Bangka Island

Bangka is an island province together with Belitung Island (few years ago, Bangka was part of Palembang province). Bangka just lies east of Sumatra, separated by the Bangka Strait, to the north lies the South China Sea, to the east, across the Gaspar Strait, is the island of Belitung, and to the south is the Java Sea. The size is about 12,000 kmsquare. Geographical faces of Bangka is consist of swamps, lower plains, small hills, (really) beautiful beaches, white pepper fields, and tin minings.


Not like Java Island, Bangka is not really good for farming. most of the faces is covered with tin. When I went there last month, many people have tin minings in their backyard outside of Pangkal Pinang (capital of Bangka-Belitung province)! Can you imagine the feeling of having mining in your backyard?? Long ago, it was so easy to open tin minings. You just need to pay 10millions(IDR) to government.. and VOILA ! you can mine your own tin which you can dig anytime! Now, many of those mines were left by its owner and became a swamps. (the picture on the left is one of tin mine that were left by its owner)


There's another unique things from Bangka is their swallow.. Do you know swallow bird? China uses swallow as a really expensive medicine (up to million/kilogram). You can hear swallow voice all over Pangkal Pinang. Yes, there're swallow nests everywhere inside someone's houses. Four-five levels houses are everywhere. Because of so many houses like that, Bangka government decided to create a rule about building high level house like that. It says that you have to design the house nicely if you want to build high level house like that. Hahaha... Swallow's home is nicer than people's home..!

Oh yeah, talk about the beaches. Many of the beaches are no-name. So you can imagine how beautiful they are. But human being is human being. They leave garbage everywhere they go! Right? These no-name beaches are included. But because not so many people know about these beaches, we can still call them as beautiful beaches. These Bangka's beaches is much more beautiful, nice, and clean than any beaches in Bali !






Babi panggang (grilled pork) a la Bangka








my cutie sea creatures :p









This picture is a scenery that you can get at Teluk Uber. There's also a hotel here. It's cheap and fine. About IDR120,000 for 100m2!! Not really 3 stars hotel or something. But it's fine and really wide. Not many people know about this place. This place is quite quiet. This can be a good place if you want to spend your time together with your spouse together without any disturbing. The food prices are really cheap. IDR 5000 for lemonade, IDR 15000 for fried rice, IDR 3000 for ice tea, etc. Ask the keeper to clean the bathroom and bedroom first! Warning, the price is not absolute. It will change according to economic global issues !!
If you want to stay at higher class hotel, you can go to Teluk Tenggiri(tenggiri is a name of Fish). Thay said that Teluk Tenggiri is more beautiful than Teluk Uber.. But that meants, it's also more crowded.