A BEAUTIFUL garden setting, friendly management and staff, pleasant atmosphere, excellent and well maintained facilities and great food ... this is the winning combination that is making Smiling Hill one of the most popular places in Batam for expatriates to gather and relax, especially for family groups.
Sunday by the Pool
Relaxing at the Bar
The Smiling Hill Pool BEFORE restoration -
Swimming Pool Complex
MOST PEOPLE are taken by surprise when they first see the swimming pool complex at
Smiling Hill -
They would be even more surprised had they seen the pool before the Smiling Hill team spent around 15 months plus a lot of imagination, energy and money restoring and upgrading a facility that had been abandoned, stripped of all equipment and fittings and used as the housing estate’s rubbish dump (right down to keeping goats in the dilapidated former change rooms).
The beautifully restored pool of today is 20 metres by 10 metres and ranges in depth from 1.3m to 2.1m meaning it is suited to lap swimming (50 lengths to the kilometre) or just having fun.
There is also a shallow, safe wading pool for young children and what was once a
swim-
The pool area is protected by natural stone and rendered walls and surrounded by gardens. The pool aprons are of natural slate.
The surrounding buildings are of rough jungle timber and palm thatching in traditional Indonesian styles and house:
- A professional kitchen.
- A stand-
alone barbecue area. - A pavilion restaurant and breakfast area with a spectacularly high pitched palm thatch roof complete with servery, water features and extensive aquarium.
- Covered poolside dining areas tucked amongst the gardens.
- A designated massage hut where you can enjoy a relaxing Bali-
style traditional massage in a beautiful garden setting from a professionally trained masseuse.
The original pool pavilion has been extended using traditional timbers, thatching and traditional furnishings to create an attractive and convivial bar area.
The pool opens from 6am for adult guests and residents (by appointment for visitors) to cater for lap swimmers. It opens to the general public from 10am, closes at 6pm for cleaning and then reopens into the evening from 6.30pm.
THE RESTAURANT at Smiling Hill trades as Goodies Restaurant and is winning a huge following among Batam’s Western expatriate community and Indonesian residents of Batam who enjoy good food in a magic setting at sensible prices.
The Goodies Chefs and kitchen facilities are capable of catering an 80-
The Goodies bar is a popular meeting place for both Smiling Hill residents and visitors. It usually becomes very busy in the early evenings and on Saturdays and Sundays.
Many expatriates working in nearby Batu Ampar phone through their orders and meet there for lunch and an expatriate wives group from the McDermott yard use it as a monthly meeting and luncheon venue.
The bar offers a wide range of regional canned and bottled beers (Bintang, Tiger,
Heineken, Carlsberg, San Miguel) plus soft drinks and fresh-
NOTE: The Smiling Hill Pool bar does NOT sell wines or spirits as it does not hold the necessary licences. However, guests are welcome to bring their own bottles of wine or spirits. These are marked with your name and held in a locker to be served as you direct. You will be charged for “splits” (coke, soda, tonic, juice etc) and you will be charged a service fee of 50,000 rupiah (about US$5) per bottle.
Big Screen TV Sports
MAJOR sporting events carried on satellite TV are shown on request in the swimming pool bar area and are available also on the terrace guest lounge at the Smiling Hill guesthouse.
The Smiling Hill and Goodies management believe that television kills conversation
so the big screen usually operates only for the big events in which most guests and
visitors have an interest -
If guests wish to view a particular event that is not being shown at the Pool bar then, if available on the satellite, it will be screened on the second big screen at the terrace guest lounge.
Free Wireless Internet
SMILING Hill has FREE wireless Internet “Hot Spots” in the swimming pool complex and also to guest rooms and the terrace guest lounge.
Guests and visitors need only bring their laptop and ask the management or staff
for the passwords to quickly and easily log-
There are also handy power points and adaptors to allow you to connect to mains electricity and charge computer batteries. It all means you can relax in the bar or by the pool with a coffee or a beer and connect to the world at no cost.
SOMETIMES guests need a quiet space a little away from it all to wind down and relax. The Terrace Lounge at the Smiling Hill guesthouse is the perfect place to sit and chat with friends, read a book, work on your laptop or connect via “Hot Spot” to the Internet.
There is also a championship-
It is elevated enough to capture the sea breezes and allow you to overlook the construction yards of Batu Ampar to the shipping in the Singapore Strait to the west or take in the view to the swimming pool complex to the east. The Terrace is also available to guests for small private parties with a small bar area from which to serve refreshments and food.
A MODEST guest library stocked with English language books is housed in the Smiling Hill guesthouse. Books are mainly popular fiction plus a range of reference titles including guidebooks providing information on Indonesia and the region.
All of the titles have been contributed by former guests and residents. Guests or visitors are welcome to take any book they like to read during their visit and if they have not completed it before they are due to leave then they are welcome to take the book home with them.
They are encouraged (but not required) to exchange a book from their own collection for the book they take from the library either during their visit or on a future visit. Many expatriate residents in and around Batam (particularly those who regularly work offshore) use the Smiling Hill library as a place to exchange English language books which are otherwise difficult to obtain in Batam.
If you enjoy reading then you can make a lot of resident expatriates very happy if you are able to bring two or three used books to be donated to the library after you have read them.
Garden Massage
FOR THE ultimate in relaxation it would be hard to better a garden massage by the
poolside at Smiling Hill. Just imagine -
You can choose a traditional body massage or a reflexology foot and leg massage for
an hour or for one and a half hours. The cost for a one-
Wading pool kids
A TASTE of Bali -
Click on photo to enlarge
SMILING HILL prides itself on being a FUN place with regular special events for the enjoyment of guests, residents and visitors.
These include sports nights (featuring satellite TV coverage on the BIG screen), parties, special food nights, quiz nights, karaoke competitions, live music performers, cooking contests, Christmas luncheons and more.
Sundays are usually “Barbecue Day” when guests can ask the Chefs to prepare their food from a selection of meats and salads or become involved in the cooking themselves.
The Chefs arrange special foods to mark national days like American Independence Day (July 4) or Australia Day (January 26). There also is usually special food and activities in and around the pool complex for both expatriates and Indonesian residents to mark the big Indonesian Independence Day Holiday on August 17.
Visiting expatriate specialists from the UK, hats from Australia and staff from Goodies
Fun times for the Youngsters
Relaxing by the pool
Rugby on the BIG screen
Terrace lounge, Guesthouse
Free wireless Hot Spot for Internet access at Pool Bar
Jakarta English language newspapers are provided free at Pool bar area
The Smiling Hill poolside garden is a perfect place for a relaxing massage