We left Danga Bay Marina at 8.30am and by 4pm we were in Batam. In less than 8 hours we had been in 3 countries, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. The trip was uneventful, lots of ships and Police, Customs and Navy patrolling the Singapore border. Despite the hundred of ships as far as the eye could see it actually seemed quieter to me than last time we came through. On arrival at Nongsa Point Marina we were guided in by a speedboat and met on the jetty by no fewer than about 8 marina staff including the Assistant Manager. They quickly tied us off and handed us the paperwork for our check in to Indonesia, a good start so far, everything seemed to be running smoothly but I was still sceptical, it's hard to judge how easy or hard a check in is going to be this early. Once we had organised the boat we headed up to the office to hand in our paperwork and check in to the marina. The facilities on offer at Nongsa Point Marina are excellent, there is a laundry, shower facilities, general store, huge pool, restaurant and free wi-fi. The staff were all friendly and helpful but the cost of the marina is a lot when compared to Malaysia.

We decided to head into Batam Town Centre to have a look around, reception organised transport for us and we were soon on our way. We had planned on getting the bikes out to ride into town but soon discovered that the landscape includes several steep hills and the marina is actually quite isolated, if we planned to do any touring of the area it would have to be by car. Our driver was a friendly little man and happily chatted away about the development in Batam and the upcoming elections. We were dropped off at a huge new shopping complex that catered to the tourists arriving from Singapore by ferry. Filled with the usual fast food outlets (McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut), a smattering of trendy coffee shop chains and brand name stores, the shopping centre was not exactly the local pasar (market) that we were after but we found a huge supermarket in the basement level that had everything that we needed. We left the shopping centre and began walking in a direction we thought may lead us to the local shops. Vans and taxi's whizzed by beeping their horns at us to try and get our business, people seemed confused when asking where we were going and we responded that we were just walking. After passing numerous boarded up buildings we gave up our search, we passed a huge Mosque just as hundreds of Muslim men were leaving after prayer. We were caught up in the wave of people and walked with the crowd back to the shopping centre.

Soon we were back in the car on our way to the marina, we asked our driver to take us somewhere to buy an Indonesian flag for the Makani Kai. He said no problem and drove us to the airport, it took a while for us to work out why. The word for flag in Indonesian is bendera, the name of the airport at Batam is Bandarra. In the end, despite the fact that every single boat in Indonesia fly's one if not two Indonesian flags, we could not find one anywhere. As there was not much to see around Batam and we were keen to get to Bali we decided to leave the marina. We went to the marina office to pick up our paperwork and discovered why clearing Customs through the marina in Batam is not an issue, they simply don't do Customs! We had already cleared the port and were told that we had to leave and because we were heading to Bali we had to do Customs there. So anyone coming through to Indonesia be aware, if you are paying Nongsa Point Marina to clear you in to the country it is not a FULL clear in.