[anonymouskimch]

Originally Posted by Black Page

NEVER bring your passport with you when you are on a foreign land. What happens if you lose it?? Or if someone steals your wallet? Your bag? Bad things can always happen.

As soon as you arrive to hotel, leave your passport (and second credit card, if you have) in the safety box. That's the safest place. Make a photocopy of your passport and bring it with you with your national identity card (Singapore, I suppose).
In case police should check you (but I don't see why... it never happened to me in many visits to Batam) you show your national ID and the passport copy. If they have any reason to investigate you more seriously, they will come to hotel with you to check the real one. End of the story.

This is what I do in any country of the world I go, including places which are much more problematic than the quiet Batam. I don't really want to discover, one day, that I lost my passport while I am in Batam. It's a nightmare! Need to: make a formal report to Police, contact the Embassy/Consulate (in Batam for you Singaporeans, I don't know where for me European), ask a substitution document, go there to pick it up, come back. After all that, I have almost surely missed my flight back home from Singapore.

Is it? As I'm looking for massage & spa at batam, it involves "everything off" so was wondering how do you deal with your important belonging than. Their hotel safety box can be trusted ma? What if there is no safety box at that hotel? Sorry too other bros if they its an annoying question to you.