As I headed for the Harbourfront Ferry Terminal, I was slightly apprehensive about tacking the mongering scene of Batam for the first time on my own, after the sanitized and familiar world of Singapore. I had done a reasonable amount of preliminary research using the many excellent guides and trip reports on the Hombre board, but nevertheless, it was still a somewhat daunting experience to be tackling this without either a wingman or an experienced guide.
The travel arrangements were all quite straightforward and I will not go into any detail here as they are all well covered in other reports. My first problem occurred when I got to the visa issue counter at Batam Centre terminal. The clerk sent some time flicking through my passport, then announced to me that she cold not let me into the country as there was no blank page left in the passport in which to stick the 7 day visa. She pointed back to the ferry and said “Can’t let you in. Go back Singapore”. What a great welcome to Indonesia! I asked her if she couldn’t just stick the visa over an old page, but she said this was not allowed. I considered at this stage whether a few extra dollars passed discretely under the counter might have the desired effect, as I had gathered from work colleagues who regularly travel to Indonesia on business under a tourist visa that this approach usually works. One of the more senior immigration officials saw my plight and came over to see what could be done. Luckily for me he took a more flexible approach and agreed to stick the visa on a spare page that exists in UK passports for some obscure purpose, and I was into Indonesia.
After changing some Sing dollars into Rupiah, I headed to the Kata desk to book a hotel for my stay. I had not had the opportunity to do this online before my departure, and I assumed that it would be easy enough to get something when I arrived. As it turned out, all the hotels recommended by other Hombres were totally booked up that weekend because of some large conference in town. I finally settled on the Goodway hotel, based on the fact that it seemed to be in the right area of town and the room rate, at 330k Rp, looked OK to me. This turned out to be quite a good choice of hotel.
It was not long before I was checked in to the Goodway, cleaned up, settled into my room, and ready to explore Batam. Normally when I arrive in any new location I like to orientate myself by walking around the neighbourhood, armed with a simple tourist street map. I though I would do the same in Nagoya, and try to find the various mongering locations that are recommended on this site. I asked at the hotel reception for a street map and the receptionist went though the motions of rummaging around before announcing that they had run out. In fact, from asking the same question in other hotels in the vicinity and getting the same response, I suspect that they had never had any, and indeed, I very much doubt that the concept of a tourist street map even exists in Batam. So, out into the streets with nothing other than my own internal navigation to rely on.
A short stroll around the blocks behind the Goodway hotel quickly located several booking joints including Dynasty, and one or two outfits that looked like hotels but were probably also ST venues (I forgot to note names). I did not venture in to any at this stage as I wanted to buy a few supplies for the weekend first, including a local SIM card for my mobile phone. I decided to get a taxi to Centrepoint Mall as I had no idea how far and in what direction it was (it turned out to be only 5 mins walk from the Goodway). The mall was in the process of closing down for the night when I got there sometime after 9:00 pm, but I managed to find a stall still open selling phone stuff, and duly got my SIM.
On the way to the mall in the taxi I noticed that we had driven past the renowned Lusy’s Oar House and the adjacent PP Bananas. I though that this might be a good place to cool down and take in a beer or two. I was not certain of the way back to Lusy’s so I thought I would take the easy way out and take a taxi. As I emerged into the street one the hordes of taxi jerks approached me and asked if I wanted to go anywhere in particular in Nagoya, and offering to be my guide, or words to that effect. Normally if I was travelling with a buddy, or had a decent map of the place, I would have just waved this guy away. However, this time around something made me hold back this reflex action. I reasoned that even a little shit like this could be of use during my stay in Batam, and so I asked him if he could take me to Lusy’s. He clicked his fingers and a taxi appeared at our side. He got into the front seat of the taxi, with the driver, and introduced himself as Bimo. It transpired that Bimo did not have a taxi of his own, but was to taxi drivers what a pimp is to whores. On our way over to Lusy’s, Bimo asked me if I was interested in finding girls, and I replied that this was certainly high on my agenda for the evening. I reeled of a list of places I was thinking of going, all gleaned from posts on this board. He said that he could probably help me find something that was more to my liking.
After a very short drive (turns out to be less than 5 min walk) we got out at Lusy’s. At that point I was only interested in aircon and beer, so I ordered one for myself and one for Bimo, who was at this point hanging round expectantly. We chatted for a while, and. Bimo offered to take me to a club where there was reasonable music and a good FL scene. This did not really kick off until 10:00 pm and it was now only 9:00, so we hung around at Lusy’s and shot some pool until it was time to go to the club.
