Batam Trip September 2015 - Day 1

During the short September School Holiday we decided to go to Batam since it's so close to Singapore, means we wouldn't have to spend a long time travelling or spend too much money!

We booked our ferry ride on the Sindo ferry from Singapore Harbourfront terminal. I have no idea what the differences are in all the ferry companies but I guess just like with airlines we just chose whichever one is the cheapest. For the return ferry ticket it cost us SG$134 for 2 Adults and 1 Child. There are plenty of ferries that leave Singapore throughout the day, so you can just choose a timing that suits you. The ride their takes roughly an hour or just under an hour and we were lucky to be blessed with good weather giving us a smooth ride. Our biggest concern is going on a ferry that is bumpy, we just don't have the stomach for it. On the ferry it's free seating, so it's pretty much every man for himself rushing for a seat. Luckily we managed to sit together.

Walking to the Ferry

Once we arrived at the Batam ferry terminal we have to que for the immigration. If you hold a passport that requires the Visa on Arrival, the procedure is pretty easy. If you're staying for less than 7 days the visa price is US$15. There is a small window where you walk up to and pay for your visa in either US$ or IDRupiah. It's best to have exact change because if you give US$ the change is given in the local currency. Once you have your visa on arrival you get to go through a separate line where you get to bypass the long snaking lines of those that don't require visas, kinda like as if you paid to go through faster almost!

After immigration it was a quick and easy walk to our hotel which is literally right next to the ferry terminal! This time we decided to stay at Harris Batam City Centre because of it's convenient location since it's right next to the Batam City Centre ferry terminal and right opposite the Batam Megamall. The mall isn't exactly Mega like the name suggest, but we'll talk about that later.

Harris Hotel Batam Center Just a hop, jump and skip away!

We were there early at about 10-11am and the rooms weren't ready yet, so we left our luggage at the hotel and went across the street to the Megamall to shop and have lunch. I wished there was a pedestrian crossing or something because I'm such a chicken when it comes to crossing the street, especially with Indonesian traffic. After making it in one piece at the mall we basically walked floor by floor to see where we could have lunch. I was literally drooling because there was so much Indonesian food that I wanted to eat. I just LOVE Indonesian food because it's so full of flavour and best of all Spicy!

Batam Megamall

Batam Megamall

There are 5 floors to the mall, the Hypermarket is at the basement and there's a big cinema on the top floor. The rest of the floors are filled up with various shops and Matahari Department Store which is like Singapore's OG department store.

On one of the floors there's a stall selling tons of Indonesian snacks. Most were priced around Rp25,000. This is heaven for those who love to snack!

After walking floor to floor, our group finally settled on lunch at a restaurant called Cobain, which loosely translates to Try (or Try lah!). The restaurant was packed with locals so you can be assured the food is good and authentic. Just a word of warning, anything with chilli in it is super spicy! But I love it!

After lunch we decided to watch a movie at the Cinema XXI on the top floor of the Megamall. Price per ticket is Rp40,000 and it is an assigned seating cinema just like in Singapore. This is a big cinema chain in Indonesia and the standards here is the same as it is in the capital city. Big, clean, plush and comfortable. We watched Inside Out, loved it! :)

Once the movie finished it was time to check into our hotel :)

The view from our hotel lift lobby on 7th floor

King Size Bed

basic bathroom

Standing Shower

The pretty view from our bedroom on 7th floor.

 We're pretty happy with the hotel room. It was spacious and the aircon worked perfectly to cool us down in the hot and humid weather.

After checking in to our room we decided to take a quick dip in the pool. I'm not a big fan of the pool, firstly it's a bit small. Luckily there weren't many people there. Secondly the outdoor area just has a not so pleasant smell in the air which to me is just typical Indonesian air smell which always hangs around even in Jakarta. Thirdly, the water isn't exactly 'crystal clear' if you know what I mean....

At least the pool had a semi-decent view. Would have been better if they built it on the roof top. One of the weird thing is it's right beside the restaurant. So you have to walk through the restaurant to go in and out to the pool. So even when you're wet you have to walk through the restaurant. 

Before long it was time for dinner! For dinner we were going to eat at Es Teler 77 at the Megamall, but we decided to change plans after we realised there were people smoking inside. Definitely a put off. In the end we just settled on A&W which is a fast food restaurant like KFC. And so that brings us to the end of day 1! Stay tuned for more on our 3 day trip to Batam.

Click here to read about our Second Day.

