Indonesia

The largest Muslim country in the world, Indonesia spreads across seventeen thousand islands from Singapore to Australia. The biggest chunks of it are Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. One of the most popular tourist destinations in the country is the resort island of Bali.

My first trip to Indonesia doesn't even come close to scratching the surface - we went to Bintan for a day by boat from Singapore. It was only an hour's journey, but we still needed to get visas on entry, and could have stayed for a week, but only stuck around for the day at a resort.

This statue of an eagle greeted us on arrival at Bintan.

The beaches were lovely, clean sand and blue water, a world away from Singapore.

Unfortunately I can't remember the name of the resort hotel, but it had a beautiful "infinity" pool and was only about 15 minutes from the ferry terminal.

In true "Brit abroad" style I had not used enough sun lotion, so towards the end of the day I had to use what I could to keep the sun off.

A pleasant fountain and watery plants near to the hotel.

Bintan boat benches on the tranquil shores of the island. It was refreshingly devoid of punters, which was very pleasant.

Now I don't know much about rhinos, but I'm guessing these are the endangered sort, Sumatran or white perhaps? Admittedly not a very good picture, but it was nice to see some local wildlife, if only in statue form.