We were on our way to Penyenget Island which is a historically significant place as it was the original capital of the Riau rajas. On our way there, we noticed a reasonable sized city on the main island of Bintan and decided to check it out being in need of some fresh food.
The harbour at Tanjung Pinang was a really busy place with ferries coming and going all the time, barges and tugs, fishing boats and little boats filled with people going to and from Penyenget. We found a place to anchor in the river that was fairly out of the main traffic. The dingy was quickly launched and we headed to town in search of beer and food.
We found both at a brand new open air food hall. These kind ladies whipped up an assortment of tasty items for our dinner...chicken satay, fried rice, fried chicken and some water spinach. A couple of beers and we were really pleased with ourselves for finding this place. We'd been away from any sort of city since our shopping run into the city on the island of Belitung...we eat well on Basanti, but it is always nice to have a break from cooking.
We needed a number of provisioning items on Basanti and we thought that this town would be a good place to find some of the things we need. No big shopping malls that we could find, but plenty of grocery stores around town for the staples like beer, rice, canola oil, toiletries and various items. Prices were good and the convenience factor was high as we had a pretty nice place to tie our dinghy on a floating pontoon.
Around town was a pretty interesting mix of traditional and modern ways of doing things.
Fishing gear
Egg delivery
KFC had this shiny fleet of delivery scooters.
We finally found the markets in town, they were great. I haven't put so many photos here because you all must be getting tired of photos of the markets...sorry, but they are such lively, colourful and fun places and we always take lots of photos. Here was a fellow mixing up curry pastes and chillies...the whole place smelled delicious! Yum.
Eggs and bananas...so many different varieties of bananas here to enjoy.
Again, the fresh chickens. The fellow next to Phil is the chicken chopper and the lady helped us find some ripe pineapples. She speaks English, has a brother living in the Netherlands, and was an enthusiastic guide around the markets. Phil and I were the only westerners there, we only saw a handful of other westerners the entire time we were in Tanjung Pinang...the locals could not be friendlier or more helpful...whenever we have some trouble with the language, someone turns up with another person who speaks some English.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, we were on our way to see the historical Penyenget Island. After a couple of days of shopping and enjoying "city life" we finally got over there...raced over in the dinghy for a couple of hours, it wasn't far.
Once there, we hired this fellow to take us around to the sites. It wasn't far and we'd planned on walking, but at least we found everything this way and it was pleasant being driven.
We visited a few cemeteries of the rajahs...generally from the 1800's so not centuries old or anything.
...and a palace...
Saw this little fellow walking down the road, check out his fish!
At another cemetery some other tourists asked us to be in the photos. How funny! Like I mentioned, we (western tourists) seem to be something of a rarity here, and lots of people asked us to be in their photos... the random western tourists in holiday shots.
This big sulphur mosque can be seen from a distance away and is the most impressive of the sites on the island.
Our little tour ended and this lady was nearby making some sort of fritters which we tried, not bad.
Time to get back to Tanjung Pinang for one more meal and a cold beer. Tomorrow we plan to get up early and get to the marina at Nongsa Point, Batam.
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