Trip to Batam

This year's end I went to Batam with my parents. My mom had some work to be done with Batam authority and it's my first time to Batam so I came along hehe... By the time I arrived at Hang Nadim airport Batam at 4 PM, so did my folks since their plane was delayed two hours due to heavy weather in Medan (what a lucky coincidence). It's still raining here in Batam and the sky was dark.

We took a cab to Goodway (Mandarin) hotel in Nagoya, Batam. I spent the afternoon swimming and tried the hot whirlpool with my dad. Since it's raining no one was swimming at that time so we have the pool to ourselves :).

The next morning, we went to Batam Center to meet the authority of Batam. Because of a mis-communication, they didn't know and hadn't prepared our visit. But they acted fast, they could make a presentation about Batam for us in just 15 minutes and we're showed a cool animated video about the development of Batam. I was introduced as an engineer from Sabang since my mom's staff couldn't go here. Luckily they didn't ask me anything hahaha :)). My impression was that they're very professional!

We had lunch at Ria Center Point. They served a very good "ayam penyet". It's a fried chicken with very crisp bone since the chicken was crushed first. It tasted very good *krauk krauk*. Then we went to Barelang bridge. It's a cable-bridge 642m length connecting Batam and a neighbor island. Wow I didn't know such bridge exist in Indonesia! Salute to Mr. Habibie for the realization of this bridge.

In the afternoon we went to Italy store to buy souvenir. I just spent 15 minutes there bought t-shirts and some snacks for my friends. My mom spent two and a half hours seeing all the stuffs there. She went through all item, asked this and that, bargained wew it's really boring :(. At night, I went to my friend's place, Olan, who worked here and had stayed in hotel for 8 months by his company! His hotel turned out to be very near my place, just 15 minutes walking.

The next day, we were having lunch at Golden Prawn. They served a very good seafood. I asked the waiter what is "prawn" and she plainly told me that it's a woman that has not been touched. ???!@#!@$@!%! Hahahaha OMG what did she think!!! I was asking about prawn, not that hahaha... By the way their golden prawn that served with mayonese was very good, you should try it!

Then we went to the highest ground of Batam in Tg Uma. There we could see the town of Batam and also the Singapore island. On the way home we went to Top 100, one of the electronic centre in Batam. I bought 1 GB "Speed" MP3 player for my sister there.

I parted with my parents in the airport the next day. They went to Medan while I went back to Jakarta.