If you are not a golf fanatic or a sports fan, and you are worried that you will be bored in Batam, let me assure you, you can still find interesting things to do, if you are like me who like shopping and love eating that is.
Firstly there are a few places you can visit, which is recommended. One of them is the largest Chinese temple in Batam, the Maha Vihara Duta Maitreya Buddhist Temple.
It is located somewhere near Batam Centre and is very famous. Every taxi knows how to bring you there. The temple also has a school situated at the back of the building, so it is full of life all the time in the day, with lots of school children and parents wandering the grounds. There are also many devotees who come to pray and tourists who come to visit. When I was there, a group of young school children were performing a song and dance routine at the foyer.
In the midst of all the goings on, you can find two tranquil gardens sandwiched between the building like courtyards where one can sit, relax and even meditate. I liked the breezy serene feeling I got when I was there. And when you get hungry, there is the huge vegetarian food hall where a buffet of freshly cooked vegetarian food is available. The variety of dishes keep changing as they continuously get snapped up by the numerous diners, and the huge kitchen kept replenishing.
Another famous landmark is the Vihara Buddhi Bakti Temple (Tua Pek Kong Bio) in Nagoya City. This has the typical Chinese temple look, with dragons on pagoda roofs, green and red tiles and lots of red lanterns hanging in the worship chamber.
What is more interesting is the garden around the temple. The walls of the single-storey building are all beautifully painted with scenes from legendary stories, and the garden is filled with statues of famous legendary figures. There is even a koi fish pond and a turtle pond and a replica of Admiral Cheng Ho and his ship.
Across the huge carpark is a row of food stalls and shops selling joss sticks. You can stop by for a drink there. There is hot coffee and tea, or if you prefer, coconut juice.
One very good discovery I made was this Kue Kampung stall. They actually make the kuehs here and then distributed to various shopping malls for retail. So you get the kuehs hot off the oven. And they are quite nice, especially the kueh kosui and kueh salat. The ondeh ondeh was nice too, but I would have preferred the sugar in the centre to be in melted form and squirting when bitten. It was rather hot that morning, and after wandering around the garden, it was very refreshing to sit down with a coconut and kueh kueh. Also tried the satay mie from another stall. It is quite similar to our local satay bee hoon, but they had you char kuih thrown in as well.
Next you can spend the afternoon shopping. The malls that I went to were situated in Nagoya City, and they were both enough to occupy my whole afternoon. There is the Batam City Square or BCS which is popular with the locals. Things are relatively inexpensive and good variety, especially shoes and clothes. Next to it is the A2 food court where you can get a bite to eat.
The other popular shopping haunt is the Nagoya Hill Shopping Mall. This mall is quite new and is huge. They even have a food street inside the mall with lots of restaurants and cafes. Worth exploring. Also you can find the Matahari supermarket and department store inside. And some of the shops have quite nice merchandise at good bargain prices. Definitely worth a visit.
When I got bored shopping (tired of walking actually), I went to their Studio 21 cinemas and watched a movie (Trespass starring Nicholas Cage and Nicole Kidman). You won't believe it, but the cinema tickets were like SGD 2.50 or something like that. Really cheap compared to Singapore.
Just outside the Nagoya Hill Mall, along the main road, in the evenings, you can find many food stalls which open till late night. These include deep fried snacks, a variety of keropok, sweet matarbak which is like our peanut pancake (except they have chocolate sauce, sweet corn and coconut in them in addition to mashed nuts and sugar). I liked them.
What I enjoy most is the Indonesian Rujak Buah, which is fruit rojak. Although I still prefer the version sold in Jakarta and Lampung. The Batam version has lesser variety of fruits and too much cucumber and the green mango was really, really sour.
Among the stalls were Padang Sate, Mie Goreng and Ikan Bakar stalls. The food is cheap and good especially the selection of seafood for barbecuing. We had the squid (which is always a favourite of mine) and the sting ray.
When it comes to dinner time, you can visit the Harbour Bay Seafood Centre. Here they have many diffierent restaurants serving almost the same things. However, by far the most popular is Wey Wey Seafood Restaurant, judging by the crowd. I was actually looking for another restaurant recommended by another blogger, but I guess the turnover is quite rapid. It was no longer in operation. So I settled for Wey Wey.
My friend ordered the Ikan Assam Pedas, the Yucak hui and the fried sotong, while added the sambal lala and their special tofu (which had salted egg and century egg among other things). In terms of taste, it is nothing like what we can find in Singapore, but the prices were really cheap. Together with drinks and rice, the bill came up to less than SGD 35. Can you beat that?
So you can really spend quite an interesting day at Batam. And I found out that 1 day is not enough. 2 days would be just about right.
