Colourful traditional fishing boats on the shore

After visiting some beaches on the west coast of Belitong, in the third day of my visit to Belitong I decided to go further than usual, to see other beaches on the other side of the island. So off I went to the eastern part of the island.

Belitong’s eastern beaches are not as famous as the beaches in the west part of the island. They have a very different characteristic too. There are no boulders on the beach like those on the west. The beaches there are either only have brown sands along its shore or white sands like other beaches in the west.

At that time, I only visited two of many beaches in the eastern coast, namely Serdang Beach and Burong Mandi Beach. The two beaches are located in Manggar District, Eastern Belitong. To reach these two beaches, one should drive for about 2 hours from Tanjong Pandan on a relatively good but empty road. And although the beaches are not too far apart, they have different kind of sands on their shore. Burong Mandi has brown sands, while Serdang has white sands.

Serdang and Burong Mandi were relatively empty when I went there. There were no tourists, but only traditional fishermen that I met. The fishermen, who dwellt in villages nearby, use those two beaches as their base, as well as a place to make a new boat or just to repair it. That was why I easily found many traditional fishing boats in there.

The boats, which were painted in bright colours, have unique wooden ‘arms’ at both side which means to stabilize it. With those ‘arms’, the boat will not easily turn upside down while being used to fish on the open sea. The locals usually called this kind of boat as “Perahu Katir”

regeneration

ready for the sea