This turned out to be the NoName bar at the back of the Harmoni hotel, again only a short walk from Lusy’s. We got ourselves a table between the bar and the stage, where a local band was playing a mix of Filipino tunes and western pop/rock covers with quite a bit of audience participation - karaoke style. Once I had a beer or two inside me, I started to look round the club to asses the quality of the FL talent. Contrary to what Bimo had told me before hand, virtually all the people at the club were locals, with perhaps just 2 or 3 other bules. The girl/guy ratio was about 1:1 but there were still plenty of spare girls hanging around. Bimo said he was going to find one for me and he disappeared off somewhere, only to return about 15 mins later empty handed and looking rather sheepish. It would appear that there are some things that even Mr Fixit can not fix!
Not to worry, I can manage this for myself thanks. I stood up to stretch my legs and have another scan round the room as a prelude to strolling around the back of the club where most of the FLs seemed to be congregating. This appeared to be a signal to one of the club staff, who came over to me and asked if I would like a girl. I could not lie, and he went off, to reappear a minute or two later with a cutie. The bar guy obviously had a sense of humour. I was easily the tallest person in the bar (even though I am only 6ft), but the girl he brought over can’t have been anything over 4ft 6in. No problems; he must have known that I am partial to a little spinner now and then. She introduced herself as Sri, and we got on very well chatting over a drink or two. She was a student at the local college and needed to supplement her factory wage in order to keep up her education and to support a child. She did not look like my stereotyped idea of a typical Indo girl, and to my eyes she cold easily have passed as a regular US school kid (she was 20 but looked 16 and I actually had to check her ID to make sure she was legit). I was later to discover that Indonesia being such a large and diverse country, there are many distinct regional variations in appearance, and in fact hers was not untypical.
When it came to dancing, we got around the height problem by her dancing on the stage, with me on the dance floor, which brought us pretty much eye-to-eye! Eventually the time came to head back to my hotel and I had already established that she was keen to stay the night. Bimo asked how I wanted to get to the hotel and I said taxi, as I thought it would not be too cool do drag Sri back on foot. The taxi driver put on a convincing show, but in the morning I discovered that the Harmoni was only about 2 mins walk from the Goodway and across the main road! When we got to the hotel, I said goodnight to Bimo and gave him a 50k Rp tip for his services. Probably more than he deserved, but I had been on the lookout for scams and he did not appear to have tried anything on me, other than perhaps allowing me to take taxi rides when a short walk would have been more appropriate. On the other hand, he had provided me with some useful advice on FL venues that I could not have got from this board, and he had provided company of sorts in the early part of the evening in the absence of any other Hombres in town.
Side note to Hombre admin:
A map section on this board would be invaluable to a newbie like me in an unfamiliar location with no seasoned monger as a guide. I know that maps of many mongering destinations are available elsewhere on the Internet, and indeed I have on my laptop some good detailed maps of Nana Plaza, AC, Pattaya, etc. But I could not find anything out there on Batam. Any chance? I will add this to the Suggestions post.
Meanwhile back in the hotel Sri and I got naked and took a shower together, but just as we were getting down to the main business of the evening, she started to cry. The gist of it was that she did not really like going out with men and was generally feeling rather sorry for herself and her lot in life (hers and a few other million Indonesians too). I am still unsure to this day whether this was genuine or some performance put on for my benefit. If it was an act, I am not sure why as it did not seem to serve any useful purpose, unless it was to persuade me to cough up a big tip at the end of our date. Anyway, the end result was that our session was much tenderer and less energetic than might normally be the case, but no worse for that. The size problem also reared it head and even though I am only averagely endowed by western standards, I had to tread very gently in order not to cause her discomfort.
In the morning Sri woke me up at 7:00 am for another session. She had told me the night before that she needed to get to college at 8:00 the following morning, so was not unexpected (not sure whether this story was BS, but I was not too bothered either way). Again, this was a slow and gentle session, but this suited me fine. Afterwards she dressed and I sent her on her way with 300k Rp in her pocket.
Photos: Sri 01 02 03 04 05
Day 2
After Sri left I slept some more then had brunch in the hotel (not particularly good). I decided to head back to the malls to raid the ATMs and generally have a look round. This time I determined to do as much as possible on foot. On my way to Centepoint, I passed the Rio Rita booking joint and thought I would have a look in. I have to say that I was disappointed by the quality and quantity of the talent on display. There were about 10 or so girls in the fishbowl and none got me particularly excited. I decided to move on and continue with my tour. I walked past Lusy’s, noting its proximity to my hotel, and then on to Centrepoint and Lucky Plaza malls, where I topped up my cash supplies from an ATM.
A brief side note on ATMs in Batam: a number of posters on this board have commented that it is difficult to get significant amounts of cash out of these machines. I don’t know whether the situation has improved dramatically in the last few months, but I encountered no such problems. May of the ATMs were offering 1,500,000 Rp as the highest withdrawal option, but if I wanted more than this, the ‘select other amount’ option allowed me to enter even higher amounts – I did 3,000,000 on one occasion with no difficulty.
