Recap A Little Bit More About Us & Our Batam Trip 2009

The Preparation

I didn’t do much preparation for this trip, I even forgotten about getting travel insurance this round. Perhaps I have taken granted that Batam is just 45mins away from Singapore.

I brought along all the other essential care items I recorded in Recap A Little Bit More About Us & Our Hong Kong Trip 2009 except umbrella and raincoat. And I find Hand sanitizer really handy in Batam. I used that to clean Yvette’s hand after she came so close to the wild life, monkey. Wipe is as important as well. The most important item that we brought along is nothing but water. We use our mineral to wash hand and Yvette’s private area when we found some water came out from the tap is dirty.

All About Yvette

Travelling with relatives that close to Yvette really lessen our load. Yvette was constantly looking out for her Jie Jie rather than us. (Thanks Cheryl & Capri)

I brought along the stroller for her nap time and was really surprise she wanted to be on the stroller most of the time. The bad thing was; she didn’t want to be belted. Arrr.. this girl!

Another good news was; she was with her cousin, Cheryl without me for 45 mins.

A Little Bit More About Our Encounter in Batam

If you find shopping in Malaysia is cheap, I think it is cheaper in Batam. I told hubby we can have occasional trip here to shop for our grocery. But the downside is, all their signs were written in Malay.

We experience black-out in our Hotel. Now there will be another additional item for us to bring. Touch Light will be one of the new item to add into our travel essential.

On a whole, I do enjoy this trip as much as in Hong Kong. I think most importantly, no matter where we are, as long as we are with our love ones, the joy will be all around.

Our Travel Tales: 2D1N @ Batam – Day 2

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My niece Capri came over to wake us up before our alarm clock rang. We washed up and ready for breakfast.

The food we had for breakfast in the café at level one and the food was pretty standard. But still, we like the counter where we could order our omelette and our sunny-side-up. In the past, Yvette does only eat egg when it is only a fried egg or a hard-boiled egg. But now she doesn’t mind fried egg. Perhaps learning the word 蛋, help?

Yummy!

 

After breakfast, we brought her to the pool for water play. I found out that Yvette was able to go down all by herself confidently and climb up the water with my minimum help.

 

After staying an hour there, we went back to our room to wait for my niece Cheryl who was away for the massage. And my dear Yvette was happily playing with the umbrella stroller all by herself. Think she must be missing her toy back at home.

The transfer picked up at 11.30 am Batam and sent us to Batam Centre (Jetty) where there is a mega mall situated opposite the jetty. We got our boarding pass from the guide and moved toward the mall and deposited our luggage before we start our shopping spree again.

This round my niece, Cheryl warned me not to go supermarket again.

Well, since I wanted to buy some home wear clothing for Yvette as she had out grown some of the clothing. It’s a good time to shop since Yvette was sleeping now.

Peace!

I managed to get some 3 sets of top and bottom and 3 dresses for only Rp 145,000 (SGD22) only. That is dirty cheap. We also brought a new cutlery set for Yvette. 

Initially we wanted to let Yvette to have some fun at the indoor playground for only Rp 15,000 (unlimited play), and then we realized it’s time for lunch. We had A&W for lunch. And honestly, the portion was small for the price we paid.

After our meal at A&W, it’s about time to board the ferry and head home. We went to collect our luggage and took the 45 mins ferry trip back to Singapore.

P/S: We left our cake on the cab and the taxi driver did return our cake to us 2 days later.

Our Travel Tales: 2D1N @ Batam – Day 1 Part 2

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The guided tour ended at 2 pm in the afternoon where we were sent to one of the local shopping mall – Batam City Square for Free & Easy.

I think we spent most of our money there. We shopped in the supermarket and we spent SGD 30 for two big packets of stuffs. Beside foods, snack, the money was spent on buying Yvette’s toiletries too. Something caught my attention in the supermarket. The oil is packed in a package form.

This only cost 30 cents SGD

We moved on in the shopping mall and I found this shop that make “handmade wooden sign craft” (I really don’t how to name this item). I made one for Yvette and will hang this outside her room at home. We spent S$15 for this plate.

The pick-up time is 4.45 pm Batam time. We had a quickly brunch at the KFC. Hubby brought one set of meal and it was shared by 6 of us. @_@

I wasn’t very happy with the tour guide’s decision on sending those people off to the Jetty and made us waited for 20 to 25 mins when we were supposed to check in. Yvette was feeling tired as she only napped for 2 hour for the time she lost in the morning and she didn’t sleep at all in the afternoon. We have put in our best effort to entertain Yvette so that she won’t dozed off at the wrong timing. (If she sleeps now, she won’t be able to sleep at night.)

Our effort was paid off.

When we reached hotel, it was close to 7 pm Batam time (which mean, it was close to 8 pm Singapore time.)

Haiz

This is the problem when we are travelling on guided tour.

Again we were shock to find out the room they given to us was wrong. Instead of giving us a shared bed, we have two single beds again. What we did this round was to join the bed together ourselves.

