CNY 2015 Batam Trip – Day 2 & 3!

20 February 2015

Woke up with a strong urge to swim, but we had hotel breakfast awaiting!

Not difficult to guess whose vulgar finger is that -_- I don’t feel that this is a lot for breakfast but I seem to be the one who ate the most! Haha! Everyone was kinda shocked since I am usually not hungry or not eating~ I’m a hungry ghost in the day!

Setting off for our beach day!!! So excited that I even brought 2 sets of bikinis, since I left my swimsuit in office…Zzzzzz.

Mickey wants to be in CNY mood too 😛

Forgot to bring so many things for this trip (even though I packed early) including my sunblock, blusher and foundation!!! Went over to borrow from Kelly’s sunblock and guess who decided to hide it inside her pants! This explains the rape. I mean the sexual innuendo in the video xD

So yea we were expecting one whole day of sun, sea, sand, tanning and water sports, but the reality was quite far off from the expectation! We consulted the hotel taxi service staff with photos of beaches with water sports, explaining that we would like to go to a BEACH with water sports…

We were told that the Nongsa beach that we wanted to go initially no longer has water sports, and all the water sports have moved to another beach. So heeding the staff’s advice, we decided to go to this other beach that he recommended, even though it costs S$14 to go there~

But upon arrival, we were sad to realise it is NOT A BEACH!!! It is nothing that we had imagined and it’s basically a place by the sea with overpriced water sports.

So after taking a look at the price list, we figured that the most we would do is 30 minutes of kayaking and that’s it. There’s nothing else that is within a reasonable budget and there’s nothing else that we can do there either.

There was so much communication barrier between the driver and us but thankfully the water sports staff could speak Mandarin and became our translator. So the driver finally understood that we want a BEACH with water sports, but sadly, there was none. It was either beach OR water sports.

We chose the beach in the end after Mommeyyyyyyyy argued with the driver that it’s he who recommended us this place and not where we wanna go, so the driver agreed to waive off our cab fare to the water sports place~

Yea so again, we imagined that at least with the sand and the sea, we could lie under the sun and bask the day off. But again, expectation > reality. We arrived at Nongsa beach after a 30-45 minutes drive, costing us around 18 bucks, and all we got was a beach full of rubbish!!! Like literally rubbish!

It was so so so dirty that we could hardly find a space that we can lie down without being surrounded by coconut shells, litters and bugs. Neither did we see anyone in bikini or even swimsuit, since it’s a conservative country -_- It definitely felt weird and “underdressed” if we start running around in our bikinis, even though there weren’t many people there, just some couples pak-tor-ing and group of people doing I-seriously-don’t-know-what-they-can-do-at-such-a-beach.

Yea but since we chose the beach over water sports (which we regretted in the end), we could only make do with whatever we have, which is 1 beach towel + selfie stick + tibits. These pretty much summarised all of the pictures below.

In the middle of nowhere~

Endless cam-whoring while the other 2 ladies explored!

Group photos~! 😀

Continued the cam-whore session since that’s the only thing to do!

We only stayed for like less than 1 hour and we decided to leave, cause we figured that it will probably be more fulfilling swimming in our hotel pool. On the way here, our cab driver actually told us that we could take a bus back later at only 1/5 of the cab fare, so we went to the exact spot that he showed us and waited…

Waited and waited and waited, and you can probably imagined how our disastrous beach day turned out. There was no sign of bus at all after a long wait and after checking with the residents around the beach (forgot to mention that the beach is also surrounded by kampongs), we were told that the bus probably only operates on weekends!

How now brown cow! We were like desperate and lost cats, walking around trying to get transport back cause there are no cabs at this ulu pandan place! We even almost hitched a ride on this school bus if not for the extortion that the driver asked for.

Luckily we managed to find this kind Indo-Chinese who could of course speak perfect Mandarin and he called a cab for us! Really kind of him!!! He even ensured that we got on the right cab when it arrived! ((:

Cute little chicks spotted before we left! So cuteeeeee please!!!

The cab trip back was more expensive than our trip there and our hearts were jumping along with the meter. So the lousy beach trip cost us almost 40 bucks to and fro and it was an ultimate disappointment. Guess we don’t have to consider visiting any more beaches in our future Batam trips~

Back to hotel to swim~! But I totally forgot that I had left my goggles in the swimming bag in office too!!! ARGH! So difficult to swim without goggles and I could only take turn to use Kelly’s x.x

Tried to teach Lyn how to swim but her breath-holding is always less than 3 seconds..hahaha! Went to the sauna after that and I totally love it! I have always had a higher tolerance for heat than coldness!

