Recently, I've been to Bintan with a couple of my councilors, and it was really, really fun. Of course, it was with the primary sch kids. They were hellish! Ask Joel Lim and he can give you a simple, yet detailed, explanation. We stayed by the beach, where you could feel the breeze, and the high and low tides were of a very big difference. It was a great place! Loola Resort i think.
The first day we reached there, we started on our activites already! It was this boom net jumping, where a 2 nets were placed next to the boat, one on each side, and we climbed to the highest point of the boat and jumped down! The impact was painful sometimes, but it was really fun, not to mention that the boat was moving all the time! When i was climbing out of the net onto the boat again, i was trampled over a thousand times by the kids! Wow!! They could not climb up themselves, so Hia Ren, Wymer and Clement did alot of assisting. Of course, us secondary school guys tire out after a couple of jumps, while the kids just kept going! We had no idea where they got their energy from. We washed up and at night, it was lots of free time and planning for the CIP the next day.
Day 2 - CIP at a school in Bintan. The school was poor, facilities were bad, and they just did not have enough teachers! It was really an eye opener to see something like that in the world, with your own eyes. And yet, the kids seemed so happy, they were running around, playing games, and we too played soccer and volleyball with them! MSHS bought them some stuff with certain amount of money allocated for them, and we bought them a printer, soccer and volleyballs, and also a proper microphone, as the principal was addressing the school with such a minute one. The kids' age ranged from 7-12 (Primary Sch Age). I played volleyball with them for a while, which after joel and i just took pictures with them! The little kids just loved taking pictures. They were all hyper, smiling and you could feel that they were happy that we were there, even though we had a language barrier. We also reached out to them, trying to communicate and such, even though it was difficult. It was a heartwarming experience. As we left, we could still see them waving to us, and all of them were shouting their goodbyes, appreciative of our short visit of a couple of hours. It meant a great deal to them, i'm sure, but it also was a big eye opener and an unforgettable experience for us Singaporeans too.
In the afternoon, we had flying fox and kayaking. The difference with this flying fox was there we flew into the sea during high tide! It was fun! I made a big splash, i remember! Mrs Koh was also waiting for us in the sea, and after we secondary sch boys went, we joined her there and just enjoyed the water. It was much better than Singapore's! Haha. After that, we went on to kayaking. There wasn't much explanation, thank god i learnt enough kayaking skills from OBS to facilitate the kids. They were not paddling la. Had to paddle 2 kids around. Lol. But you could see there were having fun! That night was our BBQ night, so we had some simple bbq, and yea.. campfire! It was fun, especially learning all those npcc cheers and songs from Joel, Clement, Hia Ren, and Guan Wei. We secondary sch gentlemen also went for a night walk with the teachers, it was uneventful, however, tho we did see a rolled over frog!
Day 3 - It was the last day, and it was really a day where we just hung out, chit chat, and packed. Slacking by the beach, enjoying the water, and just taking photos. It was great... Enjoyment of company never felt better. Although, we did have one last activity, coconut tree climbing! That was AWESOME! I climbed a coconut tree, tho it was really tiring, and i managed to pick our first coconut! It was really great! Throwing it down to them was also fun! Haha! Something i'll never forget!
So after that, we went to a small shopping mall for a little shopping and lunch. Bought sweets and food. I could see joel running everywhere the mall because his pri sch partner was running everywhere! And he was pissed! LOL! The food was pretty decent, and yea... everything was cheap there! Yup... It was a really, really great. And yea.. went back to singapore on the ferry after..
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