♥ Please Subscribe to our Channel! ♥

https://www.youtube.com/user/mommareeney

♥ Follow MizReeney on Instagram! ♥

https://instagram.com/mizreeney/

♥ Read MizReeney's Blog! ♥

http://www.mizreeney.com

♥ Like our Facebook Page! ♥

https://www.facebook.com/MizReeney

The 3-Day Juice Cleanse

I had been wanting to get on to the Juice Cleanse bandwagon for a while now. But was always kind of put off because they were usually pretty expensive and of course my hubby always said to me, that I would never last! He knows how much I love to eat and cook. But I figured how hard can it be, you just drink a bottle of juice every 2 hours, there's no way you should feel hungry. So I recently came across a relatively inexpensive deal on Groupon for a 3 Day Juice Cleanse by J3 healthier juice.soda. You can see the groupon deal here. For $99.80 with free delivery, you get 7 juice bottles a day for 3 days. So for 21 bottles of juice, that works out to only around $3.70 per 350ml bottle which isn't expensive at all considering it's pure cold pressed juice. Some even have up to 11 different types of fruits and vegetables!

The juice is delivered on your nominated date and time and is delivered in a cooler bag. The juices are not pasteurized so needs to be refrigerated immediately.

Detox Type 1 consists of - Wheatgrass, Pineapple, Guava, Orange, Green Apple, Cabbage, Carrot, Spinach, Plum, Mix Berries, Cucumber

There were 2 options you could choose from, Fundamental Package and the Greener Package. The difference being the Fundamental Package included two types of Refresher Juices. The Refresher Juices were just purely fruits (wait, is cucumber a fruit?), about 5-6 types of fruit mix. So this is the kind of juice I'm more used to drinking. The other juices in the package included raw vegetables like Kale, Cabbage, Broccoli, Celery, Spinach - these were the ones I wasn't used to drinking. It just tasted too earthy and raw....but I did finish the juices. The worst one in my opinion is the Nut Milk which is a mixture of Almond, Cashew, Walnut, Honey and Alkaline Water. This just tasted really unpleasant for my palate. I've had almond milk before so that's nothing new but this mix had a slight sour taste to it. Now I'm pretty sure it hadn't gone off, I think it was just the Alkaline Water that gave it that funny taste. The Nut Milk bottles were the only ones I couldn't bring myself to finish. You can check out the J3 website to read what each bottle consists of. One of the reasons I also chose the juice cleanse from this company was because I generally thought that I liked the mix of juices per bottle and wouldn't have a big problem drinking them. Some other juice cleanses have a lot of things in them that I don't like such as Ginger or maybe Coriander, etc. Do keep in mind this is Cold Pressed, so the juice is quite thick. I'm ok and used to this because I actually have a cold press juicer at home. And your next question will be why then don't I just make my own juice cleanse. Well considering how many types of fruits and vegetables went into it, the prep work would just be too time consuming not to mention all the washing.

Now this is probably the part that will interest most people, how did I feel while I was on the cleanse. Well I tell you, it was quite torturing, I felt a little light headed on the first day and just a general lack of energy. Oh and did I mention that I was literally starving for all of the 3 days! Even on the first day I couldn't hack it and resorted to eating something here and there. I ate some eggs thinking the protein will help make me feel full for a little while and that definitely helped. I also ate some fruits - I figured hey I'm drinking fruit anyway. But fruit has never really ever satiated my hunger in the past and it was the same this time. It was more like a temporary filler. The second day was easier and I was set on trying not to eat anything, just juice. But again I had to eat something here and there just to take away the edge of the hunger. I was never hallucinating or dreaming about food while I was on the cleanse, I was just thinking about how hungry I was and what I could eat to just take the edge of. This is a bit different to how I feel when I'm on a strict diet where I most of the time would be dreaming of all the food I couldn't have. Perhaps I also cheated because I really lack discipline :p There's also something that no one really considers before doing a Juice Cleanse. That is, that you will crave something warm and savoury. Not necessarily together because if you crave something warm, you can just drink tea I guess. But the savoury bit, that was hard for me because I don't really have a sweet tooth, I am more of a savoury person. So that's why I had a pan fried egg in between with a healthy sprinkling of soy sauce and pepper. That was enough to help me not feel blah about having to drink so much sweet stuff all day. Another thing that makes it difficult to stick to these kind of cleanses is if you are a mother/parent who needs to prepare meals for their little ones. You're basically waging war against yourself, lol! This is also why I'm not very successful in sticking to diets.

