Batam

Batam...my second destination in Indonesia in my whole life. Never knew what was waiting for me there.
I've went to Batam by Firefly direct from Subang airport. From udara in Batam, I can see Batam has many small islands close to main island which is very beautiful for me. But I am not sure if there are any resorts available there.

I've reached at Batam airport around 1pm local time and my present was waited by our company local agent. While waiting for few more members to arrive from Jakarta, we went for quick drink inside the airport. The local agent asked me, "bro, minum apa bro?". After some simple chatting, I realized that the local Batam people talking malay in dialect which almost similar to Malaysia. This is easier for me to understand compared when I was in Bandung previous week.
After all members gathered, we went to centre of Batam to have our lunch. Of course Nasi Padang restaurant. Nasi Padang is actually malaysia Nasi Campur where there have many lauks to choose and eat it with rice. The lauk have many variants from fishes to chicken and beef. When we are having the meals with many peoples, we can asked them to serve the lauk on the desk. After finish the meal, the restaurant staff will come to desk and count how many lauks have been taken and calculate for the charge. Different with Malaysia where when we ask to serve the lauk on our desk, restaurant will charge the lauk by the time they serve. It is a waste if we are not finish all meals as it has been included for payment.

In Batam we can see many retails selling cheap shirts, hand bags, chocolates, and perfume. Friends from Jakarta said that Batam is popular with the cheap handbads etc. However it is hard to confirm if the item is original or fake.

One night, we had our dinner at Golden Brown restaurant. The local person said the restaurant is quite popular for tourist. At the entrance, we can choose any lobster, fishes or crab we like from a room containing with few marbles ponds. The restaurant also entertain visitors by a live shows, dangdut ler. Surrounding the restaurant is a fish pond which according to them, the place originally a swamp area and they purposely develop the area for floating restaurant above fish pond.

Going there with a friend who does not like to explore places, I made my decision to explore around hotel alone. Just to look for anything interesting around here. Once I got out from hotel compound, a person from across the street called me offered a taxi ride. Every minutes while I'm walking along the road, countless of taxi offer came.  I am not sure if it is normal and always happen to everyone including local people. Also when I walked beside to a food stall, all of the peoples at the stalls suddenly stop talking and looked at me. To make sure if I am not embarrassing myself with ripped trousers, I checked my wear found no problem. A shabby crocs shoes, just bought jeans, shabby tshirt, G-shock watch, and my laptop bag without the laptop to keep anything that I might buy. I entered a few shops selling watches, bags etc. Just to look the items and the price. But have no interest to buy any. Most of the items I can found here in Malaysia with a similar price. After walking around 15 minutes, and feel uneasy with the people surround kept watching on me, I returned to hotel.

Batam is an island located very close to Singapore. In weekends, the area will full of tourist especially from Singapore. I heard that hotel should pre-book earlier if you planning to go to Batam in weekend as the hotel will always fully booked. As anything are always expensive in Singapore, make a trip to Batam for shopping and rest is also a good option beside Johor. Batam also lived by many chinese descents community. It is not hard to find a good chinese restaurant like Golden Brown restaurant. If you like for natural, there are many islands surround Batam that can provide good experiences like Bintan Island, Tanjung Pinang area or Pulau Galang.

I was in Batam only for 3 night for meeting purpose and sure I do not have much time to explore Batam more. But I think Batam is a good place to have rilexing condition beside other popular islands like Bali.

Bandung

Pertama kali ke Indonesia....what to expect?

I never been to Indonesia before. Only heard many stories about Indonesia, heard many riots happened in Indonesia for so many reasons, heard about how bad the traffic jam there....but that's all were stories heard from people. Plus, my maid also came from Indonesia, they also contributed to the stories that I can only hear and imagine.

'Perjalananku' starting from last week trip to Bandung gave me the opportunities to find out the real stories from what I had heard.

Flight landing in Husein Sastranegara Airport in the early morning woke me up from morning sleep. From inside the plain I can see 'Giant', a supermarket origin from Malaysia. "wah...giant dh bertapak di Indonesia rupanya".....yes, I admit that I never concern about Malaysia companies going international. When the flight make a turn heading terminal, I saw few Indonesia army plains. Then a group of army were doing kawat pagi probably. Tu dia.....it is actually an Indonesia airforce airport that converted for conventional airplane usage. While I was walking from airplane to the terminal, a big Hercules...yes, the Hercules army airplane landed on the pathway. Biar betui.....giler bagak n kuat bunyik.

Locations:
My hotel located in Lembang area, at the road to Takuban Perahu. It is quite far from Bandung city and have a very nice hill view that full of vegetables. According to taxi driver, Bandung actually have their nice fresh fishes but the Lembang area is quite far from the city and they have good and fresh vegetables. There have many hotels in the area but all of them are more to resort with villa and chalet type of rooms. I reached the hotel at 12pm but the temperature was around 22degrees. The area located in high hills area which makes the temperature low.

Traffic:
About the traffic, the rumors about how bad traffic jam is true. The traffic was very messy. I can hear vehicle honk in every minutes. The road was small and curvy, just imagine when the taxi driver takeover a lorry at curvy road. Lebih hebat dari takumi woo....kalau dalam Initial-D, takumi potong kereta lain guna high performance car, but here, take over the any slow car only by Toyota Avanza. Hard for me to explain more, just go to Bandung and experience it yourself.

Foods:
Other than local food restaurant, Bandung is full with Japanese restaurant. I am not sure if there are many Japanese there in Bandung. I have went to a Japanese restaurant named Torigen in near to Bandung city centre. It was claimed by my Japanese friends as the nicest Japanese restaurant over there. Tried few Japanese food, but the best one was a sushi with maguro...forgot the name. We had ordered 18 pieces of Takoyaki but it was never came to our desk until we headed back to hotel 2 hours later. It was not a good service for that but still we go to same places a night after to have our dinner. But this time my friend from NEC had ordered the takoyaki earlier before we started our car engine. The trip from hotel to the restaurant took around 30 minutes, but we could only get the Takoyaki 30 minutes after we arrived the restaurant. Was a hard waiting but just when you taste the takoyaki, you will forget all the hard waiting moments. It was very nice takoyaki ever. I had never tasted any good takoyaki outside of Japan than the takoyaki there.

The hotel:
Do not want to brief much about the hotel. The surroundings and hotel arrangement was nice but please do not expect much. As an advice, please prepare ubat nyamuk and buy indonesia sim card if you want to use internet in the room. I had an experienced where I have to prepare a documents but there was no internet line in the room. I have to walked at 12 midnite through villas and big trees for about 100 meters to lobby just to get an internet line for me to do my work. I finished my work at 3am and walked back to my rooms.......the meeting rooms?......do not want to tell....very not suitable to organize an important meeting.

Other than hotel that I went, it was a nice experienced for me in Bandung. Even I had never have a chance to go shopping (as what many Malaysian go there, to shopping), I am very enjoy being in Bandung. To watch and have my first experiences in Indonesia.

I will post my trip experiences in Batam and Jakarta next time.

Berjalan lagi?!

7 tahun................blah...

9 bulan................blah.....

perjalanan saya yg dah sudah. Kini perjalanan baru bermula lagi....perjalanan yang lebih hebat dan mencabar. Perjalanan yang benar perjalanan......anak, isteri menunggu dirumah....."bila babah nak balik?"........sabar nak. Babah berjalan mencari arah tujuan....