting off, riding along the one and only paved road on the Island, taking in the fresh air and warm sun Shane had decided to follow his instinct: drive on the Right side. Unfortunately, by the time the others had realized he was on the Wrong side of the road a car surprised him around a bend. Looking to avoid head on collision, Shane swerved off the road, skidding bike and body.
Damage: arm scrapes, wrist cuts, toe sores, and knee flesh.
Overall, it could have been worse. Like Bass' incident, much worse. The big crack on Shane's helmet said it all.

Dear Yenny, you would have be proud of me now. I got past the big flab of flesh just dangling off his knee, along with the swarm of flies feeding off his open sores, and proceeded to disinfect and bandage him up. My tools: Alcohol and Band-aids. Definitely a patch-work opperation.

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Overall, our first weekend away wasn't all scary. But sitting in the comfort Buger King we promised one another that this was a learning curve, and that from here on out our trips would be safer, saner, and filled with much more estrogen for both our sanity and safety.

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Some comedic relief:

At 'Backpackers Paradise' there was a creek that separated us from the other resorts down along the beach. When we first arrived, its smell was a background issue and we plugged through its waters willingly and excitidly without much hesitation over to the other side. Soon enough, however, we slowly clued in that this creek was where our bathroom issues were being flushed...


With the simplicity of trudging across now out of the question we turned to Plan B: long jump.

You would see various individuals at various points and times throughout the day setting up for the jump: knees bent, toes dug into the sand preparing for the launch up into the air and, hopefully, over on over to the other bank. You would know right away if they had succeedded or not based on their cry of success or utter disgust.

One night, some one had started plan C: catapulting across with a bamboo stick.
If you have ever seen or touched a bamboo stick you should be thinking to yourself right about now: Brilliant! Absolutely fucking brilliant-- bamboo is highly inflexible! So you can imagine how many cries of disgust this idea brought with it...

Onto Plan D:
Coming back from a party late one night I decided to lay out the bamboo stick as a walking plank connecting the two banks. Good Idea: Most people have enough balance to walk the couple feet and bamboo is fairly strong.

Or so I thought...

While trying to fall asleep that night to the peaceful humming of the tides I suddently hear a loud crack, then a plop, and then a "Oh-HHH-h Shit!"

Poor soul.
I hope the lack of showering facilities didn't encumber his night too much...