In Continuum.

South By South East: The Cons

As do all tourist spots, there are tourist traps being sprinkled all over the place. Even in Singapore, it is possible to be charged at prices that are considered to the locals as being outrageous. But that is the kind of thing they do anyway, because they always treat tourists as rich and idiotic travelers all over the world. It takes a smart tourist to evade these traps, but it also takes a lot of efforts and researches too. Not a lot of people are willing to do that before a holiday trip, which is why it is not unusual for the tourists to bring a lot of cash with them wherever they go. However, that wasn't exactly the case for us when we first thought of the idea of going to Bintan a little more than a week ago. I mean, the thought of Indonesia automatically translated to cheap-everything. We didn't bring a lot of money with us, and we certainly did not expect the tourist traps to be as ridiculous as the ones in Singapore. But they were to our dismay, they certainly were.

This is probably the biggest con on the island, amidst all the other ridiculous cons. The moment you step onto the buses and requests to be taken to town, they will take you to a place called something-Oleh Oleh. It sounds like a welcoming place, but it certainly wasn't the case at all. They take you right out to the entrance of the place, and then ushers you into the town center. By the word 'town', you would expect people walking about and minding their own businesses, with streets bursting with life, right? But this is what something-Oleh Oleh had to offer - nothing. It was a temporary town built from nothingness by the locals just to contain tourists, and the shops were replicas of the other. The streets were completely empty when we arrived, with local music playing from a distant corner of the village. We were really hungry by the time we arrived, and there was a desperate search for restaurants. But everywhere we went, the menus were ridiculously expensive with everything being priced at two digit sums. It was crazy, the way a simply plate of local dish would cost fifteen dollars, but being in the middle of nowhere we didn't have much of a choice. We chose a random restaurant at the end of Bintan's 'Orchard Road', and settled ourselves in - for the big con.

There is something strange going on on the island then, and it all seemed like a practical joke of giant proportions. If you are going to order from the menu, it'd be wise to ask when food they have before ordering. Because out of the ten dishes that we picked, about eight were not available for one reason or another. It might have been because of the fact that they were cheaper food, but for some reason they just didn't have it. We were forced to eat the more expensive food around, and they didn't seem inviting at all. The waitress smiled at us with much awkwardness, and we matched that with our own forceful grins. We ordered our food that didn't taste all that great, and they were in pathetic proportions with that kind of prices. Shen was probably the worst off in the whole con at the restaurant. He ordered cheese and ham sandwiched that didn't have cheese and ham inside. Replaced by those were vegetables and probably just those all over the place. It was later replaced by a hotdog, which he tried to chow down until he found strange gooey substances underneath the bread. It was a strange meal, and the lot of us were confused.

The worst part of this con is the fact that there is a hawker center just around the corner from where we were, and they were selling food at ridiculously cheap prices. But that place is meant for the locals and off the main road, which must be why it receives little attention from the stupid tourists such as ourselves. Everything was cheaper there, and everybody ordered their second round of lunch with the locals staring at us and thinking," Damn, they found out about this place". That is just one part of the con, and it gets worse throughout the day.

We wanted to try to go-karts which was listed in the brochure, and it was listed that it costs just a little over twenty dollars for a ride. So the lot of us jumped at the chance and took a free ride down to the go-kart center and away from the central of cons. Only, we weren't aware that it was merely a jump from the boiling water into the fire, because it was yet another tourist trap altogether. In the end, twenty eight dollars is not for a single hour ride, but a ride that last merely ten minutes. A twenty minute ride would cost forty odd dollars, and a half an hour ride would cost you somewhere in the vicinity of fifty dollars. We were appalled by the rates, and turned back immediately from the go-kart arena. I started to wonder how in the world they managed to run the place for as long as they have, with the riders of the go-karts being the owners themselves most of the time. That questioned troubled me throughout the day, and remained the same when we tried to rent rackets for badminton games.

It is commonplace to rent courts even in Singapore, but renting balls and rackets as well - that's something new. We certainly didn't expect to pay for the rackets and the balls, but that was exactly what we were asked to do at the counter. Something about the idea had little appeal to us, but it was a choice between renting those rackets or to do nothing at all for the rest of the day. So there we were, at the basketball/badminton court with three other Singaporeans, playing those games in the middle of the holiday resort. It was rather odd for us to be doing so on a holiday trip, but at the same time it mattered little to us. I mean, it was better than doing nothing at all.

A lot of other things were meant to trick tourists into spending unholy amount of money there. Jet-skis cost forty dollars for about fifteen minutes, and that to me is just unreasonable. That is not to mention the price of the food at the hotel - though they were good and in good quantity, they sure were expensive. It was strange to think that the island had such a cheap accommodation, and yet everything else is so expensive. I guess this is the classic case of one gaining some and losing some, and we were sure losing a lot in our wallets. By the end of the first day, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it till the end with the amount of money I brought. But what the hell, it didn't matter very much then anymore. The thing about holidays - I've come to realize - is that you should stop wondering about how much money you've spent. Because that alone is capable of spoiling the whole holiday for you.

From then on, we tried to spend as little as possible, staying away from the expensive activities and doing everything else. The free coupons offered a free snorkeling session in the bay, a free coconut and eighty balls at the driving range. Those didn't appeal to us at all, and what did appeal to us was the archery, but every arrow that costs two dollars. Which was why, we stopped thinking about the money and tried to have fun our own way - to be in the company of one another. And that to us - at least for me - was the most important aspect of it all.