What about the end result? Well I did lose maybe about a kg or slightly under a kg, about 2 pounds I guess. My silhouette does look slightly slimmer (yay!) and what I also noticed is how healthy my hair seems! I don't regret doing it at all and if you want to do it, just go for it. If you realise half way that you can't just go without eating, then just take the juice and drink it as a compliment with your meals. And hey it's still cheaper than drinking coffee from Starbucks! But if I had to repeat this again....um...let me think about it first...hehehe :D


♥ Please Subscribe to our Channel! ♥
https://www.youtube.com/user/mommareeney

♥ Follow MizReeney on Instagram! ♥
https://instagram.com/mizreeney/

♥ Like our Facebook Page! ♥
https://www.facebook.com/MizReeney

My Manic Panic Experience

Lately I had been wanting to change up my hair colour. I have always always wanted purple in my hair, in what way I'm not sure. But anyway I recently saw on my FB feed one of my friends dyed her hair Blue! Like Marge Simpson blue! I was in awe, but she did say she had to bleach her hair first to achieve the vibrant colour then used this semi permanent dye called Manic Panic, which I'd never heard about before until now. So off I went to Google it. Pretty much almost all the sites and videos I watched said that you have to bleach your hair in order for it to show. Well my hair wasn't exactly black, nor is it super light as you can see on the right. But my previous colour was a light brown, so I thought that some purple should show up without needing to bleach....right? I am quite terrified of bleaching my hair considering how damaged my hair already is (but I'm not ruling it out in the future). I think I'd love to have a gradual purple ombre of some sort. And this was what I was thinking that I might be able to do on my own with Manic Panic. 

So to my surprise I managed to find an online seller on Qoo10 that sold Manic Panic in Singapore. At $22 not including postage, it is a little pricey, but it is from the US and it's all Vegan, so I guess you pay for quality. After contemplating which colours to get, there was soooo many, and after researching all over the place, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram, you name it, I settled on Ultra Violet. 

I found this Hair sample comparison on Pinterest from Manic Panic Japan. I think my hair was pretty close in colour to the far right one, so I thought great I'll see some purple.

The tub isn't very big.

It's like poster paint my friends say.

So I was pretty excited and nervous to try it out. And the best thing from watching all those Youtube videos was a tip on using those black garbage bags as a smock. What a great idea! Why hadn't I thought of that before.

Fancy Garbage Bag Dress

I decided to do just the bottom half of my hair...not realising how weird it would look.

Ok, it doesn't look super bad....right?

Looks a little like a reverse Ombre effect right? Hmmm.....I really couldn't decide what to do. So I sent my pic to a few friends. Some said just leave it, but most said think it's better to do the whole head. So I redid it. And this is what it looks like:

 How bizarre, now it looks like I have jet black hair!! What's going on?? It was night time so I couldn't wait for the next morning to see what it was like under light.

 This was taken with flash, ok, so you can see the purple streaks. I liked it a lot, but shame you can't see it more prominent. 

Next morning, standing in the shade, this is what it looked like. Puzzling....coz it still looked pretty dark. 

 

And then this happened! I had the sun directly shining on my hair and lo and behold my hair was so bright! I was totally in love with this colour, it's exactly what I wanted! I just wanted to stand in the sun all day just to have this colour show up. Too bad that this isn't the colour in the shade. Maybe I should really consider doing this colour permanently.

3 days later after 2 washes, this happened. I was walking towards a building and suddenly saw a spot of sunlight and look, my hair now looks red! But on the right you can clearly see it's still pretty dark. How can one hair colour have so many different hues!

Now my hair is slowly washing out, I don't wash my hair everyday, just every second day (sometimes if it's overly oily I will wash two days in a row). Everytime I put shampoo in my hair, the shampoo turns a bluish purple, so now I understand how semi permanent dyes work. My hair is still pretty dark after a week but I can start to see it lighten up more and I guess slowly it's going back to my previous brown...so now I'm patiently waiting till I can dye my hair another colour again....coz girl, my natural roots are startin to show!

