My S$160 Getaway

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Just came back from a one-day getaway to Batam with a friend; the same friend who I went with for a spiritual retreat in September. But this time, we decided to go back to Batam for a leisure trip, to just shop and eat, shop and eat :) I would say that this time, it was a rather memorable trip with many light-hearted and interesting moments, including:

• how we always get so confused with the local currency because everything costs thousands and thousands of dollars; we always struggle with their notes and several times, we gave the wrong notes.
  
  

  Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Indonesian_Rupiah.jpg
  
  
  
• how we went around with our limited knowledge of bahasa and trying to guess meaning of words... but in the end, we learnt important words like sapi (beef), cumi (sotong), gratis (free) etc :)
• how my friend always get stopped by this group of men in Mega Mall trying to promote their hand cream (the same thing happened in September when we visited Mega Mall) and we just laughed about it when they approached my friend again
• how we drank Ades water :)
  
• how we realised that they were playing the song "One Way Jesus" over the PA in the supermarket and boy did we wonder (with glee and amazement) how they are so liberal in a muslim country :)
• how we managed to order food (using our broken bahasa and pointing) when we ate at local coffee shops despite our lack of mastery of bahasa indonesian
  

I also thank God for the trip going well even though I had nightmare about cell on Wednesday night:

• the rest I have got during the trip (and even the time to just sit back and catch some old SBC serial on channel 8 and have fun reminiscing old serials and talking about how different the artistes look)
• For a patient travel-mate who is so patient and who beared with my "blur-ness"
• that no conflicts happened between me and my friend
• that we went and came back safe, without any incidences e.g. robbery, being cheated etc
• that we managed to find cheap transport (about Rp 40,000 or S$6 per trip) to bring us from place to place
• that we did not get lost and managed to find our way around the area rather easily
• that we did not suffer from diarrhea or food poisoning even as we were daring enough to go into a local food place to try the food
• for an interesting dining experience at local food places despite not knowing how to speak bahasa indonesian. However, in the end, we managed to try interesting local cuisine like batagor (yum, it's really nice). Batagor is actually BAso TAhu GOReng (literally means, fried meatballs & beancurd) is made from blended fish and beancurd, with a special peanut sauce. It resembles our Gado Gado but I think the guy who took our order might wonder what we were talking about since "Gado" in malay seems to mean "quarrel" :)
  
  
  Source: http://flickr.com/photos/tya/260383020/ and http://www.photoblog.com/dapurku/2007/04/22/batagor.html
  
  
• got the chance to taste A&W waffers and root beer float (boy do I miss A&W)
  
  
  Source: sayasha.fotopages.com/?entry=1212629
  
  
• managed to find a Christian CD shop (Pondok Pujian, in Mega Mall) which was really very well-organised and there are sample CDs for all their CDs and listening stations to listen to the sample CDs. Each single CD seems to cost (Rp 75,000 or about S$11.90) and the staff were really friendly though they did not know much English.
  

OK here's the breakdown of my S$160 getaway to Batam:

• Hotel Accomodations @ Mercure Batam (S$30)
• Ferry (S$35)
  
• Taxi fares (ferry terminal-hotel, Nagoya Hill Shopping Centre-Hotel and hotel-ferry terminal) (S$8)
• 4 meals @ local eatery Nusantara, Godiva Cafe and A&W (S$16)
• 6 AA batteries (S$3)
• Messenger Bag (75% discount @ S$3)
• Dessert (S$2)
• 2 dozens JCo Donuts (S$14) (love these donuts because they are so soft!)
  
  
  
  Source: http://www.jcodonuts.com/
• Brownie (S$4)
• Massage (S$16)
• 2 +1 free bottle of hair wax (S$4)
• 2 boxes of cereals (S$7)
• 2 worship CDs (S$20)