My family used to make yearly trips to the chalet at St John's Island in the early 90's. This was before the government chalets on top of the hill got transformed into a fishing R&D facility utilised by the AVA today.
It was a mammoth task to plan each trip as the entire family, consisting of the families of my Dad's siblings went along and the adults had to plan a week's supply of food, cooking utensils etc. It was also not easy to transfer the supplies up the hill and trolleys had to be used.
We kids were just purely in charge of having the time of our lives! It was the one week in the entire year that we had free reign. We were free to explore the mangrove swamps, caught crabs and fishes, learnt how to make guns improvised from rubber bands and sticks, raced each other through the forests and plucked sweet mangoes from the huge tree near the chalet. We learnt how to set fires and the young ignorant us even barbequed the crabs and clams that we caught just to see how they would react to the heat.
At night, we entertained ourselves playing black jack, lotto and nintendo while the adults chatted and played mahjong.
Mornings and evenings up in the chalet were the best time of the day as you could feel the peacefulness of the island, the lovely breeze that brings about the saltiness of the ocean and the fresh smell of the forest.
Many of us cousins still recall fondly our St John Island days as it gave us a short glimpse into our parents' kampung childhood and allowed us to experience nature. Credit has to be given to our parents who took the trouble to plan such trips and more importantly, gave us the free reign to roam free which would form such an important part of our childhood. These trips aren't expensive, neither are they luxurious but they form such precious memories that I will treasure forever.
