Nirwana

We caught the midday boat to Bintan which only took 60 minutes and as Indonesia is an hour behind Singapore we arrived at midday. Immigration was straight forward and our shuttle bus to our hotel was waiting for us.

We’re staying at Nirwana Gardens which is a big resort made up of the main hotel (where we are) and various other villas. It’s a very self contained place with lots of different restaurants and bars, a recreational centre that includes a bowling alley, horse riding, private beaches and a water sports centre.

Our hotel fronts onto this beach and is like paradise - white fine sand and lovely blue sea, and it’s so quiet! Nirwana means a place of perfect peace and happiness, and this place really lives up to it.

We had some lunch and the poolside restaurant while we waited for our room, and once we’d unpacked we went exploring before going for a swim. We saw something in the water that was swimming very fast but it was too far away to work out what it was but we think it was possibly a snake or an eel! There are lots of monitor lizards in the grounds too, but they don’t worry me, they seem more frightened of us and run away when they see you coming, which is quite a funny sight!

Tonight we went to a Japanese restaurant for dinner which was excellent - I think we’re going to have a nice few relaxing days here.