Richard Low, Samuel Ng and I went for a short survey trip on Batam to look for possible good observation site on 03 Apr 2004. We take a speed boat from Harbour Front Centre (Singapore) to Sekupang (Batam) which take around 45 minutes.
Richard Low had arrange a driver who will take us around Batam and the islands(Rempang island and Galang island) that been connected via a express way. We decided to go to the south islands, Rempang island and Galang island, which is the furthest away from singapore. We are quite surprise and happy to see that nearly the full express way are without lamp posts...
Our first destination is a car park near a beach. The car park was around two basketball court size and the ground is made of concrete. There was no lamp post around, but there are some houses near the beach that sell food for tourist. It was raining quite heavily, so we didn't actually check the area carefully, but should be OK. By the way, the beach require S$1 entrance fee and the strange thing is that the whole area was raining like cats and dogs, but the fee collection area was not raining at all.... ???
Since it was raining heavily, so we decide to go to the south end of the express way to check out any other good possible site. At the end of the express way, we found a site near the beach which was quite good and decided to stay there over night to check out the view. The beach contain a family run small food resturant(??) and a small resort(??) under contruction. Below is the 360 degree Panorama view and some pictures of the site that we think is quite good... it is around 300m walk from the beach:
Unfortunately, the night was a near full moon and very cloudy plus some raining...
So Samuel and I end up shooting lighting with our digital camera... 
The good news was we basically can't see any artificial light around when samuel and I go there at night... except some sky glow cause by singapore light pollution in the low north sky. The only "bad" thing is that the mobile phone cannot receive any signals there... Anyway, may be coming back again on 17 Apr 2004 instead of going to Batu Laya. Have a nice day.
"The universe is composed mainly of hydrogen and ignorance." 
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