Paving The Way: Ria Bintan

Ria Bintan is a small island in Indonesia, located at the distance of an one-hour-ferry, south of Singapore. Small is a relative term. It’s much bigger than Lantau Island. And that’s the destination for our vacation this year.

Getting there was a bit indirect. We needed to fly to Singapore first. Then we traveled to the ferry terminal to take the fast ferry to Ria Bintan. Fortunately Singapore is a small country and it was just a short journey from Changi Airport to the pier.

Since Indonesia is one hour behind Singapore, we arrived at Ria Bintan 15 minutes before we departed Singapore. Getting in and out Ria Bintan also brought us 3 sets of immigration stamps on our passports. Ria Bintan is famous for golf. But we are no golfers. We were heading for Club Med.

Club Med stands for Club Mediterrannee. Obviously it was founded by a French guy. The first Club Med was launched in Paris in 1950. The service team members are called GO’s (Gentils Organisateurs, meaning gracious organizers) and we as participants are referred as GM’s (Gentils Membres, gracious members, not General Managers). The GO’s were multi-talented and friendly. They could be an sports instructors in the day time and suddenly became dancers in the evening. The GO’s would also join the GM’s over meals. In our last evening, the Circus Team of GO’s even invited us to join their special dinner.

This is our second time to visit a Club Med resort. Great improvement since then. Compared with what we had in Bali 5 years ago, the food has been improved a lot. The all-inclusive-package also covers drinks and snack now. And there is a richer variety of sports and activities. If you have kids, Club Med can provide sort-of-baby-sitting programs such that you can have some private time together. For kids who are 4-18 year old, their programs bear no additional cost. There were different programs for different age groups: 4-5, 6-7, 8-11 and 12-18. For those who was 2-3 year old, they have special program called Petit Club but you need to pay. Some resorts also provide baby-sitting service for under-2-year-old’s.

You can just leave your kids from 9:00 am until dinner time. Or you could choose to join just part of the program. In Club Med, there will be a variety show every night. Sometime, the kids will be invited to participate. On Saturday night, Joy was part of the “Four Seasons” show.

I was also invited to participate two times: once as a judge for a GO’s competition and the other time as a participant (acting as a rocking tree) in a comedy show. We have quite a number of first time in the trip. our first time to learn golf; our first time to learn catamaran sailing. And most exciting of all, we attended circus school!