So if you're thinking about dying your hair with Manic Panic, just do it! After all if you're not happy with it, in 4-6 weeks or less it'll all wash out. But here's a few things to take note of if you decide to go ahead:

• Make sure you cover up, this stuff really stains and avoid wearing anything light coloured for the first week;
• Put vaseline around your hairline, neck areas, chin, ears, this will make it very easy for you to just wipe off any stray colours and trust me you will get some strays;
• Although they say use a brush to 'paint' it on your hair, I found it was just easier to dip your Gloved fingers and rub it into your hair and then use a comb to spread it out more;
• Wear gloves! Because it will stain your hands for days! I wore gloves and still had staining on a few fingers;
• Even after you wash with shampoo, when you are styling your hair or blow drying your hair and you run your fingers through your hair, your palm and fingernails will turn purple! Which only goes away in a couple of days.

The best thing about this dye though is that there is none of that nasty chemical smell. No amonia smell to burn your eyes and no burning sensations when you put it close to your scalp. Though it may not work exactly the way I wanted it to, I still give it two thumbs up. But because it's a bit costly, I doubt that I'd be doing this too often.

I know it's been a rather long entry, thanks for making it this far! Happy Colouring!

UPDATE 25/8/15: After less than 2 weeks and after washing my hair on alternate days (sometimes everyday) the purple has all pretty much washed out. My colour is slowly returning back to its original brownish colour. But it's still not exactly the way it used to be, I guess there's still some dye in my hair. I wonder if it'll all wash out eventually? I miss my old hair colour :(

♥ Please Subscribe to our Channel! ♥
https://www.youtube.com/user/mommareeney

♥ Follow MizReeney on Instagram! ♥
https://instagram.com/mizreeney/

♥ Like our Facebook Page! ♥
https://www.facebook.com/MizReeney

Tofudles!

Tofudles! This is the answer to your noodle craving when you're on a low carb diet. When I sad this posted by Budget Pantry, I knew I had to try it. I had bought this tofu before but didn't like it. And I guess had no idea how to cook it. Never thought of unrolling it. So this time I tried cutting it into wide strips like Parpadelle pasta and cooked it with Pesto, Chicken and Sweet Peas. And the taste? Well you definitely know it's not pasta, but I liked it. There is a chewiness to it and you can still taste the tofu(ness).

Baiye Tofu

It wasn't that easy to stir the tofudles, once I mixed the pesto in, they kind of clung together. Next time I will cut them thinner Linguine like. And I'm actually excited to cook it again. See what other ways I can cook it. The amazing thing was my 8 year old finished all her portion! High Five Tofu!

If you're living in Singapore, you can buy this Tofu from NTUC (and probably other supermarkets).

The Tofu after it's been cut and unrolled into strips.The great thing is the tofu is not that delicate, so it doesn't break easily when you stirfry it.

The finished Dish. Delicious!!

Convert your Shoulder Bags into a Messenger Bag

I came across the idea of converting my shoulder bags into messenger bags after watching the following Youtube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF_ATEArsoo

She has the exact same bag that I have, the LV Delightful MM, and I thought that it was a really smart idea to be able to extend the use of the bag as a messenger bag. She however had bought LV straps to use, while it would be nice to have an LV strap for my LV bag, seems like it is a spare part that you can only order if you own the bag that goes with the strap. So I did a little more research and came across this video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URbmUUSI8sA

The straps this lady bought from an online shop called Mautto looked quite elegant. But I wasn't sure if I was willing to pay that much for a strap since I also wasn't sure if I would be using it often. Since the online store is based in the US once you add on the shipping costs to Singapore it wasn't that cheap.  What I do like about Mautto is that you can find different size straps, eg. 1.5" 1" etc and the type of material like Nylon, or Cotton or even leather or chain.

Anyway so I decided to check elsewhere and found one on Aliexpress. For US$8.98 including Free Shipping I thought it was a good deal to try out. The pictures showed the strap with a shoulder pad and silver hardware so I mailed the seller to ask if it came with gold hardware which they confirmed they could do. So I went ahead with the order and I requested that the shoulder pad be removed if possible but I was also prepared to cut the pad out if it came with it. So about 1.5 weeks later I received the strap in the mail via registered mail and I was somewhat okay with it. The strap itself was a good quality nylon with a slight sheen to it. What I was annoyed about was that the hardware on the slide part was silver whilst the clips were a light gold colour. Hmmm....was it by mistake or they just don't have the sliding hardware in gold? Anyway I'm pretty sure I could live with it...hopefully no one really notices :p I reckon the strap matched my LV monogram well and it's comfortable to wear. So overall it was worth the buy, maybe in future I might trade up to the one Mautto sells. I do like their clips better.

The clip looks silver here, but is actually a light gold. 

From Mautto Website