Looking at the various resorts and hotels available for the long weekend, we decided on Novotel @ Batam. It is a four star hotel, but from what i googled, there seem to have several neutral / bad reviews on this hotel. But the price and location are attractive, and hence, i decided to ignore the comments and go ahead with the booking. The harbourfront ferrry terminal was crowded during the public holiday. We had no ideas where the queues were, but still manage to make our way to the ferry of course.
The only bad thing is that there was no scenery from the room; for checking out, there is no express checkout and you will need to queue; the hotel does not have free terminal transfer. Despite the fact that the hotel is like a 5 -10 minutes walk from Harbourbay Ferry Terminal, you will still need to pay a 50,000 IDR for a 3 minutes Taxi ride. It is a standard price for peak season, and most of the taxi do not agree to reduce the fund as that is their standard rate. But you can always try to bargain during the off-peak season as there ain't many customers for the taxis to pick.
Overall rating: 9/10. The price is pricey compared to most of the food available in Batam. The total damage for the meal was about 500,000 IDR. But probably to get the same standard of Italian food in Singapore, it could have costed much more. We visited the restaurant again during our last day in Batam. It will be covered later!