I decided to do a tour of the booking joints in the mall area and was soon able to locate several mentioned on this board including Dynasty99, Queens, and Femina. I dropped into Dynasty99 and looked at what was on offer. There were one or two that I could have been persuaded to go with given a bit of a prodding, but nothing that I found too compelling at that point. I was getting quite hot by now with all this walking around in the afternoon sun, so I decided to head back to PP Bananas for a drink and to view the talent on display there whilst letting the aircon cool me down a bit.
There were about 6 girls on stage when I arrived, and a few others lounging aground or chatting to the one or two other customers in the bar. I only had a short time to assess the talent on display, as shortly after I had started on my first beer, the music stopped and the girls swarmed off the stage and quickly surrounded the few unaccompanied guys in the bar. I did not get much say in who came in my direction, but I ended up with two girls, one of which was a real cutie with big tits, and the other a more mature but fit looking girl, who introduced herself as Iin (pronounced i-in). I did not get much of a chance to talk to the cutie as she was dragged off by one of the other customers. So I struck up a conversation with Iin, or rather she started things off by pulling up her short skirt and grinding her backside into my rapidly hardening dick, and saying “I lurve European penis”. Certainly one of the better chat-up lines I have heard. (BTW for you ozzies, kiwis and yanks out there, I am sure she would have been equally appreciative of New World penises as well). All this was said in what sounded to me like a Russian accent, or at least the kind of accent a western actor uses when trying to imitate a Russian. I found her charms hard to resist and decided there and then to barfine her. I parted with the sum of 380k Rp for her barfine and my drinks. I admit that at the time I had not realised that this was for LT as I thought my drink bill should have been higher. I only later found out that PP Bananas only does LT bookings.
Back at my hotel, we quickly got down to action, and she proved to be and enthusiastic and skilled performer, including an excellent BBBJ and some versatile positions. In fact such was her skill and dedication to her task that we managed three sessions in the first two hours. Her earlier comment about liking European penis was not wrong. Whenever she saw that I was hard, she took this as a personal challenge to do something about it. Since the little blue pill was doing its stuff, this led to a virtually continuous fuck-shower-fuck-shower cycle. I wasn’t complaining though. Eventually I was totally drained and we decided to head out for a meal. I asked Iin if she could recommend anywhere and she gave what for me was the right answer: the A-1 pujasera as recommended by several others on this board.
I left a message for Bimo to tell him where we were, in case he wanted to join us. I was still intending to use his services later in the evening for checking out various other establishments. A-1 turned out to be as good as advertised and we had an excellent seafood dinner washed down with plenty of beer supplied by the mostly cute beer girls who were circulating round the pujasera. Bimo joined us towards the end of the meal and we agreed that the best plan was to head for the Pacific disco when it was starting to get going at about 11:00pm. By this stage I had established that I had in fact paid for Iin LT, and after her performance that afternoon, I was in no hurry to ditch her.
Entering the Pacific disco, I was not fully prepared for the scale of the place or the deafening volume. I have subsequently read postings from others on this board which did mention this feature. I have to say that for oldies like me, being able to talk to your prospective date rather her than having to use sign language will always be the preferred way of communicating! For this reason alone, I think my preference lies towards the smaller club-bars such as the NoName from the previous evening. The sound level was not the only problem. I carried out several sorties round the back and sides of the bar to assess the quality of the FL talent there. Admittedly there were quire a number of possibles on display, but the lighting was such that you could not get a good idea of what they looked like. The only option was to drag then out into the corridor areas. So for me, Pacific was not really ideal and I think I would be unlikely to use it as a pick-up venue on any future trip. But it obviously works for some, so each to their own, eh? We did not spend more than a couple of hours at the Pacific before returning to the Goodway, where Iin put on another fine performance before we both crashed for the night.
Photos: Iin 01 02 03 04 05
Day 3
The following morning, Iin woke me for the first of two sessions, both of which were as good as the previous day. At this point, with perfect timing, she asked me whether I would like to repeat barfine her. I have to admit that I took the lazy option and agreed to the proposal, rather than the dedicated monger’s approach which would have been to say our goodbyes and go on to search out fresh talent. One factor that had influenced me is that Iin had previously mentioned that she would like to try out the pool at the Goodway, and the prospect of her with her C-cup tits crammed into a tiny bikini has seemed too attractive to resist. After we had cleaned up and dressed, we heady off to Lusy’s / PP Bananas, where I had an excellent brunch. Iin chose to go for the local food provided for the PP Bananas staff.
