Senin, 11 Juli 2011

Tidung Island Journey


Thousand islands, the island extending along Java sea, at just the north side of Jakarta. It is administratively a part of DKI Jakarta province. This is not a new destination for having my vacation as I had severally came visit Bidadari island, Pramuka island, and the surrounding. But one other, Tidung island is a piece of island that I haven’t heard or seen before.

It happen by a change when I was browsing, I found the advertorial from a travel agent about Tidung island promo tour with only 300,000 rupiahs per person. It's normally around 600,000. After digging deeper information I decided that in a weekend on July I must join this tour. And finally on 9-10th of July, I and my husband went there.

Same as going to Pramuka island, we reached this island from Muara Angke by a traditional ship. It took 3 hours to get there. The wave isn’t really friendly to us that cause me to have a nausea.
As arrived to this island, we were greet by our local tour guide. He handed us two bikes to go along the road from the port to our homestay. As it is a promo tour with low budget, our room is a shared room with other travelers. First agenda as per our itinerary is exploring Tidung island by bike. 

I forgot to mention that this island is actually consists of 2 parts, Tidung besar (big Tidung) and Tidung kecil (small Tidung). The name follows the size of the island. Tidung besar is the main island with dense resident and other developed facilities such as hospital, high school and fish conservation. While  the Tidung kecil is uninhabited. These islands are connected by a bridge called Jembatan Cinta (love bridge). 

Jembatan Cinta and Tidung kecil is our first destination to explore. We went there by bike. After parking the bike we took a walk to the bridge. There were so many people already standing along the bridge enjoying the view. This bridge expands along about 1 km west to east. It is made of wood, some pieces of wood were broken and some under construction. As we reached Tidung kecil, we saw people relaxing under coconut tree, drinking coconut water, taking picture or just seeing their kids playing in the crystal clear shallow water, in front of their eyes, beautiful, while I had myself a cup of coffee (my anywhere, anytime joyable drink).

As seeing people having fun on the beach, I can’t hold myself to go into the water and get wet. But it’s not too convenience to swim that time because I’m not prepared with swim clothes. So I and my husband prefer to get a canoe. The rental fee is 45,000 rupiahs for double canoe with 1 hour time, quite cheap. It’s a great experience rowing the canoe surrounding the beach. Though at first I didn’t mean to swim, but as seeing the water I finally jump from the canoe and enjoying the sea water. Other people enjoy themselves with banana boat, which can be rented with 35,000 rupiahs, some other fearless men jump from a 10 meters high bridge to the water, and some just simply taking picture in the best pose they could. 

This afternoon was ended eating roasted corn and drink coconut water, so rejuvenating.  Just a moment after it, I and my hubby bike to the west side of the island to hunting sunset. Unfortunately the cloudy sky made it not performing its golden light at its best. However we can still see a full magenta circle of the sun at this dusk.

At night we had barbeque party. Big fishes, which I didn’t know the name, and calamari were the main menu for dinner. Cause it was a bit too late to have dinner, most of us can’t take a lot too eat, beside we all felt sleepy and just wanna go sleep.

Wake up at 5 early morning I had pray and then tried to catch up the sunrise by bike. But we just remembered at 6 we should be ready to go snorkeling. I’m afraid the time is not enough for it so I just getting back to the room and prepare for snorkeling. This is actually the agenda I like the most. It’s been long time I haven’t do snorkeling after last time I had in Belitung island. This time we both and other 7 people were taken by a small boat to Payung island (Umbrella island Eng.). It took about 40 minutes to here. The trip to this place worth the underwater scene that we enjoyed through our goggles. I was a bit upset to see some reefs got damages. It looked like caused by boat anchor or some foot steps on it.  Nevertheless, we can still found colorful reefs, vegetations and fishes that looks amazing and refreshing our mind.

Satisfied with snorkeling, we go back and took shower in the homestay and prepared to get back to Jakarta. I actually wanted to take more pictures but time was not compromising. We return by ship to Jakarta at 12am.
This is a journey that I wanna redo again someday.