We have now made it up to the Nongsa Point Marina at the very tip of Batam - our check-out point from Indonesia. We are sitting here looking across the Singapore Straits at the bright lights of Singapore, just three miles away. On the way up here we passed enormous ship yards, construction sites, tankers and numerous ships at anchor. With bustling Batam City on our doorstep, this is so different to anything we have seen so far in Indonesia. On a drive across the island yesterday the traffic was teeming - and then we found ourselves in our first traffic jam in four months.

It takes a little while to get the exit paperwork processed so we came in with a few days to spare before Kate’s Indonesian visa expires. This meant that we could get in a final day’s diving; it’s certainly not the best in Indonesia, but still worth the effort. We had a fun day out with the local dive company and a group of Russian expats. It was a long day; to reach the nearest diving takes a goodly drive followed by an hours boat trip, and we did three dives. Whilst the 5m visibility was not brilliant the sea fans and macro life (nudibranchs, flatworms, etc..) were pretty good.

Tomorrow, all being well, we will start our passage across the Singapore Straits to Malaysia. This is one of the busiest shipping areas in the world and the straits are a maze of shipping lanes, anchorages, crossing zones and no-go areas - so we will need to stay fairly switched on. We plan to do it in a couple of hops, to make sure we have good light all the way to our destination, Puteri Harbour in Johor.