A Tale of Two Islands

Singapore and Karimun

You can live in a place for years and then something happens or someone mentions a certain island or place and you do not know it. It makes you realise that the more you know the less you know.
That happened when I was chafing at the bit under Singaporean discipline.

‘Let’s go to Tanjung Balai on Karimun Island,’ suggested Kia Eng.

‘Tanjung what?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘It’s an island in the Riau Archipelago. Some friends went there and said it’s a fun trip.

I checked it out. Googled it, as they say. Google gave precious little away: what information they had seemed superficial.  At least it said that we could take a ferry from Singapore, so we did.

It is a 95 minute ferry ride away on one of the slower ferries that churn round Indonesia. Arriving there, we found ourselves decades away.

Singapore has modern infrastructure. Tanjung Balai has precious little.

Singapore has modern air-conditioned buses.  Tanjung Balai has old trucks with wooden stools (if you are lucky) and the windscreen opens out in front of the driver to let air through (if you are lucky).

Singapore has excellent roads. Tanjung Balai (like most of Indonesia) has pot-holed, narrow ‘roads’. I use the word with caution.

Singapore has footpaths. Tanjung Balai has obstacle courses.

Singapore has modern, air-conditioned ferry terminals where they check you in on their computers. In Tanjung Balai they write your name on a sheet of paper.

Singapore has little garbage. The waterfront along the main road in Tanjung Balai is a continuous garbage dump.

Singapore has clean drains and tidy streets. Tanjung Balai has stinking black morasses and streets littered with garbage.

Singapore has a sense of order when you emerge from Immigration. No one screams and yells at you offering this or touting that. In Tanjung Balai the racket starts the minute they stamp your passport. You run the gauntlet. You refuse? They follow you down the street till they give up.

Singapore has well planned parks and gardens. Tanjung Balai has half planned, poorly constructed waste lands.

Singapore has taxis with metres. Tanjung Balai has taxis with loud mouths. It also has becaks.

Singapore has Long Beach seafood. So does Tanjung Balai. Which is better? Tanjung Balai’s Long Beach costs about five times less and is almost as good.

Singapore has five star hotels along with its Hotel 81s and Fragrances which can be rented for short terms. Tanjung Balai has a series of smoke filled, decaying Wismas with permanent guests offering services. To be fair, it also has some lovely little places to stay, but they are not palatial. Neither are there prices.

Singapore has no-smoking rules everywhere. Tanjung Balai has a different rule: smoke your kretek cigarettes everywhere.

Singapore has hundreds of huge shopping malls. Tanjung Balai has a few markets and one or two jam packed but fascinating department stores that would fit into the foyers of most of Singapore’s malls. Which are the more interesting? Tanjung Balai’s.

Singapore has imported beaches and a small hill (Bukit Batok) rising to 163 metres. Tanjung Balai has beautiful but undeveloped beaches and a series of mountains that rise to over 450 metres. Pantai Palawan has a few shelters, but that is it. Is it beautiful? Absolutely.

I could go on. I will not. You will, of course, want to know which one I prefer? Tanjung Balai, of course. It is vital and alive. It is everything that Singapore is not and therein lies its charm.

Consider the irony of these two islands. Fifty kilometres apart. Both guardians of the Malacca Straits. Raffles considered both as the potential site for his colony. Singapore won. Why? It is three times the sise. In any event, one is chosen by Raffles; the other is ignored. One develops to an international economic powerhouse. The other saunters along in bucolic poverty ignored by the rest of Indonesia—and unknown by most of the world.

Karimun and its surrounding smaller islands make up a Kabupaten: an Indonesian local government area. As is so often the case in Indonesia, the smaller the Kabupaten, the more important they make their officials look. Tanjung Balai is alive with massive billboards showing the governing personages in full regalia: impressive. The billboards are almost falling down in places and garbage hides the base of their support poles, but, hey, look to the heavens, not to the dirt.

Karimun seems to have a predominance of Chinese over Indonesian residents. Many of them come from other provinces. Few of them know much of their islands. For them, they work in the town of Tanjung Balai and have no idea of what lies outside.

As with Batam and Bintan Islands, the sex trade dominates but you have to know where to go. Where? The hotels, of course; and the massage parlours, most of which seem respectable enough, but only one or two are ‘unsleazy’.

We strolled around Tanjung Balai, stopping regularly for avocado juice and Es Teler. We hopped onto the mikrolets (small public buses) for Rupiah 4,000 which is around 40 Singapore cents.

We drove through some of the  kampung areas in Meral and Pasir Panjang. This place has tourist potential. The beaches are lovely, but few tourists venture out of the town. That is not surprising: they are there for the girls. In that sense Karimun and Singapore are similar: some figures show that most tourists or visitors to Singapore are found in the red-light district of Geylang. 

The island has several interesting temples most of which are in Tanjung Balai. In Merai you can find Vihara Sasana Diepa. Take your time to look at the temple drawings such as ‘General Xue and Lady Fan’ and ‘Lady Warriors of the Yang Family’.


You could try to climb the highest mountain. I tried. I failed. It goes straight up for several hundred metres along a shade-less bitumen track: not my idea of a mountain hike. Nearby is a small waterfall. You can bathe in the man-made pools built to capture the water flowing from the mountain.

Just pay your 1,000 Rupiah entrance fee and wander up a path along the river. It is spoiled by garbage, but again, anywhere in Indonesia you must focus on the plan, not the reality. If both were ever to meet, the place would be even more wonderful.

Of course, if you turned left from the car park and crossed a small bridge you could take the ‘high road’ and avoid the entrance fee. In fact, it is a far nicer walk and there is far less garbage.

A little further on from the waterfall is Palawan Beach. This place has potential—but that is all. It has nothing else, yet.

It is supposed to be a part of the free trade zone of Singapore, Johor and Riau: so far it has achieved precious little. Why? That euphemistic cover all reason: lack of transparency.

I mentioned to a Malaysian friend Din, that I had been there and he was delighted. His father had come from the island. He talked about the old days when his father and grandfather moved freely between the island and the Malay Peninsular border controls on those days were non-existent. He maintained that the locals in Karimun were more Malay than Indonesian. He might have a point. We made plans to explore it more.

Sadly, if you want to check the net for details on this fascinating island, you are directed to sex sites. That is not why I like it. I like the place because it is not Singapore.

In Karimun the people are friendly. In Singapore, friendship is there, but not overt. Singapore is driven by order and control. In Karimun the people and the place are laid back. Nothing works properly—but is that important? On a holiday?