Day 373 - 29 Jun '24 - Kathmandu to Singapore. Today was the last of our 15 days in Nepal. We had seen Kathmandu, Bandipur, Pokhara, and Dhampus, experienced insane driving, lots of clouds, monsoon rains, and tasted some delicious Nepalese food.
The direction of travel we were taking on our trip, and time of year we were there, unfortunately meant we arrived in Nepal in monsoon season; no country is seen at its best on overcast or rainy days. The weather and the humidity meant we never really got to witness Nepal’s main feature - stunning landscapes of towering mountains. It just meant we would need to come back at a more hospitable season. And when the idea of a trek more strenuous than 45 minutes is something that Abi would tolerate!
We walked to Thamel around midday to get some food, and also look for a cheap knock-off waterproof jacket for Alex. There were loads to choose from, but they just didn’t fit him quite right, so didn’t buy anything. A shame, really, as the genuine stuff is massively overpriced!
After having some lunch at a cafe, we went to a wonderful oasis in the city called Garden of Dreams.
Originally built as a private garden for Kaiser Sumsher Rana in 1920, and used as such until his death in the mid-1960s, it was left to ruin for 30 years, before being painstakingly restored and opened to the public in 1998.
It was a beautiful space, but also very busy! There were hundreds of people walking around or sitting on seats or walls, relaxing in the late afternoon.
We walked back to our room and packed up, then, at 7:30pm, hopped in a couple of taxis to the airport; you read that right, a ‘couple’ of taxis. I’d had a bit of a drama ordering the taxi through an app. The first time I looked at cars, it called a driver, and I wasn’t able to cancel the order in time - he said he would wait the 10 minutes. When I used the app again, his car was no longer there, and it called a different driver. When we got to the road, we saw a taxi car, but it was the first driver! Then, the second driver turned up!! Talk about awkward…. But when we opened the boot, there was nowhere near enough space for all four of our rucksacks, so having both taxis there actually ended up rather fortuitous.
The airport departure area was incredibly busy, but it surprisingly didn’t take us too long to get through check-in. It seemed most of the people were only there to say goodbye.
Once we had our boarding passes, all passengers were obliged to watch their bags on the conveyor belt until they had passed through an X-ray machine, just to make sure there were no problems. While standing there waiting, Dan got chatting to an American lady, who randomly told us about the Singapore arrival cards we had to fill in three days prior to arrival!
“Crap!” I said when Dan told me. “That’s not good at all!”
I quickly jumped online and found out we had to fill them in within three days, including date of departure. Thank goodness! I downloaded the app and when we found some seats, filled in all our forms - easy. Phew!
We bought a couple of sandwiches and some crisps from a little shop, but while eating them I got a rather painful stomach twinge. Oh oh! To be honest, I’d been feeling a bit queasy since the taxi ride, but it had steadily got worse.
“I need to go to the toilet,” I murmured to Dan.
It was 9:20pm, and our plane left at 11:10pm. I went to the loo, and came back shortly afterwards.
“Just a fart,” I told Dan.
“Well, that’s good!”
“Oh…em…maybe not. I’m going back.”
It was then 9:30pm. At 9:45pm I stood up, then sat back down again. Not good. At 10pm I got a message from Dan saying I had better hurry up as boarding was going to start in 10 minutes.
Having a sore tummy was most definitely NOT what you want before boarding a plane! I made it back to the seats at 10:10pm, and we walked to the gate.
“Gotta go…”
For crying out loud!
Back in the queue once more, Dan asked how I was going.
“Pretty sure that’s everything now, but I’ll take some Imodium just in case! I’ve only got to make it past take-off.”
Fortunately, I was right in my guess, as the pains had gone and I had no more need for a toilet. The only thing I’d eaten since lunch at 2pm were some dried soybeans we got in Austria, and I’d eaten the other half of the packet two days ago. I had no idea what caused this stomach upset, but they were the most likely culprit.
Day 374 - 30 Jun '24 - Singapore. The flight was a constantly turbulent one - not anything to worry about, just constant. At times, the seatbelt signs came on, and twice, the cabin crew had to stop service and go to their seats.
We started the trip with the lights off. Brilliant, Dan and I thought: we’d get sleep for a few hours then our meal would be breakfast.
Wrong! By the time we got our food, it was 1:30am Kathmandu-time. Have you ever had any desire to eat chicken curry and pasta, pork and vegetable salad, a bread roll, and a mandarin juice jelly, at 1:30am?
Neither.
(Well, maybe if I’d been drinking, and that was the leftover food in the fridge…)
The lights were finally dimmed again at 2am, only for them to be turned on again at 3:30am, and we landed at 4am, which was 6:15am Singapore time. So, what was that, an hour-and-a-half sleep? At least the kids slept for most of it, even missing the food.
Immigration was a breeze: no queues, no forms to fill in, no passports to stamp. Just an electronic gate where you scanned your passport and then thumb, and that was that! So quick and efficient.
