131021 – 22 Batam

We woke up early to catch the ferry to Batam at Harbourfront. Batam usually has those $38 deals so I bought the ones at Hotel Mercure. For the price (excluding a $28 port tax and tour guide fee), you get a bus guide, ferry tickets, 1 night at a pretty good hotel, breakfast buffet, seafood lunch and massage. Not too bad, considering the prices of hotel in SG is over $80 for just a night, and the room is always so small…

we bought couple shirts from Onepiece at Uniqlo!

Went to the usual choco factory, kueh lapis place and local Batam goods which 00 wasn’t very interested in except the white chocolate. Ended up buying a bag of it and eating it for the next few days.

There was a temple trip included too so we dropped by that as well. Not too bad, there were interesting statues.

00 kept saying the middle one is Dman. Lol.

The seafood lunch wasn’t very appealing to 00 as well T_T I guess it’s because it was shared with another 6 person and doesn’t look very hygienic/tasty.

We visited the mini town that I couldn’t go last time with Yvonne cos of the rain so we had a visit this time. The houses were actually rather poorly built and the animal statues were also not very well made.

We had massage/shopping after that. Massage was done in a couple’s room… never knew there was such a thing. Massage was pretty good as usual! The area around it had shopping centres so we went to explore those as well. I got 2 pairs of contact lens, at less than $8 each. Cheap! We also had our dinner there at Breeks. What a bad choice, I never knew the food was this bad. We learnt that you should always ALWAYS choose a restaurant that has guests (or is packed). Breeks, though the menu looked good, had no guests at all! We had cream spaghetti and baked potatoes and both were horrible. The cream spaghetti almost tasted like water and the cheese on the potato… don’t even know if that’s cheese at all! We were afraid of getting tummyaches so we didn’t finish everything. The oreo smoothie was terrible too. It was just milk + oreo pieces, and very diluted.

Despite the horrific dinner, the day ended with the awesome hotel~! 

Though I think the last hotel I was at, Harmoni, was much better. Still, compared to the small hotels in Singapore, this was good enough. I had to take a call for one of my project, which happens to be an Indonesia-based one. Our toilet couldn't flush properly and we had to call the repairman. zzz.

Our breakfast the next morning also made up for all the bad food we had. Well, I guess nothing can go wrong when there’s bread and cereal?? Heh.

Back in SG, we went over the MBS and Orchard duty free shops to try to find the liquor for my dad. Didn't manage to get anything though.

We checked into Hotel Victoria at Bugis, which I realised is part of the Santa Grand chain. Not too bad. Had dinner at a chinese restaurant near the area. it was already 10+ so we ate it in a hurry and it was served really quickly. Still nice and cheap though!

From batam to singapore

we had a lovely buffet breakfast at 8am. and i do mean like, really awesome because all the food we picked tasted good! much better than a lot of breakfast at hotels that i've had. there was croissants, cereal (typical western), japanese curry, dim sum (although we only saw baos and lotus rice), and asian-styled breakfast.

live cooking for scrambled eggs and sunny side ups!

oops, only had leftovers. too busy eating to remember to take a photo. 

thereafter, we went back to our hotel rooms, watched fashion tv and nua-ed till 1130, where our bus came to pick us up.

sadly, it started pouring like mad so we couldn't really do anything except hand around the ferry terminal, grab some last minute souvenirs, and nua at a waffle cafe, talking till the ferry came around 3pm.

queued for half an hour and boarded aroudn 330pm. it was so packed we couldn't get a seat together T_T. and the aircon in the basement of the ship was SO SUPER COLD. thankfully we reached around 530pm, sparing us of the freezing torture.

and it was hi singapore-with-toilets-that-actually-has-toilet-paper again~

honestly i wouldn't mind going back just for the hotel again. and maybe the miniature country / go karts maybe since i didn't see it. but none of all those food crap again. pfft.

121202-03 Batam Trip

Ssssso i went to batam with yvonne over the weekends.

woke up at 5am to get ready and left to meet yvonne at 7am harbourfront. yawns. the ferry took about 45 mins to arrive and only set off around 815am. wonder why we needed to be there so early =_=

our tour guide brought us to a lot of souvenir + local products shop, so we practically ate the whole day. first was the choco factory. well, there's indonesian chocos but i wasn't too attracted by things i could buy in singapore. we basically went around tasting all the flavours.

then was the polo shirt place. supposed to have some grand sale but the designs weren't all that fantastic. and it wasn't as cheap as those at the terminal. and i realised the 50,000 rupiahs my mom gave me were expired money so i couldn't really buy anything anyway. (not to mention it's only about $6-7. lol)

then we were brought to eat kueh lapis at a home factory. wow the slabs of butter for the thousand layers.. even though it smelt so good. this was the only thing i bought for the whole journey, at $25/cake. though i heard you could get them at the terminal for $18. oh well.

next up was an otah feast. same, went around tasting. the houseflies are irritating. $9 for 25 otahs wasn't so bad, since they have a lot of seafood flavours that are generally expensive in singapore. it was gonna be lunch after this anyway so didn't buy any.

after this it was finally our seafood lunch.

they have some cute kissing fishes in their aquarium. look it's kissing the butt!

ooh and then it goes for the lips!

ok lunch. to be honest, it wasn't all that fantastic. the portions were not big, but ok for our table. since we all ate otahs and chocolates and whatnots, we weren't really that hungry (it was all part of the tour guide's ploy). yvonne couldn't take seafood, and they gave her a huge bowl of clear soup with tofu, tomatoes and some raw vege. they also gave her 2 plates of greens that she rejected. where's the chicken that she could eat??? poor yvonne. in the end she couldn't really eat anything except the beehoon soup and those greens. owww.

we were supposed to have free coconut drinks with the meal too, but it was so terrible - the coconuts they gave had almost no flesh at all and tasted sour. thank goodness we could exchange for one. bleah. see the one on the right - no flesh and the one we finally got at the corner with the flesh. what a difference.

thankfully we got to skip the temple trip and some random stuff because we weren't really interested in all the sightseeing and it was drizzling. so no miniature country for me. we went for our 1hour massage (only $10!) and then took a taxi back to the hotel around 3+pm. 

what me and yvonne were only looking for was our hotel shoot actually. lol. 

and we were pleasantly surprised by how awesome our hotel is!! harmoni one~~

and some xmas decorations are up!

here's the floor of the guest rooms.

and finally our bedrooms (sorry, this was taken on day 2 so it looks messy. oops)

we prepared ourselves for our photoshoot, then ordered a hotel dinner of chicken teriyaki. slept around 1030pm since we finished off early. (or rather, our lapis kueh came and someone had to collect it, and my cam ran outta battery) wheee~