Day 1

We decided to travel to batam for a short trip. It’s a alternative short trip apart from JB to get away from Singapore.

As we have already took the boarding tickets a day earlier, we do not need to reach early to collect the boarding pass. The boarding pass is just a piece of paper with QR code. It is probably the most impt piece of paper throughout the whole immigration process.

At harbourfront, look for signs that matches your departure timing and queue up (eg 9.30am) . At around 845(boarding time), the queue will start to move and you can proceed to the immigration counter and other boarding process.

Right before you board, you will need to pass the boarding tickets back to the staff.

It was approximately a 48min ride before we finally reach Batam. We stay at Best Western Hotel and they provided us with a free shuttle service to the hotel. We went and deposit our luggage as it was too early to check in.

Subsequently, we took a cab and went to Nagoya Hill Shopping centre.

According to hotel staff, it is safe to “grab” or “gojek” to Nagoya hill Shopping Centre from hotel but it is not advisable to do the same from the mall. Google for “Taxi Mafia”.

When reaching Nagoya, you should find a massage parlor to book your massage. As we are a large group of 7 and did not make any booking, we were not able to find any bookings after visiting 10 shops. Some places like ESKA can be booked online and is even available in our hotel.

Either way, we shopped and ate at the mall. There is a “food street” that sells a variety of Indonesia food. We had our fill of various Indonesia food and there were all taste ok.

A&W root beer

Turns out the Baku Teh contain pig blood. 😱😱😱😱😱

The shop calls this “Panties Pizza”. It’s super cheesy.

After all the eating and shopping, we headed back to our hotel to use the pool.

The pool has a fake “infinity pool” feel and a indoor jacuzzi. It quite nice to use the pools.

There is a buffet beside the pool. It cost around 380,000 rupiah. They call it: “BBQ under the stairs”.

We ate the steamboat in the restaurant at first floor. It cost us around 600,000 rupiah for 8 ppl. The ingredients were quite “flour-rey” and soup is too salty.

Our hotel room was rather big and well equipped with all necessity.

The TV has more than 30 channel including Singapore channel.

Everything in the fridge is free.

Day 2

Our hotel stay includes breakfast. The breakfast place is fairly crowded as we were not able to get a proper seat for large group. Although it is not the best buffet, I like how they try to provide live cooking booth. There are: egg booth, waffle booth & Sushi booth (apparently they make a long sushi roll)

However, the utensils are quite dirty as most cups and dishes have stains, dirt and dust on it. I will usually wipe it before using.

After breakfast, we took the hotel shuttle to Mega mall. The journey was almost 1 hr as they need to stop by Nagoya Hill shopping mall.

Megamall looks cleaner and nicer than Nagoya Hill. It is yet another round of shopping and eating. We ate our lunch Penyat King. The meal was ok and cheap but I feel that the toufu has gone bad. We had 7 portion of food that has toufu and they all taste sour. Hmmmm m. 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

After all the shopping, we headed back to Singapore. The queue was soooo bad and people started queuing 1 hour before the departure time.

Home Sweet Home 🏡🏡🏡