My Short Trip to Batam

It takes about 45 minutes ferry ride from the Harbour Front ferry terminal to go to Harbour Bay ferry terminal in Batam. There are some ferry operators with some different destination port from Singapore to Batam.

My husband and I took ‘Wavemaster’ ferry to Harbour Bay ferry terminal, a return ticket of $48.00 per person is cheaper than one way ticket which cost more than half of price. Waiting bay is clean, nice and not packed with people perhaps it was on Tuesday morning.

I enjoyed the sea breeze and the smell of the ocean until I realized that the ferry had arrived at Harbour Bay. First destination was Nagoya Hill, a new and big shopping mall surrounded by small shop houses with many variety of business. I like this kind of shopping malls where there are many unique shops selling different kind of stuffs. Bargaining is important to get good and cheap stuffs such as cloths, shoes and other things, of course it’s not easy to bargain if you do not have roughly idea on the price.

After strolling around almost one hour in the mall, we moved to the food gallery to find something to eat, so many small restaurants and food stalls offer delicious foods and refreshing drinks. Finally we decided to have our lunch at a Sundanese restaurant, it was good, yummy and cheap too, It costs around $10 for 2 people including fresh fruit juices.

From Nagoya Hill we took taxi heading to Batam Centre, actually this is another ferry terminal in central area but our ticket was return ticket for Harbour Bay which meant we had to take our return trip also from there. Taxi cost around $6 -$7 depends on the car condition and taxi operator and the price was not fix too. It’s about 20 minutes driving to get to Batam Centre, The mall is smaller than Nagoya Hill but nice place to shop, eat and relax too.

We spent our time having light meal i.e. empek-empek and es campur while resting our foot and enjoying the harbour view from the restaurant’s window. There are a movie theater and some Spas in this shopping mall which most visited by Singaporeans.

At dusk, we went back to the Harbour Bay, walking and exploring the new shopping mall which is adjacent to the Harbour Bay ferry terminal and Windsor seafood centre along the seaside. The mall just opened around February 2010, some shops had not opened for business yet, we went to Carefour to grab some avocados and other stuffs in our shopping list.

After finish shopping, we rushed to the seaside food centre, they open their business in the evening till early morning. Having an al-fresco diner under the clear sky was fantastic and memorable. The eating place was simple and clean, we could choose the fresh fish, prawn and crabs ourselves. We started to check out the menu, there were no price listed even the waitress had no idea at all how much was the food cost but politely offered to check with the cashier for the price. Anyway, we didn’t want to wait any longer as our stomach growled, we ordered some seafood meals and they served the food about 20 minutes later, their prawn and fish were really fresh and tasty, we enjoyed the meal and the ambience, after we got the bill we found their price was reasonable, it’s around 40% of the price for the same food in Singapore.

Full stomach and tired, we walked down to the ferry terminal and caught the last ferry for that day to return to Singapore.