Batam shopping trip

How steady is my classmate to organize an oversea trip to Batam with me. I only tell them on Wednesday and we were setting off on the coming Saturday.

If you guys are looking for some tip on Batam trip, let me maybe give you a rough idea on the places of interests and currency exchange.

Overall ferry charges, $47SG nett, which include 2 way ferry, subcharges, any fee incurred and seaport taxes.

For exchange rates

100SG = 690,000rupia

cigarette Marlboro Mentol cost 9,200 rupia. If you do the maths, 50,000rupia = 7.3SG .... then the 9,200 rupia only cost like a dollar plus nia :)

When we reach there, we asked the local on what is interesting around Batam, and we were not surprise that they keep emphaziz about "Zabo, cheap cheap". Okie although that wasn't the main idea of the whole trip, but I was kind enough to ask the rate for those who were shy to ask but dying to find out. 300,000 rupia is the amount you have to pay to have them accompany you for one day.

If you want Zabo, massage and disco, you have to go to Nagoya
If you want to eat seafood and stuff, you go golden prawn
If you want to shop, you can go Batam centre, hypermart
If you like sea sport (which is one of their main attraction) you go to Waterfront city.

Journey between all these location takes around 10 - 30 minutes, you have to bargain with the taxi driver, often cut the price into half. Don't worry if you think that is very cruel to them, its marketing strategy, being kind to taxi driver mean being cruel to yourself.

So so so, we meet at harbor front and asked for ferry to Batam, that was a model of a ferry, but definitely not the one we were boarding. Model of some cruise I assume.

After you pass the gantry, you can access the DFS. Vodak selling for $20 plus per bottle. So cheap.

When we exit through the gate, a swamp of taxi driver rushed to us. We got a little culture shock, all of us cross the road to hypermart to eat breakfast. Tinghao die die wanted to eat A&W. He say he 8 year never try it already, even after we enter the shopping mart, we can still see the taxi uncle waving at us. Sibei funny. He were extremely hardcore loh.

The price of A&W is so so loh. Cost us around $5. Not very cheap but thinking that the mart is extremely close to the terminal, we assume that all things in this mart is sort of same price as Singapore.

This ah ne. Horned at us after we finish our food and brake just in front of us and open door like want to kidnap you like that. But haha, he came out of his taxi and welcome us to Batam then asked us to take his taxi. So since he looks decently kind and speak 10% english, they qin cai a bit and bao his taxi for $40. This $40 is like hiring him as a tour guide, he will bring us around interesting places and also save us on time bargining with another taxi driver.
That is the famous Indonesia 'Batso'.. Last time I training in Indonesia, I will always buy batso for my every meal. Very nice.


Then weiheng die die want to go massage. Okie, heng the booking is full so we had to wait till there is slot lah. So finally, weiheng convinced me to accompany him into the indothai refleks. It cost $20 for 2 hour of Indo cum thai massage. Weiheng say if one of the two massager is more chio I have to let him have the chio one. Hmmm but turn out, it doesn't really matter. Indo thai massage is those family style one of course, not those special special type one.

We decided to ask Ah ne drive us to Polo factory, all of them want to buy some shirt. They say the shirt there very cheap. Exclusively imported from united states and bla bla.. I don't really good with all the clothes brand and stuff.. I think I prefer to stick with Balendo polo shirt instead.

* insert 3 hours of random exploring of the area plus shop here and there*

We head out to Golden Prawn to have our dinner.





The food is nice, ambiant is quiet. We really enjoyed the peaceful dinner together. Our 400 thousand dinner. And head back to Batam center for ferry at 9pm. Oh ya, forget to mention Singapore time is 1 and half hour faster. 9pm at batam is 1030pm in Singapore.

After that weiheng pester me to go Dolphin ......

ya, we need to mention I had a small acident in Vivo city carpark. I crashed onto the kerb and injured myself. Kanna fined $25 for anyhow park my bike at bus interchange. And leg kana exhaust pipe burn tio.

then end of story