Batam 8-9 March 2014

I had always wanted to go Batam because it's pretty near Singapore and seemed like a rather inexpensive place for a short getaway. The feel of wanting to go overseas only intensified after settling my grandmother's funeral stuff and I told Ivan about it. As usual, the reply he gave me was "soon". Before I got together with him, the idea I had of "soon" was really soon, like within hours for small matters and few days for bigger ones. After some time, I have gotten accustomed to his idea of "soon" instead, which is almost equivalent to "you just wait, for months maybe..". So I just waited for that "soon" to come and gradually forgot about it.

This time, the "soon" took about 1 month to come and it surprised me when he told me about it. Initially, he wanted us to go on 2-3 March so it would be an anniversary celebration, but I've got Sociology prelim the following Monday. In the end, we had a post anniversary celebration instead and all were paid for by him.

On that day, we had to wake up very early and I only had 2 hours of sleep due to my body clock. The lack of sleep really made me felt cranky at the start, but slowly, the feeling disappeared as the tour began.

We visited the Ralph Lauren Polo Store first. The tour guide said that the Ralph Lauren stuff there are authentic and one polo tee costs about 50SGD only, however as we only brought about 200SGD worth of rupiah, 50SGD is considered a lot. We also bought some food from their factory outlet and local snacks store. Kueh lapis is also considered as their specialty so we each bought 1/2kg of the mocha flavoured one.

We visited the temple too. Aren't the statues cute?

A seafood lunch was also included in the package, but the food was just so-so. They served flower crabs, super small crayfish, very strong veggie-taste veggie, fish and some other things which I don't eat. We also went to the BSC or BCS mall but there's nothing much there as the tour guide explained to us that all the goods there are imported from Bugis Street so it will be cheaper to buy at Bugis Street instead. We chose to skip the massage so we had to stay in that mall for an hour. While waiting for the rest, we came to this cafe and ordered a drink. Just like what the tour guide has said, the locals like to drink sweet stuff, so the frappe we ordered ended up being very sweet too.    

The tour ended at about 4-5pm (Batam time is one hour behind Singapore time) and we arrived at the Nongsa Point Resort. It's a much nicer place to take pictures as compared to the places we had visited throughout the tour. 

  

The next day was just packing up, had breakfast and coming back to Singapore..That's the end of our 2nd overseas trip together..