Revolving stars

JH, Carmen, PL and I went for a short batam trip in July 2016. While surfing the net, I came across this spa and massage place, Spa Central Batam , on tripadvisor that is supposed to be good. Since we are suckers for massages, we decided to give it a try. I sent a whatsapp message to the number given on the website in the middle of the night as it was a very last minute decision and they replied really fast in the late morning. Thumbs up for their service. Similarly, when we reached the batam centre terminal, even though we had choppy wifi, we managed to make contact with the contact person for them to bring us to the massage place. Again, we felt that the service was good. They use a taxi service to bring us to the massage place. When we reached Spa Central Batam, we realised that it is located on the 2nd floor. Stepping in, we were greeted by warm receptionists and they led us to a sitting area with water. Also, they passed us the spa and massage menu. All of us chose a ma...

I hate early mornings. God knows when was the last time I actually woke up and stayed awake till morning before heading straight for work. It was a fruitful early morning though. I have lots of non-work work to catch up on. My batam trip left me slightly crippled. My calves are aching and cramping like mad due to the constant basketball-ing. It had been a loooong time since I have done anything like that. But it was fun. I felt like we had turned back time. Background: We stayed in Nongsa Point Resort in Batam around 1 hr drive from Batam center. The facilities were a little run-down and breakfast was ewww.. (the only redeeming feature was the live egg station.) Pool was awesome - no cold water Karaoke was unavailable at Turi Resort. Without further ado, I present to you the pictures of Batam Trip! (in random sequences) Our Batam breakfast in the resort~ Since the 1st day's breakfast turned us off. This shot was taken in Turi Resort. The hammock can fit t...

PL and I went for our first facial treatment together at Eska Wellness and Spa. This time round, we went to the branch located inside Nagoya Shopping Mall. As you can see, it was just a short walk from Triniti Hotel, the place where we stayed. But I would recommend that you try Ace Hotel, which is located around the row of shophouses. We took the Essential Purifying Facial Treatment at 330k rupiah (inclusive of taxes). It was written there as a 60 mins treatment, but we were treated for 2 hours, and nearly missed our check out time. >.< The branch was jam packed when we reached there at 10am, when it just started to open for business. We booked the treatment the night before, as we figured that it would be less packed but we thought wrong. A lot of Singaporeans were there, but they were mostly there for massage or hair spa. We were the only two for facial treatment, which is good! Basically, they just squeezed the whole face out of me, and it was ultra painful. Probabl...

I'm officially sick of Batam. Lol. This time round, we tried Triniti Hotel which is near Nagoya Mall. It is located two streets behind The Spa Secret. There is a Futsal court situated just in front of the hotel, and it is located in a very quiet neighbourhood. When we reached the hotel, we were quite taken aback by the ulu-ness of it. And it didn't look impressive to us. It looks like a rundown hotel, where construction is unfinished. And the ulu location didn't help much. There was no sign saying that it is Triniti Hotel, but the Triniti spa has a big signboard with no one in sight. I saw the reviews online saying that it was a very dark walk from Nagoya Mall back to the hotel at night, and I agree with it. There is this stretch of road which is unlit at night, so it was quite scary if you are intending to watch a late night movie before heading back to the hotel. It was also one of the rare times that I saw PL pissed at the staff. The receptionist checked us i...

I'm going Batam tomorrow again!! Okays, this is probably the first Batam trip of the year, but I have been to Batam 3 to 4 times last year? I was looking through all the old information and photos and I realised something: We always get rip off by people! So these are the things that we need to take note of: 1. Take taxis away from the touts (those hanging around the hotels - they always charge 10,000 - 20,000 rupiah extra) 2. Always try to speak in Bahasa Indonesia or Malay (They will be friendlier and not charge so much if you attempt to speak in their language) 3. Make sure that you know their pricing before you bargain with them. If you tell them you are from Singapore, prepare to be tok by them. 4. Always ask for steamed food. If you tell them you want your stuff to be fried, they will be sure to give you lousy quality stuff (especially for seafood) 5. Don't eat at fast food outlets! I know there is A&W there, but seriously, the food there sucks. Try Ma...

Wey Wey Live Seafood in Batam was introduced to us by Eska Wellness and Spa person, and they actually gave us a free ride there after our massage. The food there was cheap and delicious. We ordered too much till we couldn't really finish. We went for a weekday trip, which was why there are not many people there! I heard that on weekends, it is always very crowded. The Gong Gong, which is a delicacy in Batam. It is sold almost everywhere! We really had to use skills to eat these you know. Drunken prawns, which is what the waiter recommended. It was damn awesomely yummy~ The super hot curry that I couldn't really take. Salted egg crab, which was not that nice since it was too dry. I still prefer the Malaysia/Singapore version. The Dou Miao is good! We wanted to order more but our stomach protested against the excessive food. The unglam photo of us eating~ The fried prawns is damn damn good. I think we fought for the last of it. HAHA. ...

My friends and I went for a massage at Eska opposite Nagoya Mall. It was supposedly very famous, but the masseur that did the massage for PL last month at Megamall was not good. She was quite bad to the extent that PL did not tip her, which was a very rare thing indeed. I am always complaining that he tips too much. This time round, I tried the service myself at the outlet near Nagoya mall, and I would say that the service is mediocre at best. I took a 2 hr therapeutic massage with essential oil but requested to only do the back, shoulder and neck. After one hour, the masseur did not know what to do next and just kept rubbing the same old points. I was very disappointed. Asae said that her masseur was not very skilled either, and splashed a bit of hot water on her when she did the herbal compress massage. I was very lucky in the sense that because I only requested certain body parts to be massaged, the masseur secretly massaged me with the herbal compress too. The herbal compress w...

It's a hotel that PL will love, since the whole theme of the hotel is orange. Stayed there for 3D2N on a weekday. (24-26 Sep 2013) Their beds are furnished with orange Harris Big Hugs and it was a godsend because I always need extra pilows and bolsters around. As usual, there was an extra pillow in the cupboard, and I made full use of it. We had a super interesting encounter with the cockroaches in the room though. The guys were in our room chit-chatting when one of them spotted a cockroach crawling around the carpeted floor. Asae immediately jumped and demanded him to catch it. Then, another mini cockroach crawled across the wall and almost landed in our bed.The guys mentioned that it was because of the water flood in the bathroom, which probably caused all the cockroaches to come out. Asae couldn't take it and requested the guys to let us stay in their room. So, the four of us squeezed into a room, taking all our belongings and the bed stuff over. We even carried the bl...