My pulse is racing as I am blobbing up and down the swimming pool in between star jumps and frantic splashes of water. My fellow classmates and I scream in glee as we try to synchronise our moves to our instructor. The cheerful beats of Korean and Thai disco music betrays the stately grandeur of the colonial building in our midst.
I am attending an aqua zumba session, one of the many wellness activities offered during my recent stay at Oasia Resort Sentosa, which turns one this month. The 191-room hotel, by Far East Hospitality, has a strong wellness focus — it boasts the hotel group’s first in-house spa and hosts a thoughtfully curated buffet of wellness and recreational activities that look like they came straight from the pages of Breathe Magazine.
The Imbiah or Wellness Sanctuary wing, housed in the heritage building, offers guests a daily roster of recreational activities. They range from yoga, aqua zumba to lip balm and bath-bomb making workshops. On selected weekends, the hotel also conducts talks and activities on a diverse range of topics, from nutrition, mindful tea-drinking, beginner calisthenics to calligraphy.
During a recent stay, I was put up in the junior suite in the Wellness Sanctuary wing, which was a former barracks block that was built in the 1940s for recreational activities by the British military.
Also on the itinerary was a day retreat at the Oasia Spa and a bevy of wellness activities throughout the hotel which made me feel less guilty about piling on the calories during meal times.
There is something different about a hotel that is big on wellness — dining options in the hotel are limited to one restaurant (Bedrock Origin), there are no extravagant buffet lines and in-room dining service ends at 9.30pm (which means no late-night bingeing). In the room, there is no welcome platter of cake or macarons, but coconut water and wholesome snacks from Asmara, The Whole Kitchen and Amazin’ Graze take their place.
During the hotel’s a la carte breakfast served at Bedrock Origin, a number of guests were milling about in athleisure gear — probably en route to a yoga session or the hotel gym.
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With a hive of wellness activities going on in the hotel, having prolonged periods of me-time in the hotel room can be quite a challenge. This is quite a waste, given that the suite is relaxingly cosy. The Junior Suite, which is big enough for a family of four, has a living room with a sofa bed, on top of a king-sized bed area and a bathroom.
The loftiness of the room is accentuated by the ventilation grills on the walls. A slice of history is also kept intact as the room’s original wooden doors are retained albeit with a fresh coat of grey paint.
The suite’s most prized asset is the expansive floor-to-ceiling window that covers the entire verandah. A ceiling fan is added for a touch of colonial aesthetics, but isn’t necessary as the room is cold enough.
From the window, one gets a vantage point of the distant city skyline and the attractions around the Imbiah monorail station, including the upcoming Sentosa Sensoryscape, an experiential sensory public park that took over the Merlion’s spot and is slated to be completed by this year.
The windows are fitted with automated blinds and curtains that can be drawn at a touch of a button — to a much dramatic effect. If you value your privacy, drawing these blinds is vital as the room, which is on the second level of the building, can be peeked into by curious passers-by along the main road or by passengers in the monorail that wheezes by every few minutes.
Inside the wood-heavy rooms, there is ample space in front of the room’s two smart television screens to hit the ground for workout routines. The televisions come with on-demand self-meditation and yoga video programmes. If those aren’t up your alley, you can borrow ipads loaded with Les Mills fitness videos to prance and punch in the privacy of the room, complete with Lululemon yoga mats.
The king-sized bed is smaller than what is offered by hotels of similar stature, though the size here is constricted by the space in the verandah that it occupies. The mattress is on the firm side, which is great for back support, but not so much if you’re craving for that sinking marshmallow-soft sensation.
What’s royally big though is the brown marble-cladded bathroom, which comes with a spacious free-standing bathtub, rainforest shower compartment and toilet.
After a hearty breakfast of chorizo chickpea stew, bacon, potatoes and sourdough bread at Bedrock Origin, it was time for a workout of a different kind — a three-hour-long Day Retreat at the Oasia Spa. Things got on to a warm start (79 degree Celsius to be exact) in the wood-laden sauna, before the 90-minute massage session commenced.
It starts with customising the body scrub that would be slathered on my body. I concocted a blend of sugar and Himalayan sea salt, which have cleansing and skin exfoliation qualities, before adding spoonfuls of oats, which help moisturise the skin. I round out the concoction with essential oils, matcha powder and rose petals. (It looked like a breakfast muesli bowl at some point.)
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The full-body massage started with an invigorating scrub-down with the body scrub that I had concocted. After incessant brushes, my body is well-oiled and redolent of matcha and lemongrass. I am (finally) ready for my massage, which is the pièce de résistance of the spa’s day retreat.
Using a mix of Shiatsu, Thai and Indian massage techniques, the masseuse managed to ease up one too many knots dotted throughout my tight shoulders and lower back. The intense massage ended in a light slumber as she applied the hypnotic Indian head massage techniques on my scalp.
The spa retreat concludes with a three-course lunch from the spa’s day retreat menu (nothing deep-fried!) that comprises oven-baked barramundi with macerated tomatoes, sweet soy tempeh salad and a nutty chocolate cake.
Having a schedule packed with wellness activities means that I am more mindful of my sleeping time. Instead of binge-watching, I turn in earlier so that I could squeeze in a morning jog along the tranquil Siloso beach before breakfast, and a swim in between my wellness activities, which included an Inside Flow yoga session that tested the limits of my stretching ability.
A lot of effort has been put in by the hotel to create a more wholesome stay for guests at Oasia Sentosa Resort. And it pays off — I usually leave staycations feeling a tad bloated from overindulging at the breakfast buffet or sleep-deprived from watching too many movies on HBO. However, for once, I left a staycation feeling refreshed and energised.
Find out more: Oasia Sentosa Resort
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