School trip to the Riau Islands

I got to accompany a group of 8th graders on a week-long trip to explore local communities in Indonesia. We flew up to a series of islands just south of Singapore and spent 5 days learning about the local ways of life, mostly centered around fishing. We hiked, swam, boated, and interacted with kids at a school. All in all, a pretty good way to spend a week in May!

: Our trip started at the port city of Batam, where we flew from Jakarta. We hopped into boats like these for our trip to the island at which we were staying.

: Loved the colors of the painted wood boat against the seawater.

: I thought it was fun to try to take wake pictures. Not sure how coll they are, but here’s one anyways.

: We passed stretches of green mangroves and blue sky.

: Between the water and the sky, fishing villages a built on stilts due to the varying tidal levels.

: We finally pulled up at the Telunas resort – our home away from home for the next few days.

: Ahh – the view from our dining area towards the beach.

: Our resort lights up as the sun starts to set.

: The evening boat comes in.

: Watching the last rays catch the water.

: Here is a view of the resort at night from the beach.

: Steam rising from the jungle as the morning heat rises.

: Playing on the beach were all sorts of crabs. Here, two of them are hanging on to each other.

: We took a trip through some mangroves for a jungle hike, and I thought this red soil was pretty dramatic.

: Peaceful mangroves reflected in the river.

: We hiked through the forest to a waterfall, but got absolutely deluged by rain. When we got to the falls, they were too torrential to use for swimming.

: So if you wash your shorts but don’t rinse them well, go trekking through a tropical rainforest, and then get caught in a torrential downpour, you really will get streams of lathered up laundry foam running down both legs.

: The service component of the trip was doing work at a local school. Because the boys were all expected to be fishermen, the students were mostly girls.