Blog 73. 23 Oct 2019. Bangka Island. 01.37.57S 105.43.95E

Alcedo
David Batten
Sun 27 Oct 2019 09:10
Amazingly, the bus arrived, with 2 young guides to take us to the Persona (wonderful) resort, where we met up with some very tired Rally members who had enjoyed a pretty sleepless night rocking and rolling in the anchorage. It was a fun welcome ceremony and an interesting lunch cooked by the local women.

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Welcome ceremony, Bangka style on the beach with the anchored yachts in the distance

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Tasting some white concoction that was like a mixture of alkasalza and fish, no doubt full of good of things but frankly, quite disgusting as you can see form the expressions on Rene and David’s faces.

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Dancing, not aerobics, on the beach. No idea who all these women were, one theory is local government employers, but so many women and no men?

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After lunch, making use of the resort facilities. L to R, Skipper, Ship’s Boy, Anne from Time Bandit, Pauline from Bounty and in the background, Stuart and ?

In a way it was unfortunate that we were so far from the boat, as there was several hours to fill, even after a cool down in the pool, before the gala dinner. We did a quick taxi trip to the nearest town for some shopping and had a walk along the beach where we met people panning for tin.

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Collecting sand with tin deposits from the beach. Tin being heavier that sand, they basically washed the sand away and sold the tin for approx Rp 60,000 per kilo. A good day could be 3kgs.

Tin is huge in Bangka, with most of the population either working for the smelting company or engaged in extracting tin from the sandy soil or clay, both on land and at sea, as we discovered on our city tour the following day. After watching CV pitch and roll all day, we were very pleased to be going back to the calm river anchorage after the gala dinner.

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Late afternoon beach walk. You can see how crowded the beach is!

Tomorrow, the bus is coming at 08.00 hours to pick us up for a “city” tour, whatever that turns out to be.

Alcedo

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