Selat Panjang  Selat Panjang (Jawi: ; ) is the capital of Kepulauan Meranti Regency, which is part of the province of Riau in Indonesia. The regency is a new regency in Riau province which was established in 2009 after being separated from Bengkalis Regency. The city is located on Tebing Tinggi Island, which is separated by a narrow channel from Sumatra, and across the Strait of Malacca from Singapore. Selat Panjang has a dense population of about 120,000 people. The largest ethnic group is Chinese, almost all Buddhist and Taoism in belief, but 37% of the population are ethnic Malay. There are also smaller ethnic groups such as Tamils, Minangkabau and Javanese. Thus, nowadays many Chinese Indonesians that are originally from Selatpanjang have moved to other regions in order to make a better living with the prominent place like Medan, Pekanbaru, Batam, Bengkalis and Tanjung Balai Karimun have been their new place of living. Nevertheless, every Chinese New Year in Selatpanjang, many of those who have moved away would return in order to celebrate the Chinese New Year although they have lived in other regions or cities for decades. Bahasa Indonesia is primarily spoken by people in Selatpanjang. Beside that, "Riau Malay" is used as a lingua franca while the local Chinese population speaks a form of Hokkien language known as "Riau Hokkien" (廖内福建话). This form of Hokkien is very similar to Singaporean Hokkien and Southern Malaysian Hokkien in terms of accent as well as lexicon. "Riau Hokkien" is spoken in the middle and southern part of the Indonesian island of Sumatra and is very different from Medan Hokkien which is used in the northern part of the Sumatra island. Located near to the equator, temperatures vary little during the year, typically with a high of 90° and low of 74° in each month. Rainfall ranges from under in February to in September, totalling about per year. The land is flat. At one time it was entirely covered by peat swamps and dense forest, but it is rapidly being cleared for pulpwood and palm oil plantations. Mudskippers thrive in the tidal flats.