Well, allow me to help with the imagining. I\u2019m 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\u2019ll spend the next few years imploring others to also do. The kind of holiday where, despite all those spectacular buffets \u2013 not to mention however enthusiastic your application of the \u201call inclusive\u201d policy is \u2013 you can still come out with a calorie deficit.<\/p>\n
Resort room. Photo \/ Tim Roxborogh<\/p>\n
And given this is Club Med, it\u2019s the kind of holiday where even if you\u2019re 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\u2019ve ever seen. <\/p>\n
Elephant towel. Photo \/ Tim Roxborogh<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
As for solo travel, if you\u2019re interested but haven\u2019t quite made that psychological leap, consider a place like Club Med. It\u2019s company policy for staff to go out of their way to be friendly with guests, even offering to dine with you if that\u2019s what you\u2019d like.<\/p>\n
Photo \/ Club Med Spa<\/p>\n
In my case, I really wanted to play tennis as well as try out the resort\u2019s fancy new pickleball and padel courts. No opponent? No problem, because you\u2019re 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. <\/p>\n
Doubles partner Mae. Photo \/ Club Med Spa<\/p>\n
She was in her mid-60s, about half my weight, and other than \u201cyay\u201d or the occasional \u201csorry!\u201d, didn\u2019t speak a word of English. She was awesome; the definition of wily precision over power. We won the tournament.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
Flying trapeze. Photo \/ Club Med Spa<\/p>\n
Surprising, because it can\u2019t be overstated how close Bintan is to Singapore \u2013 just 37km and a one-hour ferry \u2013 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. <\/p>\n
Other excursions are available, like a boat tour through Bintan\u2019s ecologically significant mangrove forests teeming with wildlife, or to the neighbouring Ria Bintan golf course as designed by the legendary Gary Player himself. <\/p>\n
Kayaking tour. Photo \/ Club Med Spa<\/p>\n
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\u2019m aware.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s a Club Med first, with the opening of the 300sq m Amazing Family! Hub. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Part indoor playground, part movie and games room, it\u2019s a major asset for Bintan. And another reason I\u2019m determined to return.<\/p>\n
Club Med Bintan offers family fun without excluding solo travellers. Photo \/ Club Med Spa<\/p>\n
So remember the name: it\u2019s like the beer and the singlets, but without the \u2018g\u2019. And I\u2019ve got a feeling a whole lot more Kiwis aren\u2019t going to be drawing blanks about it for long.<\/p>\n
Checklist<\/p>\n
SINGAPORE<\/p>\n
GETTING THERE<\/p>\n
Fly from Auckland to Singapore non-stop with Singapore Airlines in around 12 hours.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
DETAILS<\/p>\n
The journalist travelled courtesy of Club Med. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Well, allow me to help with the imagining. I\u2019m currently tray-table down, laptop open, 35,000 feet somewhere above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[79564,313850,18836,22857,5821,2109,71,189,33262,35302,31989,66303,5511,191961,6187,156249,97763,111,139,69,255800,9739,17509,59353,213,223,61,810,102,9192],"class_list":["post-640387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-beachfront","tag-bintan","tag-club","tag-escape","tag-everything","tag-family","tag-from","tag-holiday","tag-hour","tag-hype","tag-im","tag-jealous","tag-just","tag-littleknown","tag-lives","tag-med","tag-multigenerational","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-roxborogh","tag-singapore","tag-so","tag-solo","tag-sports","tag-the","tag-to","tag-up","tag-with","tag-writes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}