Food on Batam Island

As I visited Dr. Frans Setiawan whom I got in contact with through Couchsurfing, I got to know a little bit of the life on Batam Island. They lived in a beautiful housing compound named Bukit Sukajadi which has hills and forested parts in the background. In the morning I got to enjoy some jogging and tai chi training. Although Batam doesn't have surf beaches and outstanding tourist sites, spending some time there especially when you can join a local event would be worth the effort. It is easy to get to Singapore by ferry. Holders of Indonesian passports can get a good deal of about § 15,-. Buying ferry tickets at the terminal is usually more expensive. Cheaper tickets needed to be bought at travel agencies in a shopping mall

On days that both of my hosts needed to work the whole day and didn't have time for me, I have been dropped at Nagoya Hill shopping mall. After shopping around and trying different kinds of food, I started to make contact with some property business representatives. They drove me around the island to show their properties in areas I wanted to spend time in. This was my first impression of what was going on on Batam Island. I saw some coastal and forrested areas, among others the Panbil village and the nearby Kepri mall.

Frans drove us a bit through Batam, the food there was cheap, very tasty with excellent service. He introduced me to his friends Uwan and Sabrina. We had breakfast in Batu Aji, the more lower middle class part of Batam. After this we drove past a couple of villages onto Barelang.

There we had a beautiful seafood late lunch while I was exploring the houses on stilts in the water. It was similar to the clan jetties in Penang, the houses and stilts were a bit less sturdy and the environment more genuine rural. I was very impressed by the friendliness of the people because they didn't hesitate to invite me into their homes

The food was relatively expensive for such an area, possibly because many Singaporeans come to visit Batam for food and spa

Bandar Jakarta Seafood Restaurant

Wiwi and Novia took mum and me to a very nice place in Alam Sutra TAnggerang. It is opposite Omni Hospital and consists of a couple of good restaurants and bakeries. On weekends you will find the place packed with families going for a little outing. The seafood restaurant Bandar Jakarta is very well organised with a cosy atmosphere.

At ground level there are huge tanks of various kinds of lobsters, giant prawns, small and huge sharks and various types of seafishes. You can just go and pick the type of seafood that you fancy and choose from a variety of how you want them to be cooked:" grilled, fried, sauteed in oyster sauce, chili sauce, battered etc". You deliver your seafood to the counter, tell the staff about the cooking mode and then go to the tastefully designed quarters upstairs and get served by sexy, intelligent and charming waitresses in short pants or skirts