Ka-ching! My first ‘paycheck’ from the paid blogging project has just been credited into my Paypal account. It’s not that much but it’s something.

I’m still not sure how long I can keep this up but, for now, I’m still revelling in the novelty of getting green bucks for blogging.

Unfortunately, PayPal will charge me $5 if I’m to transfer the amount into my credit card. My other options are:

1) send the money to a friend with a bank account in the US;
2) use it to buy something on eBay or elsewhere; or
3) wait ’til the amount gets big enough for me to not feel bad about the $5 fee :P

I’m back from Bintan. But I’m so swamped with work that it will be a couple of days more before I can write my review of the hotel that we stayed in — the Angsana Bintan Resorts & Spa. The ’spa’ part sounds good, no? It was, it was! It was so wonderful that I think I’ll have a separate post for a mini-review of the spa.

In the meantime, here is a pic of my twins having fun in the Bintan sun, even if the skies were a bit downcast at that time (hence the drab, grey sky), and the pristine beach whose sand was so fine, they got into the very fabric of everyone’s swimwear! I took this photo using a borrowed D80 and my dream 18-200mm VR lens. The camera, with its battery grip, was a lot heavier than my usual D40 plus 18-135mm lens combination but the resulting pictures, given the right settings, were crisp and sharp and awesome. Which just makes me want to have this lens all the more…

Anyway, where were we? Ahh, yes. This post is supposed to be all about Bintan.

Here are a few quick facts about Pulau Bintan (Bintan Island):

• Bintan is part of Indonesia, hence, they’re one hour behind Singapore. For example, 0835 Bintan time is actually 0935 Singapore time. Keep this in mind when planning your flight and ferry bookings.
• Bintan is accessible via a 50-minute ferry ride from Singapore’s Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal. The ferry terminal is a 10- to 15-minute taxi ride (less than S$10 fare) from Singapore’s Changi Airport.
• Bintan may be in Indonesia and almost all the hotel staff Indonesian, but the rates for the room, spa, food, and green fees are all in Singapore dollar or US dollar. In short: everything’s exhorbitantly priced!
• Bintan is a golfer’s paradise, being home to Bintan Lagoon Golf Club’s Jack Nicklaus Seaview Course and Ian Baker-Finch Woodlands Course, Laguna Bintan Golf Club’s 18-hole championship Greg Norman Course, and Ria Bintan Golf Club’s 27-hole Gary Player Course. The green fees will burn a hole in a pocket though. No, make that, the green fees will burn off your entire pocket and maybe even your trousers! Unless, perhaps, if you’re from Europe and thinking in terms of €.
• You’ll be going through Singapore and Indonesian Immigrations, so you’ll need to bring along your passport for a trip to this island.
• ASEAN passport holders don’t need any visa to enter Bintan but visa-on-arrival is available for certain nationalities. Click here if you wish to find out if you need a visa or not to get into Bintan.
• You can buy your Singapore-Bintan ferry tickets on the spot at Bintan Resort Ferries’ (BRF) counter at the Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal, subject to availability. But it is highly recommended that you book your ferry tickets in advance, especially if you intend to go on a weekend or public holiday. You can make your bookings through Bintan Resort Ferries’ website up to 10 am of the day before your departure.

For more information on Bintan Island, its hotels, spas and golf courses, check out Bintan-Resorts.com and VisitBintan.com.

So you’re finally going to that long-awaited holiday to Paris. You need to book a hotel room. Fast. The problem is, you don’t know where to stay. You don’t have much time to search the internet because you have a lot of work to clear up before you go on leave. Plus, you have a budget to work with. But at the same time, you’d like to be as thorough as possible because it’s not everyday you get to go on a holiday and you’d like to stay in a hotel that will make the most out of your budget.

Sound familiar? Yup, we’ve all been through that scenario. And the usual solution is to type in the search box “+Paris +hotel”. As soon as you hit [ENTER], you are immediately hit by a barrage of sites that all claim to offer the best deals and the best hotel rates in face of the earth. You wearily plod through each link, write down notes on hotel names, their locations, their rates and the hotel search sites where you found them. The whole process is time-consuming, arduous, and can be very frustrating.

Allow me to make a small simulation of this process.

With Google as my main search engine, on top of the results list is Booking.com. Like most people do, I click on it first because it’s on the top of the list, afterall.

At Booking.com’s site, I enter the check-in and check-out dates and Booking.com immediately lists down hotels with available rooms on those dates. I then have the option of sorting the hotes by popularity or by price for single or double room. Booking.com’s site is pretty decent because it includes guest reviews, as well as maps. My only grouse is that the prices are listed in the currency of your destination (in the case of Paris: the Euro) so I still have to find a way to convert the prices into Malaysian Ringgit.

