there and back

Been back for a while. It is time to write things down.

My parents decided that I need to get a break from holing up. So we planed a short weekend trip to Batam, Indonesia. Batam is a small(?) island (twice the size of Singapore) 45min boat-ride away from Singapore. It is real easy to visit.

3rd-World Village

I was expecting a beach stay with lots of sunlight and lazing around. There was definitely lots of sunlight, but I did not get much of lazing around. We shopped for the most part and there was some (< 1hr total) of sightseeing.

I did not take this photo, but the whole place looks more or less like this. Our hotel building was one of the few large buildings on the island. It might be the tallest too.

From our hotel window. We do look like the tallest building around.

Lots of squatters like this one around. The local government generally lets them be(I suppose the government has to pay for their relocation otherwise) unless the land is taken back for development. The squatter inhabitants do not pay land tax but they have to find their own utilities source. Hence, we saw quite a lot of squatters around drains and rivers.

This is a miniature replica of a traditional Indonesian building. But I didn't get to see any house like this one on my entire trip.

Language

The most curious part of my trip was communicating with the locals. Indonesians speak Indonesian language, which, truthfully speaking, is a Malay dialect. Sad to say, after living in Singapore for over 10 years, I really only know 'Selamat Datang', which is some sort of hello. (Hence the tour group.) During most of the trip, we didn't need to talk because there was a tour guide. However on the last day, the tour arranged a 'free and easy' time in a shopping mall. Oops.

(In a restaurant)

Us:         Which dish is that? (points to drawing)
Waiter:  ???
Us:         Does anyone here speaks English?
Waiter:  ???
Us:         English?
Waiter:  ?? ... (shakes head)!
Us:         >_<!!!!
              This. (points) Which. (opens palm, shakes) Menu. (shakes menu, flips around, points around to everything) which? (flips hand)

(mime show goes on for a while, we managed to order some sort of noodles ahaha~~)

Us:        我的妈呀！好麻烦！ (omg! So troubleome!)


Waiter: 可以说中文(can speak chinese!)
Us:        arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

This is the first person I have come across that speaks Chinese as the preferred foreign language, over English <3. It was real surprising. I also noticed random things have chinese characters on them. Like this one:

(It says No Arson despite the picture.)