Next it was on to Lucky Plaza to do some shopping. I believe it was Porker on this board who went on a similar bikini shopping expedition and met with no success. I am pleased to report that our efforts were more successful and Iin led me to a clothing store on the 2nd floor of the mall where there were a number of very attractive bikinis (i.e. very small) on display. We made our purchase then headed back to the hotel to test out the goods. Seeing Iin trying to get into the bikini was quite entertaining. She had never worn one before and was very shy about the whole concept of displaying so much flesh in public. Eventually she managed to squeeze herself into it and I was pleased to see that the top half was struggling to contain her tits.
Photos: Iin 06 07
And so down to the pool for the water test, which she also passed admirably. Seeing that there was a hot tub by the pool, I suggested to Iin that she might like to give this a try. She thought his was a good idea, but then topped this with her own suggestion that we fuck in the hot tub. She could have been reading my mind! Hot tub sex is one of my favourite perversions, especially if there are other unsuspecting people in the vicinity. However, just as we were about to climb into the tub, I saw a notice that said ‘Men Only, no women or children’. Then I looked around and saw another tub not far away that said ‘Women Only’. Shit! Segregated hot tubs. Whatever next! Being paranoid about possible reprisals from Islamic vice patrols, I shied away from taking the plunge in the same tub as Iin and we had plain solo sessions. That turned out to be a missed opportunity by paranoid old me, as later in the afternoon as we were leaving the pool, I saw a complete Japanese family including children, all in the Men Only hot tub. The hotel staff looked on totally unconcerned.
After a fun afternoon hanging out by the pool we retired to be bedroom, where Iin effortlessly managed to bring my to a successful conclusion three times in the space of two hours. By now we were getting hungry again. I had previously asked Bimo to suggest another eating place that he though I might enjoy for a special night out, preferably serving sea food. Again, his local knowledge came up with the goods. He got one of his taxi driver chums to drive us to a restaurant called Golden Prawn 555, located about 10 mins drive outside Nagoya, on the north coast of Batam and facing Singapore. The restaurant had its own massive fish farm attached to it. On the way in the diner is confronted by several pools containing many varieties of fish and crustaceans. You pick the ones you want to eat and the waiter pulls them out into a bowl, and you specify how you would like them cooked, plus any accompanying side dishes you would like. Then you get to sit drinking beer in the restaurant, which is in the form of covered wooden jetties perched over the fish farm lagoon itself, while you wait for your dishes to be served. We had a truly excellent feast that night in great surroundings. The only drawback was that there was a karaoke stage in our restaurant and in an adjacent restaurant, and we were stuck halfway between the two. The meal was quite expensive by Indonesia standards, but still a whole lot cheaper than Singapore.
Feeling well refreshed, we decided to head back to town and check out the Ozone disco at the Planet Holiday hotel. The techno music was as full on as at Pacific, but the FL talent on show was nothing like as extensive. Admittedly, we only stayed until about 12:30 am, so things might have improved later on after we left. Iin was quite into the music and turned out to be quite a sexy dancer, in addition to her bedroom skills. I did not want to put these to waste, so our survey over, we returned to the Goodway for a very satisfactory end to our evening. I was sill in awe of this girl’s capacity to please on a 24 x 7 basis.
Day 4
Sadly, I had to return to the real world of work in Singapore. Iin got it off to a good start in her usual way. This took quite some time, so we skipped breakfast and packed our bags, only to find that we had 20 minutes to kill until our taxi arrived. This was a challenge that Iin could not turn down, and soon our clothes were off again for a final and very passionate session. Before I left, I gave her a 200k Rp tip, which I reckoned she had well deserved. If you are in Batam, I recommend you check her out. She may no be the greatest looker but she will keep you entertained for hours or even days.
And so back to Batam Centre ferry terminal and my return voyage to Singapore. I said my farewells to Bimo, who had accompanied me to the terminal, and gave him another 50k Rp tip for his services over the past day or so. On balance, I did not regret having him in tow for much of the time, and I think I got more out of the weekend with him around than I would have otherwise.
As my ferry came within cellular coverage of Singapore, the SMSs started to ping in. First was from Da, wanting to know if we could meet up that night. Fat chance! Second was from Mae, asking the same question. Well maybe, we’ll see.
Conclusions
This weekend had been a great introduction to Batam for me. It would have been better in the company of a fellow monger, and I would probably have been more adventurous in using the booking joints if this had been the case. A good map would certainly have helped.
It seems to me that there are many more FL venues to explore than the 3 main discos – almost to the extent that every hotel appears to have a club/bar/disco attached to it. In fact the Goodway where I was staying had a joint called the Q-bar, which probably had its own talent. I just never got round to checking it out.
Only 2 girls over 3 nights – admittedly not a very respectable mongering head count, but I had a blast, and that’s what really counts. I will certainly be going back, this time armed with a new passport and the local knowledge to hit the ground running. Beats the GFE weekend in Sentosa for the nth time hands down!