Like most Singaporean families with young kids, we do our usual vacation planning rituals twice a year – one for June and another for the December months that coincide with the public school holiday periods. There were some plans in the extended family whether to use part of the December break this year for a trip to Hainan with grandparents, but the logistics of planning for a trip that would work across four family units was just too much, what with selected nephews and nieces having their major national exams this year-end. We pretty much gave up trying to find a common time slot where everyone would be available.
With the entire year’s canvas open to us for planning again, we decided to do a long trip in December and a shorter one in June – in past years we usually plan our vacations the other way round. For the June break, I had a full week – or 9 days from Saturday to the following Sunday – to work with, and we wanted somewhere reasonably close. Over the months, we explored a number of places in South-East Asia – including Rawa Island (Ling really wants to go back there for a third visit!), Redang Island, Langkawi, Kota Kinabalu – but the final decision came between either Penang or Bali.
There are some really nice places to stay in Penang, and a 9 day trip there would really be to enjoy the huge range of street cuisines and eat ourselves silly. The costs of the trip would be quite manageable too. We finally reckoned though that the kids would probably like the trip less than the adults would. At 9 and 5 years old, the only gastronomic experiences they care for are pizzas, ice-cream, and chicken nuggets. So, Penang street food was going to get so wasted on them.
Bali it was to be then. A more costly trip for sure, since Bali isn’t too different from Phuket in that significant parts of the island now are also catering for the lucrative tourist market with costs to match. And there are anecdotal reports abound that many spots on the island has different admission charges for locals and foreigners. Still, there is a varied list of things to see and do in Bali, even if we’re going to be staying clear of the more busy parts of the Nusa Dua peninsula. Our last visit to Bali was in September 2008. We engaged a driver for four of the six days that trip, and covered natural sights across the length and breadth of the island. That I reckon was the last vacation I did where all the heavy DSLR gear came along to cover as many photographic situations as I was doing at that point: panoramic, slow motion, sunset and night, animal, and even macro photography. We had kids after that, so what we could do on vacations – photography wise – got completely turned on its head haha.
The 2018 version is going to be quite different this time: any itinerary we put together is going to be children and family-centric, as I reckon the kids wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a sunset at Uluwatu against what they see on the Minton balcony everyday.
More to come soon!
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