Pangkep, the capital of Pangkajene dan Kepulauan Regency is the small town. It doesn’t have the representative hotel, only some motels available. So if you have to go to the office or attend an occasion of Semen Tonasa, the only choice you have is staying in the company’s Lodging facility, which they call it “Wisma” in Bahasa Indonesia language.

It is not a hotel, so you can not find any hotel facilities like swimming pool, fitness center, bar, business lounge or restaurant. But as far as food is concern, you will have 3-times a day meal provided for you. The chefs are a local people, therefore you will find local cuisine in your menu. They are good, especially if you like to try something new and like the hot spicy food. The room itself, is standard. They are all have AC, refrigerator, TV and in-room bathroom with hot shower. Some of them has bathtub, and some only with shower booth. Channels of TV available are limited, due to poor signals in the room. But in the dining room, the signals are much better. The Wi-Fi is free, but you have to register your email once in every 24 hour. Though bandwidth is small and not sufficient for video call, at least you can browse, check your email, and chatting via Whatsapp.

Another good thing of this lodging that it is located in the housing complex of company staffs, and therefore it is quite and very good condition to rest after your busy hours. I suggest you do the exercise by walking around Semen Tonasa huge housing complex. The scenery around the complex is nice with many trees. But you have to do it before 7, because when the factory is running in full capacity, the air would polluted by tiny dust of clay and coal.
 
By staying here, ust don’t expect too much. But I guess it’s OK since you don’t have any other choice.

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This restaurant used to belongs to Hotel Aston Premiera. Since the hotel ownership changed, now this restaurant belongs and located in the Holiday Inn Hotel, Bandung which is in Jl. Pasteur, about 1.5 KM from Pasteur toll gate. You should consider this restaurant into one of your list when you are looking for a place to celebrate something like anniversary, birthday, graduation, etc. with your family. Because the place is cozy and not yet many guests which somehow make it more private for you and your family.

The food is also good, though they don’t have that many choices, but those in the menu have good taste. The price though, is consider mid-high since it is belongs to the 4-star hotel.

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If you are happened to visit Belawan and looking for a place to have lunch or dinner, this restaurant can be in your list. It’s located by the sea near the Port of Belawan. The building itself is very unpretentious made mostly of wooden poles, wooden floor and open wall, but you can enjoy the view of the sea while you are enjoying your food. This restaurant is famous of Medan local cuisine, especially variety of fish dish. So if you like fish and you like spicy Medan cuisine, this place even more become one of must visit restaurant for you. Try to order several choices of fish dish, you won’t regret it! Pricewise, this restaurant is worth it.

The drawback of this restaurant is because of its setting with open wall building. When Belawan gets too hot (like it usually do), you need to sit under or near the fan, or otherwise you will be sweating like crazy.

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If you are looking for budgeted airlines from Jakarta (CGK) to Bangkok (BKK), Tiger air must be in your list. You will stop in Singapore, but that would not be a problem, since you will always enjoy Changi Intl. airport every time. Just don’t put your expectation to high, but in my opinion, you get everything you need from a budgeted airlines when flying with Tiger Air.

My flight number was TR 2775 (CGK-SIN), continue with TR 2112 (SIN-BKK).

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I was travelling with my wife and my two children. The last thing I needed was gate change to the last minute prior to departure.

We were already around our assigned gate, window shopping in the shops along waiting room at Hong Kong Intl. airport, getting ready to aboard airplane to Shanghai. It was 10 minutes before boarding when we heard announcement that the gate had been changed. And it was consider far from previews one, especially when you are traveling with small children like I did. The gate moved to down stair where we had to take bus from the gate to the aircraft.

I was aware that I took the budgeted airlines, but in my humble opinion, they could deliver better service if they had good planning that day. I suggest they let their passenger know the gate change at least 30 minutes before boarding time.
 
Other than that instance, thank god everything went smoothly. The flight was calm, the crew were nice and friendly, and we arrived Shanghai on schedule.

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This was not the first time I take Cathay Pacific flight from Jakarta to Hong Kong on my business trip, therefore my expectation was high. I brought my family along this time for family vacation, only to experience the ominous interior of the aircraft. In my humble opinion, Cathay should have their aircraft interior refurnished! The seat cover were gloomy, some hinges of the seat producing noise along the flight, etc. Thank God, the entertainment system were working properly.

When my children took another airlines for our vacation, they got some toy like board game and small doll to play in the plane. They asked me if they got it this time, and it turned out Cathay didn’t have such policy. I don’t think that they’re expensive, but to junior passenger like my children, made lots of differences. They compare it right away with their previews experience with other airlines.

