Travelogue: Batam Nagoya Hill Shopping mall (Day 1 part 1)
Both Bf and I had the same intention of letting down our big burden (throw aside work and other things) and simply enjoy our private time together so throughout the whole Batam trip, we shopped, we eat and shop and eat all day. It was a blissful kind of feeling that I received once in a while.
Upon checking in and had our mini tour around the hotel, we thought that it is time for some food! So we headed down to the lobby and call a cab. Cab at Hotel lobby charges way expensive so if you have a tight budget, you may want to walk out of the streets to call a cab. One thing that I love would be the flat rate that each taxi driver will charge you. You won't get cheated as it is part of their policy to set price of a same standard. You can actually sue them if they increase their fare.
Another +1 point would be the comfortably level of the taxi seats. Taking taxi from the hotel lobby would entitle to a good treatment. They will have chauffeur to open up the door for you and the cabs are all new and comfortable. Our trip from hotel to the mall costs us 50,000 rupiah.
First of all, you have to inform the bellboy the location that you want to head to. Afterwhich, they whistled and call a driver to pick you up. Our first destination was Nagoya Hills shopping centre and we thought that it would be good to have our lunch and massage there. I had relatively high expectations of Nagoya Shopping Mall after reading reviews and hearing recommendations from a number of people.
Nagoya hill was known to be the biggest shopping mall at Batam and I can't deny that! It divided into two different dividers and one would easily spot the eatery house when you are there. They categorise all food and beverages at one part and on the other side would be apparel, handbags and souvenir stores.
Nagoya Hill Food Street provides a wide range of cuisine that you can try. Among of them is a variety of fast food dishes like that commonly exist in malls, such as KFC, A&W, Pizza Hut. And also the restaurants those are popular in Batam as Solaria (Chinese Food), Happiness Restaurant (Indonesian Food). Also available specialties from various regions in Indonesia such as, Padang Food, Meatballs (bakso), Chicken Noodle, Soto, and others. And there’s more Japanese food.
For those of you who want to enjoy the bread and cakes are widely available outlets are peddling bread and cake. If just want to unwind after shopping or just want to hang out you can enjoy a dish of coffee in the cafes at Nagoya hill Food Street, such as Godiva and others.
The disadvantage would be the words that we can't read and identify as they were all in malay language.
Bf and I went round and round the circle and couldn't think of what to eat because whatever they sell look just so tempting to us. We were caught in between their local food but was afraid that we ordered the wrong dishes that would ruin our appetite or the typical western that we could find anywhere in Southeast Asia.
We were so stressed and at the same time famished and decided to enter into this western + local dishes cafe called Solaria.
They have an extensive menu that flavours from western > local> chinese food. There are way too many choices to be made but somehow we couldn't understand all the words in the menu so we requested to have a menu filled with pictures. The waitress was patient enough to hand me the new menu and both Bf and I were busy flipping through.
It took us a while to confirm our order! I had my western because I do not want to take the risk of ordering the wrong food. Both of us thought of having bit by bit over here so we shared a plate of Chicken cordon bleu which stuffed in cheese and ham in the chicken patty! Not only that, Bf ordered their local marinated chicken to try.
Cordon Bleu doesn't taste special, not that fanciful dish but the marinated chicken bits would round up a good meal! The sweet BBQ sauce that was drizzled on top of the chicken were fairly well done. It wasn't too sweet nor salty and the chicken were crispy.
Total meal that sum up: 95,000 rupiah ( S$11)
Being the typical Singaporean, we have heard of many friends telling us to visit their hypermarkets because everything there is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! You know I immediately turned into an Aunty mood and ransacked the whole supermarket, busy snapping pictures of their snacks that I have never came across before.
The supermarket was really huge! Just imagine Vivo Giant? That's the size of it! Of course, if you refuse to use the hotel's toiletries, you may want to buy back some of it here. And ladies, if you need sanitary pads, don't hesitate to buy it from the supermarket because 1 whole packet with 8-10 pieces cost you $1,50 ONLY! How cheap! Anyway, I brought a few packets back to Singapore. Hehehe.
