Pulau Batam Transportation

Hourly ferry leaves Stulang Laut (The Zon) Terminal in Johor Bahru for Batam. The fare is RM76 (one-way) and RM120 (two-way). The return ticket is normally open i.e. you can confirm your time later when you leave Batam. You also need to pay an additional Rp105,000 in Batam for the seaport tax.

The 90-min journey is quite comfortable.

We just come back from Batam, and find out Taxi cost can be quite cheap
if you are willing to do a little walk :D

From Hang Nadim Airport to Batam Centre official taxi cost will be Rp.80.000,
But if you just go out from the airport, keep walking to your left for the gate (abt 500m),
Be persitent! Ignore all taxi touts, and you are out...just around the "eagle monument"
you will still have taxi driver offering their service, but for a much cheaper price....
In our case we paid for Rp.30.000 for Airport - Batam Center

Same trick apply for other place.... go out of the actual "place of interest"

We hired taxi fm Mega Mall - Telaga Punggur (pier to Tanjung Pinang) for Rp 50.000,
and from Telaga Punggur - Airport for Rp.40.000

From Singapore, we took a ferry from HarbourFront. Got to be there 1 hour before departure. We bought an open return ticket, which means that we don't need to confirm the time of return yet. We can get the return ticket from Batam after we finish our shopping :)
I booked our ferry tickets through BatamFast.

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Attached are photographs taken during my flight from Jakarta to Batam in January 2008. The flight from Jakarta to Batam takes about 1 hours 20 minutes, and several domestic airlines fly this route e.g. Batavia Air, Mandala Airlines, Air Asia, Merpati Airlines, Garuda Airlines, Kartika Airlines etc. It is much cheaper flying Jakarta-Batam than Jakarta-Singapore as the return airfare for the former costs about 800,000 Indonesian ruppiah return (about Singapore $140) whereas the latter will cost at least Singapore $250 for budget airlines such as Valuair.

There are a couple of ferry operators that depart from Singapore Harbourfront Ferry Terminal. My friends and I used Penguin Services. There's a ferry to Batam nearly every hour, and the ferry ride was pretty smooth.

The cost of the return boat ride is about $33.

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Batam is only 55 Minutes from Singapore and 90 Minutes from Johor Bahru. Its economical way to get to Batam Island as there is no regular flights to Batam from Singapore or JB. I decided to take Ferry from JB and it cost me RM 60 one way (for Visa on arrival you must have round trip ticket RM95) Travel Time was 90 Min Aprx/sailing every hour reasonablly comfortable seatings, If you want to smoke then have to go upper deck.

Call Eddy at +62 (0) 778 7021523 and he will be there in less then 30 minutes He can speak english well and knows the Batam very well. To or From Airport IDR 50,000 or from Batam Center Ferry terminal to Nagoya District IDR 25000 per way. (Taxi Companies Charge IDR 40,000 from Batam Center) and other taxi ask for IDR 80,000 for Airport.

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If you want to travel to neigbouring Bintan island from Batam, then you need to go to the Punggur ferry terminal located at the south-eastern end of Batam to take the regular ferries (about half to one hour intervals) to Tanjung Pinang in Bintan (about 1 hour) or Tanjunguban in Bintan (about 20 minutes). The ferry to Tanjung Pinang cost about US$7 return. From Tanjung Pinang, you can take speed boats to other islands e.g. Pulau Singkep (see my VT Pulau Singkep page).