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AM ERICAN AS S O CIATION O F S INGAP O RE January 2016
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Where to Spend the Six Long Weekends of 2016
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MCI (P) 185/03/2015
Adventure for the Not-Too-Adventurous By Faith Chanda There are six long weekends in 2016. Six! And if you decide to take off the Monday before National Day, you can stretch it to seven. Wow! So where to go? Our family of four is a mixed bag when it comes to adventure. Some of us love roller coasters while others suffer from motion sickness. Most of us love the outdoors, but one of us gets bitten by insects every time. Three of us love the water, but our littlest is still learning to swim. So it’s a challenge to find activities that all four of us enjoy. But in Bintan, we did! Newly built, The Canopi (www.adventureglamping.com) boasts giant tents furnished with four-poster beds, televisions, aircon and attached bathrooms. Glamourous camping, indeed! One day, we hired a taxi and drove about 45 minutes to Trikora Beach, which is frequented mostly by locals. Its natural beauty was well worth the lack of luxury. Small raised huts were there for good reason: watch out for the sand mites! But the water was cool and refreshing and the sand soft, with seashells of all shapes and sizes abundant at the shoreline. On the way back, we passed through a small village where we saw traditional fishing vessels at sea. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we also visited the chic Banyan Tree Bintan (www.banyantree.com)
for a quick bite. The Cove Mediterranean restaurant requires a buggy ride down a steep path which runs behind authentic-looking villas that practically hang off the cliff side. At The Cove, the staff was as warm and generous as the food. We showed up a bit bedraggled between lunch and dinner service, but they never batted an eye. We enjoyed scrumptious food amidst a photo-worthy view all to ourselves. Heaven! Another day found us checking out Nirwana Gardens (www.nirwanagardens.com). We rode elephants, visited their tiny zoo, bought inexpensive day passes to the infinity-edged pool overlooking the ocean and ate at Dino, which quickly became our favorite restaurant, a respite of kid-friendly food. One afternoon, we took a boat tour in Bintan’s mangroves. With the wind in our faces, we sped through ever-narrowing canals spotting sleeping tree snakes, tiny crabs and even a small monitor lizard. Word is the evening firefly tour is breathtaking, but our adventures had the kids nodding off earlier than usual (and sometimes during dinner!). In still-developing Treasure Bay’s Crystal Lagoon, we tried almost every activity they offered. Our seven-year-old bravely attempted cable wakeboarding
with the instructors at Bintan Wake Park and was immediately hooked! I briefly kayaked for the first time without tipping over. We goofed around in bumper boats (like bumper cars, but on water!) and zipped around the resort on rented motorscooters. We were pleasantly surprised at our first-ever ATV tour: pretty quickly we were roaring over branches and rocks in the undulating forest path like pros. My oldest rode with the leader which was really fun for her! We aren’t usually very adventurous, especially on vacations with our kids, but Bintan provided plenty of excitement to keep the kids happy and just enough of an adrenaline boost to thrill an adventure lightweight like me.
Photos by Faith Chanda, Robert Lowe Faith Chanda has written for SAN since moving to Singapore from New York with her husband and two children a year ago. As a trailing spouse, Faith has reinvented herself as a writer, after spending most of her career in Marketing Communications and Event Planning, spanning multiple industries and roles. She enjoys exploring food, culture, nature and design.
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