Well, allow me to help with the imagining. I’m currently tray-table down, laptop open, 35,000 feet somewhere above Queensland and piecing together all that made my past few days at Club Med Bintan the kind of holiday you just know you’ll spend the next few years imploring others to also do. The kind of holiday where, despite all those spectacular buffets – not to mention however enthusiastic your application of the “all inclusive” policy is – you can still come out with a calorie deficit.
Resort room. Photo / Tim Roxborogh
And given this is Club Med, it’s the kind of holiday where even if you’re travelling alone, the only way you could be lonely was if you locked yourself in your room. Which, speaking of rooms, look brilliant with a new design and colour scheme that reflects the local Bintan culture as well as the fact Club Med is moving to exclusively upscale properties. Also, it must be pointed out, the most impressive in-room piece of towel art I’ve ever seen.
Elephant towel. Photo / Tim Roxborogh
It was, shall we say, the elephant in the room that the multi-towel elephant creation that greeted me on the king-size bed was so cute and wondrous that I daren’t actually dismantle it. Instead, I carefully lifted the elephant to my daybed overlooking the jungle, not to be touched again. Luckily there were other towels.
As for solo travel, if you’re interested but haven’t quite made that psychological leap, consider a place like Club Med. It’s company policy for staff to go out of their way to be friendly with guests, even offering to dine with you if that’s what you’d like.
Photo / Club Med Spa
In my case, I really wanted to play tennis as well as try out the resort’s fancy new pickleball and padel courts. No opponent? No problem, because you’re provided with an app that shows when the daily tournaments and coaching sessions are. I ended up getting paired with a Japanese lady named Mae for the tennis doubles.
Doubles partner Mae. Photo / Club Med Spa
She was in her mid-60s, about half my weight, and other than “yay” or the occasional “sorry!”, didn’t speak a word of English. She was awesome; the definition of wily precision over power. We won the tournament.
Then it was on to padel (like tennis and squash combined), before the craze eating up tennis courts the world over, pickleball. But if you’re more of a squash or badminton person, you can do that. Or beach tennis, table tennis, volleyball, archery, yoga, petanque, paddle-boarding, football, rock climbing, basketball; even trapeze (a full-sized trapeze with net) and surprisingly good snorkelling.
Flying trapeze. Photo / Club Med Spa
Surprising, because it can’t be overstated how close Bintan is to Singapore – just 37km and a one-hour ferry – and the small matter of the proximity to one of the busiest shipping corridors in the world. But the coral, fish variety and clarity of water was good.
Other excursions are available, like a boat tour through Bintan’s ecologically significant mangrove forests teeming with wildlife, or to the neighbouring Ria Bintan golf course as designed by the legendary Gary Player himself.
Kayaking tour. Photo / Club Med Spa
It is frequently cited as being among the finest courses in Asia, and I was assigned a golf pro and a caddy who patiently watched their client proceed to hit a record-breaking number of balls into the South China Sea and the Indonesian rainforest. Still great fun though, and no monkeys were injured by stray balls. That I’m aware.
The whole Club Med Bintan experience was such a blast that the only downside was a wave of guilt at being there without my wife and kids.
Next to the two swimming pools and all the sun lounges is a new splash pad that my 7- and 3-year-old would have gone crazy over. Indoors, there’s a Club Med first, with the opening of the 300sq m Amazing Family! Hub.
Yes, Bintan has a terrific kids club so parents can have the novelty of reconnecting with each other (and now with some first-rate, more secluded a la carte restaurants if you really want privacy), but part of the ethos of the hub is to encourage fun ways for multigenerational family play.
Part indoor playground, part movie and games room, it’s a major asset for Bintan. And another reason I’m determined to return.
Club Med Bintan offers family fun without excluding solo travellers. Photo / Club Med Spa
So remember the name: it’s like the beer and the singlets, but without the ‘g’. And I’ve got a feeling a whole lot more Kiwis aren’t going to be drawing blanks about it for long.
Checklist
SINGAPORE
GETTING THERE
Fly from Auckland to Singapore non-stop with Singapore Airlines in around 12 hours.
To get from mainland Singapore to Bintan Island, take the passenger ferry from Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal (TMFT) in Singapore. Travel time is about one hour.
DETAILS
The journalist travelled courtesy of Club Med.