I quickly bathed Yvette, changed her and made our way for our dinner. We have chicken chop and I ordered rice for Yvette guessing that she might not like the food.

After dinner we headed back to my SIL’s room for R&R. (SIL was staying next to our room.)

The 90mins of traditional massage was the last agenda of our day. Me and my niece Capri went to off first after saying bye bye to Yvette. The papa and my SIL sneaked out the room. Yvette didn’t cry when we were off.

I would say my niece, Ting aka Cheryl did a good job in baby-sitting Yvette. Yvette only started to cry 45 mins later. As she was howling, my niece carried her to me where I was doing my massage. (The Spa was located in the hotel.) She stopped crying immediately after she saw me. The she wanted to be nursed.

Something out of the norm happened toward the end of our massaging session. The whole hotel actually black-out!

Woot!!!

This was the first time I encounter this situation. Luckily, my niece’s phone was able to flash out the flash light. If not we will be walking in the dark when we walked out the Spa.

The light came back after 10 mins. We went back to our room.

I realised whenever we were not heading home during Yvette’s bed time, she was exceptionally energetic. There wasn’t any sign of tiredness at all. With no other choice, I have to move back to our room to pat Yvette to her dreamland. I only managed to get her to sleep at 12 am Singapore Time.

Our Travel Tales: 2D1N @ Batam – Day 1 Part 1

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This is a last minute trip as we are still in holiday mood. My SIL’s family was just back from Melbourne about one week ago and we were just back from Hong Kong a month back.

My niece suggested going Batam for 2D1N as she has two day off in lieu in a row. We booked our tour with MaxPac Travel for S$148 per pax and S$55 for Yvette. I won’t say this is a very good deal but package do include the following:

1. 2 way return ferry ticket (Harbourfront-Batam-Harbourfront)
2. Land transfers (Jetty-Hotel-Jetty)
3. 1 N accommodation at Golden View Hotel with breakfast
4. Welcome Drink (This is nothing)
5. 1 Seafood Lunch at Golden Prawn 933 Seafood Restaurant
6. 1 Free Set Dinner Rajawali
7. Breakfast on Day 2 morning
8. Batam City Tour on Day 1
9. 90 minutes of Traditional Massage or 10 mins Go-Kart Ride
10. Land Transfer by air conditional bus
11. Service of 1 Local Guide with S$2 tips to be paid at end of the tour
12. PDF & Batam Terminal Fee S$27.00 per head

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Our day started early in the morning. We woke up at 7 am to wait for my niece’s boyfriend to fetch us to Harbour Front Jetty. We met at 7.45am at our void deck. Luckily due to holiday season in Singapore, the traffic to Harbour Front was really smooth.

I think she still want to sleep

 

We had breakfast at Macdonald before we boarded the ferry at 9.20 am and reached Batam Sekupang International Ferry Terminal at 9.20 am too (Batam is an hour behind Singapore.)

Enjoying the sea breeze with Papa

 

Our first stop was to visit one of the largest Buddhist temples in SEA, Maha Vihara Duta Maitreya is also known as the Laughing Buddha Temple. Apparently the interest of visiting the temple was not strong. We only roamed around and took some pictures.

Before we hop on to the bus again, we found this tree that look like Christmas Tree to me. Yvette likes the leaves of the tree and even plucked the leaves and smelled it.

Then we moved on to Polo Shop, we had brought nothing but I found one bag I like. I didn’t buy because the material of the bag is not excellent. (Not waterproof and it will get dirty easily.)

The guide brought us to the GTS Local Product Shop before we have our lunch. In this shop we can buy their local snacks, keropok. Yvette dozed off while we shopped.

Don't really like this umbrella stroller. Yvette didn't seem to be as comfort.

 

Then we proceeded to our lunch at the restaurant – Golden Prawn 933 Live Seafood Restaurant that was built on wood and bamboo next to the shop.

Love this picture. (This picture was taken by my niece Capri using FujiFilm camera)

 

Since Yvette was sleeping, I brought a packet of fried rice for her for only SGD 2. She woke up after we was about to finish our lunch. We walked over to Cultural Village. The local kampong villager preformed Kuda Lumping Dance and talent like peeling the coconut using their teeth and even eat glass. I didn’t watch the show as I was busying feeding Yvette at the wooden table and stool under the tree.

Our next stop was to visit Taman Mini Indonesia where we could see different type of houses found within 33 provinces of Indonesia.

One of the highlight of our trip was to let Yvette has a close encounter with the monkey. We moved to Edventure Teambuilding Park for Go Kart and there was a monkey performing there too. Perhaps Yvette was too young to understand the monkey might attack her. She was so close to the monkey to the extent our hearts were racing. And the monkey kept coming back to Yvette. I think the owner knew we don’t mind to keep donating money to the monkey. (We passed money to Yvette to put in the “performance pail” when the monkey came by.)

The monkey didn't look friendy to me

After spending most of our time moving up and down the bus, we were too tired to get down to Bengkong dried foodstuff market and Vihara Buddhi Bakti Temple also known as Tua Pek Kong Bio among locals.