I find among Booking.com’s list a small hotel called Hotel de la Vallee. It’s a 1-star affair, you have to pay E2.50 to have a shower (!), but it only costs E62 per night and the location sounds very promising: “5 minutes away from Chatelet-Les Halles metro station, 10 minutes away from Le Musée Du Louvre and 15 minutes away from Notre Dame”. It’s in the 1st arrondissement, afterall — practically in the heart of Paris.

So I double-checked the rates with Expedia.com because they’re having a summer sale until 31st July. They’ve also got the search-by-budget option although they list their prices in US Dollars. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the way their system handled searches. It felt a lot like using Windows’ troubleshooter — they met my search criteria, but could not quite give me what I was looking for. I was expecting a lot from — and ended up sorely disappointed in — Expedia, knowing that it has been featured by Fortune Magazine as the 3rd most admired Internet companies in the United States (after IAC and Google), followed by Amazon.com at 4th place.

Then I found HotelsCombined.com. I love the clean, uncluttered look of their site. I also love their tag line: “One Site To Search Them All”. But what I love the most is their concept of searching on your behalf 30+ hotel reservation websites simultaneously and listing down the sites with their respective rates.

When I searched for Hotel de la Vallee on HotelsCombined.com, it churned out the results quickly. And it confirmed that I, indeed, got the best rate through Booking.com (RM277.22 per night). I could have saved myself a lot of time and hassle if I just used this site in the first place!

Other features I love about HotelsCombined.com: the option to change the currency and the option to specify an upper and lower limit for the hotel rates to suit your budget. Their site also comes with the standard brief description, some photos, as well as the possibility of sorting the results by price, location, user rating, etc.

Anyway, back to the hotel issue, I thought of searching for another hotel that can match Hotel de la Vallee’s rate. Naturallement, I used HotelsCombined.com to do the search and, for the dates that I specified (1st-10th August), I got Allstar Residence de la Seine Aparthotel Paris (from RM276.20 per night from Hotel-Board.com). But for the same price, I’d much rather go for Hotel de la Vallee, as it’s nearer to public transport and the Louvre!

I’ll be taking a few days off from blogging from Sunday (tomorrow) to Tuesday — or so I hope — because we’re going to Pulau Bintan for a few days of much needed R & R.

Pulau Bintan is an island that’s officially part of Indonesia but it’s so close to Singapore that hotel rates, food prices and entrance fees to elephant shows and such tend to follow the Singaporean rate. But if you’re Asian (or at least look Asian) and if you can speak some Indonesian, you might just pass off as a local and get to enjoy local rates for certain things. And local rates are about half the usual tourist rate, mind you!

With RoundBoy and the twins tagging along, there’ll be tons of things to pack — day clothes, pajamas, swimming clothes, sunscreen, strollers, toys, bottles (sadly, the twins are not weaned yet!), diapers, assorted crackers and tidbits, not to mention my own clothes, phone charger, charcoal tablets, toiletries, and the usual other stuff that I bring along whenever I travel.

I’m also debating with myself whether or not to bring along my Nikon D40 or just bring along my old Pentax WPi. The waterproof feature of the latter will definitely be useful for the pool and the beach, but I will sorely miss the former during sunset… Of course, I can bring both cameras with me. But if I won’t be using my D40, it will just add to the stuff that I need to keep an eye on during the trip, hence, I’d much rather not bring it if I won’t be using it.

Anyway, I better cut my rambling short and start packing now.

While I’m in Pulau Bintan, I will do my very best to take a break, like I’m supposed to. But if there is broadband internet in the hotel room and if I manage to take nice pics of the beach, maybe — just maybe — you’ll be hearing from me before Wednesday! :D

Yes, you read it right. Chocolate sprinkles for breakfast. Only in the Netherlands, dank u.

First, you take a piece of bread. Then you spread some butter on it. And for the pièce de résistance: generously put some chocolate sprinkles right on top! The butter serves a very important role — it stops the chocolate sprinkles from falling off the bread — so slather it on generously ;)

The chocolate sprinkles come in several varieties: shaved chocolate (as in this photo), chocolate rice, multi-coloured rice, among others. The owner of the houseboat that we stayed in on our last night in Amsterdam told us that there are several varieties available in Albert Heinj, near the jams and jellies section. Unfortunately, in between our trip to Zaanse Schans and De Keukenhof, we didn’t have the time to do some last-minute shopping.

So if anyone of you is going to Holland soon, please, please, please let me know. So that I can beg you to buy for me a few boxes of these delicious breakfast treats! :D

[Note: I’ll post a review of the houseboat soon.]