Vitagen is also $1.20 per packet of 5! Its like 50% of Singapore price! However, the size is smaller than Singapore.
Pastries section that make my mouth-watering. At the moment, I wasn't that hungry so I didn't bring back some cakes/ donuts to the hotel. Serve me right and come to think of it, I totally regretted.
Bf and I took quite a while to do some groceries in the supermaket, we bought all our toiletries here and also to top up our snacks. We simply threw whatever catches our eyes into the basket and left the place with a spend of $20 worth of snacks/ drinks and toiletries.
\
Headed to A&W (main reason why we were here) for a ‘tea-break’. Gosh, I really do miss A&W – please bring it back to Singapore! One of the happiest moment to tackle A&W waffles. I should go my waffles with a packet of curly fries and root beer float but I was too full for that and not being greedy at the same time.
26,500 rupiah (S$3) for my waffles! Tell me worth it or not? They even come with a scoop of Vanilla ice cream drizzled with chocolate sauce. Excited being excited but I felt that A&W has dropped its standard. The waffles wasn't as crispy as it should be but no complaints because I fulfilled my task.
Somehow we felt stupid to get our groceries too early, ended up we have to cab back to lunge our groceries bags in the hotel before we leave for our massage. Lucky us, the shuttle bus that was mentioned earlier on set a nice timing for us to board the bus and we have a free ride back to Nagoya hill shopping centre.
While waiting for the bus, I decided to had my #ootd shots outside the garden.
We had our full body massage at Eska. Again, Eska is most accessible from the Pintu Barat entrance of Nagoya mall, in fact, you will find it just right across the road from the A&W.
I would say that the service is mediocre at best. I took a 1 hr therapeutic massage with ESSENTIAL OIL but requested to only do the back, shoulder and neck. After 30mins hour, the masseur did not know what to do next and just kept rubbing the same old points. I was very disappointed.
Bf said that her masseur was not very skilled either but he fell into a deep sleep while the masseur was acting force onto his body. The only thing he can remember throughout the whole session would be the voice of the masseur as he kept asking him to turn here and there.
Our package cost us 180,000 which is less than (S$20). In addition to spa and massage services, Eska also has a whole range of beauty and hair services spread out over its 3-4 levels – Manicure, pedicure, facial and a hair salon on its first level. The treatments are mostly carried out in curtained partitions. I think the men and women massages are conducted on separate floors. If you book the spa package, which consists of a bath treatment, for example the 3-hours birthday retreat package, you should get a room that comes with its own tub. Otherwise for non-bath packages or ala carte treatments where you have the body scrub, they are mostly conducted in the curtained partitions and you will have to make your way to the common bathroom at the end of each floor, to shower off.
While the receptionists at Eska are conversant in English and Chinese, in addition to Bahasa; most of the therapists are fluent in Bahasa only and speak at most, a smattering of English. But no matter, arm yourself with a few useful Bahasa phrases and you should be able to enjoy your sessions.
After our massage would be our food time. We crossed over to get a cup of milk tea from Tee meister as they are having a buy 1 get 1 free promotion. Both us got this treats for 23,000 ($2.40) for two cups but threw away after drinking because it tastes disgusting!
We decided to revive our childhood and enter into arcade which was located right at the top of Nagoya shopping mall. With 1 token that cost us 1000 rupiah (10 cents), we started our childish-ness and acted like a small kids. Went over to showcase our basketball talent by shooting some balls into the hoop. HAHA.
This remind me of Mr Bean show where he deliberately pushed and banged the whole machine in order to allow the coins to roll in. I did that but the coins refused to drop! LOL.
By the time we finished our games, it was nearly evening so we decided to head back to the hotel for our dinner!
Dinner post of what we had will be up next! I can't believe I took 1.5 hrs to write up this post.
Till then for the next part of adventure.
