Customer Travel Tips for Bintan Island

Customer Travel Tip: Go with a lot of friends otherwise you will get bored because there is nothing to do...

Liked: Close to Singapore

Disliked: Expensive, beaches not beautiful

Customer Travel Tip: Exchange about $40 into Rupiah before you go to the island, that's all you would really need (for a few govermental things, like the visa). Everywhere accepts Singaporean currency, and it would be a lot easier to just use that instead of constantly converting between Rupiah and sing. It probably is worth it to check it out once, especially with how close it is to Singapore, but I am definitely not going to return to this island.

Liked: When the beaches are nice, they are really, really nice. The seawater is a crystal blue, the sand is pure white, and out in the distance you can see small, palm tree islands. There are also an incredible amount of cultural buildings there. There are more temples, shrines, mosques, and ruins than you can shake a stick at. Just driving across the countryside, I had the cab driver stop every once in a while so I can gape at these marvelous buildings.

Disliked: To get from one place to another was a real hassle. The taxi drivers, knowing you are a tourist, are always trying shake some extra money out of you. I always made sure to establish a price before I got into the vehicle. And speaking of price, dealing with money was very problematic. People on the island accept Indonesian Rupiah, Singaporean Dollar, and the US Dollar. However, exchange rates seem to change between every place I went to, and I had to constantly use my calculator on my phone to make sure I was wasn't getting ripped off. Almost no one spoke English, making it very hard to communicate. Bintan is a very tourist-unfriendly place, and it ended up being an unnecessarily expensive weekend.

Customer Travel Tip: For women: do not dress too lightly. Be careful about prices, many people will want to take advantage of your lack of knowledge of the country and the currency

Liked: Scooter rent easily and good roads, beaches, nice and helpful people most of the time

Disliked: Some people not very nice, and staring at my girlfriend. Dishonest people in a little restaurant in Tanjung Pinang (no price given before eating, then price more or less given and money back not correct...)

Customer Travel Tip: backpacking

Liked: relaxing atmosphere

Disliked: No

Customer Travel Tip: Look for good beach side resorts, with full coverage on water activities.

Liked: quite, value for money. Relaxing. good sightseeing and water activities.

Disliked: Nothing actually.

Customer Travel Tip: None

Liked: Relaxing

Disliked: Limited options for food outside of resorts