Scary port on Batam Island. Scary hotel. Scary nights. Scary motorcycle guys. But totally awesome hair shampoo and condition in the supermarket by three really fun ladies! And one chic actually pocketed some of my hair... She had never seen curly hair before, and wanted to show her friends. One might say a little freaky, but she was quite funny.
This is the chic who pocketed my hair. She also thought I looked like Angelina Jolie.
These are the ladies who washed our hair! They are so sweet! The best part about Indonesia!
That's my motorcycle guy. He was scarier than Kari's guy. Notice that neither of us have a helmet on, and yet I'm smiling. And this is the ferry we went to Indonesia on!
This is my breakfast. So wrong. However, the hot chocolate had sweetened condensed milk in it, simply ingenius.
We got on the wrong ferry, both literally and figuratively. At first, we stood in the Penguin ferries line full of white people and other tourists. By the time we finally got to the ferry terminal from the airport it was 3 p.m. We were worried about the maximum time in Indonesia (a non-existent threat now that we’ve been there…), so we went into another ferry line with no people. We should have considered why no one was in this line, but on with the story. We finally got to Batam Island at 5:30ish. We ended up at a port on the locals side of the island. We took a taxi to Windsor Square Hotel that should have cost us 30,000 rupiahs, but neither of us had change, so he took my 50,000 bill and didn’t give change. We didn’t know if one is supposed to tip drivers, so we left it at that.
We arrived at this hole in the wall hotel and felt right away we needed to lock up anything we had. We checked in and wondered what to do. We read that there was a small bike road connecting other small islands and atolls, so we enquired about bikes and the location. A He/She took us under her wing and told us never to go out at night by ourselves and never to do the bike tour. She was a muscular woman, and she told us she is extremely careful at this port. We asked what there was to do, and she told us about some shopping centers. We went off to go, and she said we should only take hotel appointed taxis. When there was none available, she said it should be ok to go with these two motorcycle guys.
They took us to some obscure malls that were half-closed. We ended up at a Wal-Mart type store, but still no where near a mall where we could get touristy stuff. We were a little confused as to why there weren’t any tourist malls and shops, when these three hair care ladies for Sunsilk (an Asian brand of hair products) told us they would shampoo, condition and massage our hair and head for free if we bought their samples. An awesome time was about to be had! We bought some Sunsilk shampoo and conditioner and got ready for our wash and massage! It was awesome! They had this little bathroom set up near the front of the store. It was so random! For a little while, there was a group of people watching the only tourists get their hair washed. Those ladies were so sweet! Only two of them knew English, so we had good conversations with them. But the other one just smiled. She was cute, she would just laugh when we did! One of the ladies thought I looked like Angelina Jolie, so she kept taking pictures with her cell phone. She’s the one who took my hair and put it into her pocket when I asked where the trash was. She said it was the first time she saw and touched curly hair. When it came time to blow dry my hair, I wanted to make sure she didn’t treat the blow-dryer like a weapon, else I would have a huge fro on my hands. I kept trying to get her to understand that she needed to be careful with the blow-dryer and to only blow dry pointing down, but she totally got scared and hardly wanted to touch the dryer and kept pointing it away from my hair. It was a funny little end to the night. Next time, I’ll just not say anything, and deal with the consequences later. Those ladies really made Indonesia awesome. Our other experiences sucked, so I’m glad I met them, or else I wouldn’t ever want to go back to Indonesia. Now I know to go to the places where other tourists go…
The motorcycle guys stayed with us throughout the three hour wash and massage. They took us back to our hotel and demanded a ton of rupiahs. We didn’t quite understand though, because of the language barrier. They kept saying, too many zeros (what they meant was not enough zeros, as we came to understand). As we were standing in front of the hotel with our purses open, the He/She helped us again to get inside the hotel as fast as possible, and to never just let our purses open and out. Another lady from S’pore also ushered us into the hotel to get away from all the people staring at us. We sure learned the most in Indonesia probably because it was the scariest. And that’s the point when we decided not to let anyone else take advantage of us. We got on the first ferry out of Indonesia, which ironically wasn’t even with the same company with which we bought our round trip tickets!
We arrived at this hole in the wall hotel and felt right away we needed to lock up anything we had. We checked in and wondered what to do. We read that there was a small bike road connecting other small islands and atolls, so we enquired about bikes and the location. A He/She took us under her wing and told us never to go out at night by ourselves and never to do the bike tour. She was a muscular woman, and she told us she is extremely careful at this port. We asked what there was to do, and she told us about some shopping centers. We went off to go, and she said we should only take hotel appointed taxis. When there was none available, she said it should be ok to go with these two motorcycle guys.
They took us to some obscure malls that were half-closed. We ended up at a Wal-Mart type store, but still no where near a mall where we could get touristy stuff. We were a little confused as to why there weren’t any tourist malls and shops, when these three hair care ladies for Sunsilk (an Asian brand of hair products) told us they would shampoo, condition and massage our hair and head for free if we bought their samples. An awesome time was about to be had! We bought some Sunsilk shampoo and conditioner and got ready for our wash and massage! It was awesome! They had this little bathroom set up near the front of the store. It was so random! For a little while, there was a group of people watching the only tourists get their hair washed. Those ladies were so sweet! Only two of them knew English, so we had good conversations with them. But the other one just smiled. She was cute, she would just laugh when we did! One of the ladies thought I looked like Angelina Jolie, so she kept taking pictures with her cell phone. She’s the one who took my hair and put it into her pocket when I asked where the trash was. She said it was the first time she saw and touched curly hair. When it came time to blow dry my hair, I wanted to make sure she didn’t treat the blow-dryer like a weapon, else I would have a huge fro on my hands. I kept trying to get her to understand that she needed to be careful with the blow-dryer and to only blow dry pointing down, but she totally got scared and hardly wanted to touch the dryer and kept pointing it away from my hair. It was a funny little end to the night. Next time, I’ll just not say anything, and deal with the consequences later. Those ladies really made Indonesia awesome. Our other experiences sucked, so I’m glad I met them, or else I wouldn’t ever want to go back to Indonesia. Now I know to go to the places where other tourists go…
The motorcycle guys stayed with us throughout the three hour wash and massage. They took us back to our hotel and demanded a ton of rupiahs. We didn’t quite understand though, because of the language barrier. They kept saying, too many zeros (what they meant was not enough zeros, as we came to understand). As we were standing in front of the hotel with our purses open, the He/She helped us again to get inside the hotel as fast as possible, and to never just let our purses open and out. Another lady from S’pore also ushered us into the hotel to get away from all the people staring at us. We sure learned the most in Indonesia probably because it was the scariest. And that’s the point when we decided not to let anyone else take advantage of us. We got on the first ferry out of Indonesia, which ironically wasn’t even with the same company with which we bought our round trip tickets!
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