Bintan

A small island where the Riau-Lingga royal house lived, said to have been a sultan's wedding gift to his queen. Wooden pompong boats reach it in ten-odd minutes from the Tanjung Pinang pier. Once there, hire a motor rickshaw to circle it.

The yellow mosque facing the Penyengat jetty, built in 1832. The story goes that egg white was mixed into the mortar for its walls. Hand-copied old Qurans are kept inside; shoes come off and arms and legs are covered to enter.

The grave of the 19th-century writer who wrote a Malay grammar and the didactic poem Gurindam Twelve. He is a national hero for laying groundwork for Indonesian. The twelve verses of that poem are carved on the walls around the tomb.

After a sand quarry was abandoned, white dunes and blue pools were left that pass for a desert. With no shade anywhere, by midday the sand can burn bare feet. Many go in the late afternoon as the sun slants.

Banyan roots have swallowed a small Chinese shrine whole, right over the roof. It lies in the Chinese village of Senggarang across from Tanjung Pinang, reached by boat. Near it, stilt houses over the sea are joined by plank walks.

In a temple yard outside Tanjung Pinang, five hundred life-size arhat statues sit in rows. No two share a face or pose, so people walk row by row reading expressions. The yard has almost no shade, so make it an early morning visit, ahead of the climbing sun.

Boats push up the Sebung beside the northern resorts while people look for monkeys, monitor lizards and mangrove snakes. Take the night boat and fireflies blink along every mangrove branch. Mosquitoes are thick, so wear long sleeves.

A long public beach down the east coast, granite boulders tumbled over the sand. When the tide drops the sea pulls back hundreds of metres and you can walk out. Weekends bring local families and the roadside seafood huts fill.

Huts on timber piles driven into shallow sea, built for fishing. At night lamps draw in schools of anchovy, then the net is hauled up. A few platforms ferry guests out to watch the haul and steam what comes up.

A promenade runs along the Tanjung Pinang shore, with a public sculpture shaped like a spiral sea snail. Around sunset the sky over Penyengat reddens and people gather. Once dark, a street food court opens in the lanes nearby.

A huge man-made lagoon in the Lagoi resort zone up north, among Southeast Asia's widest. Kayaks and paddleboards cross clear, waveless water, and shade huts line the sand. It stays calm when the northeast monsoon churns the sea, so that season is busier.

A Chinese temple outside Tanjung Pinang whose East Asian-style, red-pillared main hall holds a gilded seated Guanyin 16.8 m tall, on Indonesia’s record list as the largest indoor one. Around Lunar New Year worshippers pour in and cars queue on the road.

Ruins of an old Riau sultanate capital up the Carang River above Tanjung Pinang; the name means fallen city. Brick walls gripped by roots and old graves remain in the forest. Half the appeal is the ride there, by small boat up a channel through the mangroves.