Two exits, one for ‘something to declare’ and one for ‘nothing to declare’ led to exactly the same place, and had no staff that we could see, and once through, we were outside and waiting for the taxi.
We checked into our hotel around 8am, closed the blinds, climbed into our beds, and slept until Dan’s klaxon alarm gave us a heart attack at 11am (he really needs to change that sound!). It was raining, so we waited an hour before walking to the nearest metro station with the intention of finding a shopping mall food court once we got off the train.
We never made it. While walking to the mall we came to a gluten free restaurant with the bizarre name of Cow and Farmer. It was an Indian organic restaurant that had millet noodles, buckwheat chapati, and many other gluten free options.
“It’s meant to be!” I said to Dan excitedly. “This is the place I’d found on the gluten free app! How crazy we just happened to walk right past it!”
Abi ordered the millet noodles with veges, which she would share with Alex, I ordered paneer bhaji, and Dan ordered an Indian thali set, which I would have some of.
Somewhere around my third or fourth mouthful I got the familiar throat itch and head shake of nuts. I’d asked the waiter if there were any nuts, and he assured me they would make a fresh batch of everything. I asked him again, and a third time, and was told repeatedly there were no nuts.
But my body told me differently.
“Perhaps it was some residual oil?” Dan thought.
“Something,” I agreed. “Maybe peanut oil on the bhaji? Or ground almonds in one of the sauces? Either way, I’m not eating any more.”
When everyone else had finished and we went outside to plan our afternoon, I started to feel rather unwell; my stomach was twisting and I felt a little nauseous. But, I was determined to see something this afternoon, so we walked to the Sri Veeramakaliamman temple that had a pyramidical tower covered in hundreds of colourful plaster statues!
The temple was one of the oldest in Singapore, and was dedicated to the goddess Kali, who was portrayed wearing a garland of skulls. Unfortunately it was closed, so we didn’t get to see inside.
We took a few photos, but I was feeling pretty crappy, so we flagged the idea of more sightseeing and caught a bus back towards the hotel.
We rested at the hotel for a couple of hours, then went back out to find some dinner. I admit not being particularly enthused about trying local food again so soon, so settled for good ole KFC.
Not that I was particularly enthused about eating that either!
Back at “Singapore’s best and largest budget hotel chain”, we got the kids into their bed at 9:15pm, which was later than we’d liked, but meant they should hopefully just go to sleep.
We’d find out tomorrow, on what level of ‘little shit’ they were in the morning!
Day 375 - 1 Jul '24 - Singapore. I looooooove blackout blinds.
“Did you know what the time was?” Dan suddenly blurted out.
“Wha…?” I said.
“10am!”
We had just slept 11 hours straight. Given the fact I was still sound asleep when Dan spoke, I clearly could have slept for longer. Even the kids were still asleep when I knocked on their door.
Today we went to the downtown waterfront. We bought some sushi triangles and chocolate milk from Seven-11, and then sat on a bench looking over the water to the Marina Bay Sands hotel, one of Singapore’s most recognised landmarks.
We felt a little awkward while eating our lunch, as we didn’t see anybody else eating, or drinking, anywhere.
“Are we allowed to eat here, do you think?” Dan asked me. “I don’t see anyone else eating, and it’s lunchtime.”
“I’ve got no idea!” I answered. “I don’t even see any rubbish bins. There’s no pigeons either!”
“That’s because there’s no food,” Alex pointed out.
We ate our lunch as quickly as possible, made sure to pick up every single bit of rice that fell, and carefully put our rubbish in a plastic bag until we found a bin.
It turned out that right around the corner where the Merlion statue was, there were two large public bins, and lots of people sitting around eating their lunch! Ha ha ha!
We walked around the bay and then across the Helix bridge; this was designed like a double helix, and on the ground were occasional C-T and A-G letters. I admit, it took me quite a while to put two and two together, as I initially couldn’t work out what the letters stood for!
At the other end of the bridge was a shopping plaza for the well-heeled. Even the children’s clothing shops were Dolce & Gabbana, Ralph Lauren, Armani, Gucci, and Versace (they also had Burberry, but everyone from Glasgow knows that only neds wear Burberry!). In the middle of the plaza was a fantastic hanging light display and colourful screens on the ground with whales and lizards.
We left the plaza, much to Abigail’s disgust, and carried on to the Gardens by the Bay. This was a massive complex of free garden areas as well as some ticketed places.
Our first garden was the Flower Dome, and we were pleasantly surprised to find out it was air-conditioned! Inside was an extensive display of succulents, trees, roses, edibles, and amazing wooden carvings.
We spent about an hour wandering around, with Abi taking approximately one million photos on Dan’s phone!
After the Flower Dome we went to the Cloud Forest, which housed the world’s tallest indoor waterfall.
