Badas-Riau Expedition
Dawn breaks and the golden sun awakens a vast rolling ocean. The white sand bay painted in her beauty like a Van Goph, the forests of tawny-green palm trees stand watch, and across the waters we spot the missing kayak beached on the grey silhouette rocks; this reverie is but the fourth morning of our ineffable expedition.
It all started on the second day of the first month in the forty-fifth-squared year; one captain, two crew, and a company of fifteen students set foot on their new wooden home, the Four Friends, for what would be two weeks of endless escapades, adventures, and daring tribulations.
The initial voyage saw us across the South China Sea, blessed with an ardent breeze to cast up our lofty white sails beneath an eternal tropical-blue heaven. All the while, the turbid waters shook many of our party to an unpleasant sea sickness, where even the schooner’s cook, Dadang, was not spared. By the third day, we made sight of the Badas Islands, a terra firma we’d come to love and adore, for it hosted the most welcoming and congenial hosts, resplendent bays of tropical coral reefs, and enough coconuts to suffice us for an entire expedition.
Bidding our new island friends farewell, on the fifth day, we made for the South of the Rial Islands, pulling and knotting the sun-dried ropes; the sails dropped and rose with the flaunting moods of the wind. Flying across the decks, we made diligent attempts to stay on board, and by the last hour of the sixth day, we found succour in the bulwark shelters of Kentar Langgu.
For the next two days, our serendipity led us to reap the treasures of adventure, exploration, and friendship as we sojourned onto picturesque uninhabited islands, jumping overboard to swim across the Earth’s great circle, meeting with clownfish and uncontacted aquatic denizens before reaching the dusking intermezzo of Benang.
Our expedition then drew to a dreary denouement, as the rains and winds came with such tempest that we lost power, electricity, running water, and eventually food. Lifting anchors by hand and braving gale eight winds, we scrambled to depart the four friends on the sixth hour of the thirteenth day. Greasy and smelly, yet with indefatigable smiles, we all depart this adventure with wind in our steps, new kinship in our friendships, and mottled with a hunger for the next adventure. We only ask, “Where will the winds take us next?”.
