Weekend Getaway – Batam

I was in Batam, Indonesia a couple of weeks back for a short getaway over the weekend. The real excuse really was to go get some sun given the rather gloomy weather in Singapore these couple of weeks. Well, I did get my share of the sun… a little too much of it in fact. The weather did however take a turn when as I was headed back to Singapore on the last day.

Apart from the resort Holiday Inn Batam, Waterfront City is pretty much a dead town. Buildings had sprung up there some 15 years ago at least but somehow, the development came to a halt. Getting from the ferry terminal to the resort takes about 3 minute in the shuttle service. On that short ride, one can clearly see the poor conditions of the roads and abandoned developments.

Getting to city centre  in Nagoya via taxi is obviously the most convenient. I was surprised to find ‘Bak Kut Mee’ (pork rib noodles) in Nagoya Hill given that Indonesia is largely a muslim country.

Figured I had the try it since I was there. Though it did not taste fabulous and instant noodles was used instead of fresh yellow noodles, it was not too bad. There wasn’t much pork ribs in the dish to speak of really. In fact, it was more like ‘Zhu Zhar Mian’ (pig’s spare parts noodles). What I did like was the congealed pig’s blood (aka red or blood tofu) that we hardly get in Singapore anymore for ‘hygenie’ reasons.

Took some photos on my Canon 40D  including snapshots on my iPhone of a drums competition held in the Mega Mall. Oh… went for massage too.. ‘clean’ one in case the guys are wondering.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 12:53 and is filed under photos and tagged with batam indonesia, batam waterfront city, canon 40d, gloomy weather, holiday inn batam, instant noodles, pork ribs, short getaway, weather in singapore, weekend getaway. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.