One night in Indonesia

Having finished up Friday night fairly early, legging it from my golf less on to meet up with Nick, Liv and Flash for dinner at the pizza place just near our flat, Saturday morning kicked off at the crack of dawn, with a 6am alarm getting us out of bed ready for our little weekend adventure to Batam.

Batam is a tiny little island just a 45 minute ferry ride away from Singapore. Despite it being so close, it’s one of the many Indonesian islands, so with it’s own currency and an hours time difference being factor in, despite the fact that we got to the hotel within a couple of hours of having left home, it still felt like a real holiday.

Kate and Duncan had signed up to come along with us (taking advantage of the same GroupOn bargain deal as us), so we gathered as a four for an early morning coffee at the ferry port before working our way through passport control and boarding a ferry for a journey that takes about as long as getting from Portsmouth to Cowes on the fast cat.

We arrived well before breakfast time, and a fully half day before we could officially check in, so we did what any sensible people would do in that situation – we got into our swimmers, covered ourselves in suntan lotion and settled in for a fabulous day of lazing around by the pool. There were drinks being served in a waterside bar, where you sit in the pool to enjoy your beverages, so we obviously spent a fair amount of time there.

There was reading, there was sleeping and there was eating – all the very best things! In the evening we enjoyed Happy Hour at a bar nestled half way down a beautiful old rickety pier, enjoying the last of the sun and some very strong drinks! Then dinner was at a teppanyaki restaurant, with the chef working his magic right at our table, followed by a couple more drinks out on the deck.

Sunday was very much more of the same – sun, swimming, beach time, sleeping, reading, eating, a couple of drinks and lot of lazing around. Our ferry home was leaving Batam at five, getting us back to Singapore in plenty of time for dinner and a bit of life admin to ensure that we were back on track and ready for another busy week at work. Thankfully, this week is only a four day week as we have another public holiday on Thursday, so that’s definitely taking the sting out of being away from the beach and back in the office.