I hope Cathay has improved by now to give the excellent service quality to all of their passenger.

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This mosque was built by private and group funding, and it belongs to a family who has one of its late family member worked as the ship captain. His name was Mr. Budianto. This is the reason why his wife and family built this mosque with the shape of a ship.

The open hours for this mosque for prayer and religious activities is actually from before down until after night prayer or around 8 to 9 PM. And when in fasting month, it opens nearly 24 hours. But if you want to enjoy the architect part of its building and climb to the roof or I may say ‘aboard the ship’ it only open the staircase from 9 am to 5 pm every day including holiday. You have to dress properly to enter the perimeter of the mosque. Long trousers for men and long dress with vail for women. If it is not many visitors, you can directly ‘aboard the ship’ and enjoy the unique architectural piece of art. But if it is many visitors visit at the same time, you have to Q and wait for your turn. It’s free, but you are require to write down your name and phone number in guest book.

You only need about 15 to 30 minutes to visit this site, or about 45 minutes if you also want to say one of your daily prayers. The mosque was built with heart and with fine quality of building materials. You will awe to what you see thinking that it’s actually a ship on t land. If you are lucky and know member of Mr. Budianto’s family like me, you would have a chance to enter the helm room where the ship control wheel is located. Or it’s actually the main control room for sound system and CCTV.

If you visit Bandung or Cimahi, don’t forget to visit this mosque. Even if you are not Muslim, you are more than welcome to visit, because mosque is for every one! You will not regret it.

I booked this hotel for my colleagues from China, just for a few hour from 9 am to 2 pm, before they moved to the better hotel of Aston Braga next door. I know that Fave hotel is budgeted hotel. The suite room in this hotel doesn’t even have the window. But it was OK, because they only was going to use it for rest after overnight flight from Ningbo, China.

In order to be able to use the hotel room in the morning, I had to book it from the day before. This means that the hotel room was not in use at night. But to my surprise, when my friends enter their room, half of the room floor was flooded by water from AC. It was at Idul Adha muslim holiday and the room were fully booked. So when I requested the new room, they couldn’t provide it for us. The house keeping staff came to the room and assessed the situation only to informed us that it going to take at least 1 hour to fix the AC. Because my colleagues would only stay form 5 hour, I decided to let it be and let them fix it after my colleagues check out that afternoon. They just wanted to take some rest anyway.

But that was it, only simple sorry from the receptionist, which I thought that it was necessary for me to talk to the MOD. A man who act as MOD that morning came and see me in the lobby and apologize. Only to apologize! I know this is budgeted hotel, but even lower class hotel would give a service recovery on occasion like this. Not until I asked he promised to discuss it with the management. Later that afternoon he called me and said that the hotel could only gave the neck pillow as their service recovery. Well, what could I say, I told him to give it to my colleagues.

Room Tip: Room with good AC condition without leaking water

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It looked like 5-star hotel from their website. But in my opinion, this is 4-star hotel or even lower. Not because of the service they delivered, but due to the limitation of its facilities. If you are looking a place just to spend the night on business days and do not care about hotel facilities, you might just fine. But if you also want to enjoy some of the hotel activities, you might want to choose another hotel nearby.

The ball room was big and I gave a seminar there, but the restaurant was small and become and entrance or passage to the ball room. The gym is also small, and the swimming pool only 7 meter in length on the corner of 3rd floor, isolated from anywhere else in the hotel. Thankfully the food was consider good and things that I also enjoyed. And I forget to mention about Wi-Fi speed. It reached more than 35 Mbps. In Indonesia, this is consider very fast.

Room Tip: highest floor available, to get nicer view of the town

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It is actually the regular baso (meat ball) in three different cooking style. One is reguler, like we use to see and eat, but the other two are unique for this particular restaurant. The second type is like ball made of chunk of meet in ping pong ball size, and its chewy. While the third one is fried hallow meat ball the about 5 cm in diameter. If you ever tasted Baso Malang, it kinda taste like it with unique style.

You eat it the first and second type in the hot meet broth soup, while the third one by dipping it in hot spicy sauce or just put it all together in the soup. They don’t provide noodle to eat the meat ball with. Instead, they provide the traditional Makassar rice cake cooked in banana leaf. You eat them by put into the soup together will all the meat balls.

If you want to take it home with you, they have already made them packaged in nice packaging for you to be able to take it into the cabin of an airplane.

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