We’ve been in Singapore for several months now, Ted since the end of September, and I’ve been here since early November. We had hoped when he took this job, a contract position as a flight trainer, that we would spend a lot of time traveling around South East Asia, so far that hasn’t happened. So, when Ted found that he would have about 10 days off around the holidays we got on the internet to see about going someplace. Maybe Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, or Borneo? All within a few hours flight time. And usually, flights are pretty inexpensive, but we had waited just a bit too long and there were no inexpensive flights to anyplace, and hotels were all booked anyway. Finally we discovered that the island of Batam, part of Indonesia, had some places available that weren’t yet booked and that we could take a ferry across. Without knowing much about it and Christmas fast approaching I booked us for just two nights at the KTM resort in Sekupang. A two night stay was just $168 US for the whole stay and included breakfast both mornings.
On the morning of the 24th we had our breakfast and packed up and walked over to the closest MRT station at Clarke Quay and rode the 3 stops down to Harbourfront. Singapore has a resort island, Sentosa, accessible from Harbourfront, as well as the park system the Southern Ridges, luxury housing, and lots and lots of shipping commerce, in addition to the ubiquitous luxury mall.
We had made online reservations with Batamfast for our ferry ride, paying about $90SGD for our roundtrip fare, so we hustled through the MRT station and the mall doing our best to locate our ferry company. Oddly, the company has poor location information on its website and it was luck and Google Maps that finally got us there. Once checked in we had just a little time to walk around before boarding.
Anyone from the Seattle area will hear ‘ferry’ and think of the large vessels that carry cars and people between the I-5 corridor and the neighboring islands in Puget Sound, but these ferries are dwarfed even by the passenger ferries in the NW. They are passenger only and seat maybe 100 people. They travel the roughly 12 miles between Singapore and Batam in about 50 minutes, wending through an incredible number of shipping vessels waiting their turn in the straits. Ted started counting shipping vessels in one small part of the harbor and got to 50 before long, and there were group after group of them, some several times the size of the usual vessels.
On the ferry on the way to Batam!
Arriving in Indonesia a short time later we discovered that you apply and pay for your Visa upon entry ($30SGD for the both of us) and then pretty much walk on out to the taxi queue. The ride from the ferry terminal to the resort was a rather steep $14SGD considering it is all of 3 km, but it seemed the only way to get there so we complied.
After living my whole life in the PNW and traveling mostly in Europe and a little in Central America, Singapore is a very comfortable fit. It’s clean, highly organized, urban, very western, most everyone speaks English, and though the traffic is somewhat more cavalier than Seattle it is more orderly than Rome. Batam on the other hand is not quite so mannerly. There is a lot of rubbish on the road sides and traveling by motor vehicle is not for the faint of heart. I saw numerous families riding mopeds, sometimes with as many as four people on them, whipping in and out of the traffic with cars traveling quite close together and lane markings completely disregarded. None of the taxis we rode in even had seat belts in the back and if there were any in the front the drivers chose not to use them. The mildew that is so prevalent on the walls in tropical places is cleaned and painted away in much of Singapore, but Batam is not quite so diligent in it’s mildew removal and it gives the feel of projects started, but then abandoned.
Ted on the deck of our cute little cabin.
Front deck attaching the cabins to each other.
Indonesian bidet.
The KTM resort sits on a little promontory in Sekupang and looks back across the shipping lanes towards downtown Singapore, which you can quite clearly see when the weather cooperates. Entering the gates you pass a Basketball and tennis court area surrounded by cute cabins of varying sizes. The resort rolls down the hill to a beach, with more cabins dotting the hillsides, and the impressive statue of Kwan Im, goddess of mercy, standing 75 feet tall and overlooking the restaurant, pool and beach.
Kwan Im, standing over the resort
At Kwan Im’s feet
After checking in we were given a ride back up the hill to our little cabin, simple and small but private and charming, with a lovely view out into the bay and the small islands just beyond. We had some lunch in the restaurant and had a leisurely afternoon, enjoying drinks on our deck as the sun set.
Very dramatic light.
Beautiful view from our deck.
Christmas isn’t widely celebrated in largely Muslim Indonesia, so there wasn’t much fanfare at any point during our stay, though the reception area had some decorations and several people wished us Merry Christmas. But since there is a Christian minority, Christmas is a bit of a public holiday and a number of families had barbeques on Christmas eve, enjoying each others company, the scenery and some fireworks. The monkeys also enjoyed the barbeques and we found them scrounging in the garbage on the way to breakfast. But the breakfast was lovely, with freshly made to order omelets, lots of fresh fruit, coffee, juice, cereal, sausage, fried noodles, rice and chicken feet.
After breakfast we got a cab into Nagoya, the urban center of Batam, to walk the mall and maybe do a little budget shopping. The ride in caused me to acquire a new gray hair, but we did arrive safely. The mall isn’t quite up to Singaporean standards in term of the offerings but we spent a few hours wandering around and looking at all the shops until hunger overtook us. There are ample restaurant offerings in the mall ranging from some of the western favorites like KFC and A&W, to more formal sit down places. We had some awesome fried rice and a noodle dish for under $6 USD.
Since it was Christmas we decided to do something fun for ourselves and found a reflexology place just outside the mall and requested two 90 minutes sessions. The price was right at just about $10 each! We were ushered into a low light room, seated into two recliners, and had our feet put to soak in warm soapy water for a few minutes, encouraging us to anticipate good things. That was the last time for the next 90 minutes that we felt relaxed. Our image of a fabulous foot and leg massage was replaced by the painful reality of intense pressure deep into the feet and calves. Only our optimism that the painful part would surely be over soon and the nice, relaxing part would start at any moment kept us in our seats. But the grim truth is that even a day later we were still groaning in discomfort. I’ve never had a reflexology session before, so I have no gauge by which to measure it, but I can only hope that there are more pleasant sessions out there awaiting us at some point.
The site of our Christmas reflexology beating
Exhausted by our foot beating, we snagged a cab back to our cabin and broke out the gin. We enjoyed another lovely sunset sipping our pains away.
Soothing our pained feet with a little Christmas gin.
The next day we enjoyed our breakfast, Skyped with some of my family and got ourselves ready to head back to Singapore. The resort provides a return ride to the terminal and we had already bought our tickets so the trip back was a breeze. Because Ted has a work Visa to Singapore and I am a dependent we have the ability to scan our passports and thumbprints, bypassing the long entry lines back into Singapore and we were back at our home by early afternoon.
Our first trip out of Singapore wasn’t quite what we had thought it would be, but we had a great time, enjoyed our holiday and were grateful to have the chance to explore another new place.
Libby Scofield 