Back to our rooms to shower and prepare before heading out to another mall – BCS~ I thought it’s the mall I had went before but it’s not! Seemed like a brand-new place I haven’t explored but too bad we didn’t have enough time to either 😦

Went for our usual supermarket-shopping again after the ladies’ dinner but I didn’t get much this time, because I was low on cash after getting S$30 worth of sambal chilli for le pig brother! Back to the hotel since all the shops were closed/closing and the little girl and I explored the back of the hotel!

We were actually looking for a decent place to play our pop-pop (childhood memories!!!) and we chanced upon people putting fireworks at the carpark behind!

Pretty scary to watch them play cause the fireworks will shoot up from right in front of you to right above you, and it was so damn loud! I was screaming away with the fireworks while both of us keep backing off from it, yet we both stayed to watch for quite a while -_-”

And this is the hilarious part when Lyn stepped on my slipper while we were running away from the fireworks above us and it slipped off my foot! Two scaredy yet curious cats -.- Haven’t you heard that curiosity kills the cat?!

So while we were watching the scary yet beautiful fireworks, we were playing with our pop-pop as well. Suddenly our pop-pop became so sad, because imagine people’s fireworks going “Ewwwwwwwwww POM POM POM!” and ours went “Piak! Piak! Piak!” T.T

The dwarf with giant Guinness!

Wanted to have our second round of lohei that we smuggled over but everyone was too full~ So we stayed in our individual rooms to watch movies instead; so many nice movies to watch!!!

Then the 2 ladies suddenly changed their minds and came over to 捞个风生水起~ But because we didn’t wanna make a mess in the room, it was a “gentle lohei“…hahaha! 捞啊～ 捞啊～ 捞！((:

21 February 2015

Checked out on 初三 but since our ferry is in the evening, we still had one whole day to enjoy after breakfast!

How an alcoholics’ room look like

Brought the ladies to the place we discovered the previous night to take photos with our cruise! Hahaha! Yes, this is our hotel! My second time staying at Pacific Palace but this is my first time finally taking an exterior shot of it~

Selfie with our hotel cum cruise!

Group shot!

Welcome to our cruise! 😀

Selfie stick again! Hehe!

Behind the scene -_-“

With the smaller ship at the side!

All with eye gears! =O

Accidental artistic shot…HAHAHAHA!

Someone tried to photobomb me while waiting for the cab!

Finally off to Nagoya Hill again for lunch! And finally had my long-awaited A&W treat from Lyn! Hahaha! Cause she lost a bet with me prior the trip! 😛

My must-have A&W waffle!

Huge floss roll!

=OOOOO

Ended the trip with a good foot massage but it was also a worrying one, cause I felt extreme pain in so many areas and the masseur concluded from the acupoints that I have problems with my head, neck, shoulder, eyes, heart, bladder, blood circulation and sleep! –CRYYYYYYYY!!!!–

We didn’t have much money left since it’s our last day and I even had to change extra cash with Lyn for this massage actually. But because my masseur was really good, we decided to give a bit of tip~

Who knows the masseurs complained that our tip was too little and asked for more! How annoying!!! I think these people are taking it for granted that they deserve the tips, rather than knowing that it’s actually an extra thing that we could have not given! Zzzzzz!

Back to our hotel to collect our heavy kueh lapis and rested a little before heading to the ferry terminal~ I thought by being early we would be able to check in earlier and etc, but the system at the terminal was so chaotic!

We queued for such a long time and way past our boarding time, then this group of people just suddenly rushed in and cut our queue! Everyone was so annoyed and I don’t know why people can be so thick skin! People queued for 45 minutes and you only came for 5 minutes yet you wanna board first! Zzzzz!

Finally, finally back to SG at 9+ and headed over to Lyn’s place to 拜年 and be 财神爷！Played 四人 mahjong this time and although I lost, as expected, I wasn’t the biggest loser!!! Hahahaha! I also lost lesser than I had expected again, so I am happy enough! Plus I was the first to win okay!!! Another happy day spent with ❤ ones! (((:

Happy 牛 羊 Year, everyone~!!!