This dome, also air-conditioned, had lots of orchids, ferns, and large-leaf greenery. We got a lift to the top of the dome, then slowly walked down a long winding pathway.
The two domes had turned the idea of greenhouses on its head; rather than tropical plants displayed in a cool environment, it was cool-growing plants displayed in a tropical one!
It was 5pm when we finished and there were still other areas of the Gardens to explore. We decided to hang around for the Supertrees to be lit up, which didn’t start until 7:45pm, rather than come back again tomorrow night.
CRACK! BOOM!
Oh my god, a flash of lightning and a thunder roll, directly above us. They were so loud, and instantaneous, and had given everyone a fright. The rain started to spit, then got a little heavier. While we were deciding where to find something to eat for dinner, it started to bucket down.
We sat at a burger joint and ordered Abi a lettuce burger - we would get something later. The rain got heavier still, the thunder and lightning carried on. We changed our minds and grabbed burgers and chips too!
It was almost an hour before the storm passed and we could leave our shelter. The burger joint would have made a killing!
The Supertree grove was incredible. Massive burgundy metallic trees with plants growing on the trunks, with a walkway between some of them and an observation deck at the top of one.
We found a picnic bench and sat down on it for about an hour, while the kids ran around a bit. We waited until the last moment to buy tickets for the observation deck, as they were non-refundable, and non-transferable, which we thought was a bit horrible. If they closed the deck due to rain or thunderstorms, then too bad, you lucked out, and would have to buy the tickets again for the next day.
At 7:45pm a music and light show started. I’d seen pictures online, so was quite excited. What a let-down! Only three of the trees would light up, one only partially. The music they played were segments from the musicals Cats, Chicago, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and more, but it all just seemed boring. For long sections of the music, NO trees would light up.
We stopped watching and went up the observation tree instead, and had a wonderful view over downtown Singapore at night. The Marina Bay Sands hotel was also lit up, and looked amazing.
Abi had a massive tantrum, stomped her feet, cried, and spent the time up the top nowhere near us.
“Why did we come up here? We were going to do the tree walk! Now we can’t even see the light show!”
“We’d decided to do the observation deck because we would get a better view and could stay up here as long as we liked. The tree walk we could only stay 15 minutes.”
Abi kept sobbing, and moved away. She was clearly tired. We all were.
We walked to another observation floor where we could walk around the outside of the tree, and overheard a message on the loud speakers below, that the 8:45pm light show had been cancelled due to the lights not working.
“Maybe that’s why the one we saw was so rubbish?” I wondered.
The 15 minute walk to the train station was conducted in two parties - Dan up ahead with Alex, and me dawdling behind Little Miss Tantrum. By the time we got on the train, she had calmed down enough to talk to us again.
It was shortly after 9pm when we arrived back at our rooms. We said goodnight to the kids, and then watched some Singaporean TV while Dan did some work and I read a book. Neither of us feel sleepy until almost midnight! I guess that’s the downside of having an 11-hour sleep the night before.
Day 376 - 2 Jul '24 - Singapore. Another 10am start after another 10 hour sleep! Today’s first sightseeing stop was the Sri Mariamman temple in downtown Singapore. The tower above the entrance was beautiful! The colours were so vibrant and striking, and there were again a large number of carvings all clambouring over one another.
This temple was open, so we took off our shoes and walked around inside for a while. At the back of the complex were some domes above the shrine area, also painted in bright colours. It must be a full time job making sure everything stayed so bright, and I wondered how often they got repainted.
Once we got out the temple, Dan asked what was next on the plan.
“Well, there was another temple like this one, but it doesn’t look any different really, maybe just bigger or older or smaller or whatever.”
“Okay,” he answered. “What else was on your list?”
“There was another temple…”
“I don’t want to go to another temple!” yelled Abi.
“We’ll do whatever mummy wants to,” replied Dan.
“As I was saying…there was another temple to go to in the Hokkien style, but since we’re going to China, there’s no real point in seeing it as we’ll see temples in China.”
“Yep.”
“So, off to the Gardens again to see the Flower Fantasy,”
“Okay, great.”
“But first…lunch!”
We grabbed some more sushi triangles from a Seven-11, then sat down by the waterfront to eat them. Something I have really loved about Singapore, was all the public art. Almost everywhere you looked, there were amazing bronze sculptures. One was even by Salvador Dali!
One of my favourite ones was a group of boys jumping into the river. It was a joyous moment frozen in time, even though the river was a fluorescent green…yuck.
We walked back to the Merlion park, then went on a pointless loop around a shopping mall, trying to find a non-existent bubble tea shop. We ended up going to two shopping plazas, where the only benefit was the air-conditioning, and still didn’t find bubble tea. Oh well, never mind! But…one of the shopping plazas had a river in it, that you could boat on!!
We carried on to the Gardens, sweltering in the humidity despite our umbrellas, taking occasional sips from our singular bottle of water. We had been rather surprised at the lack of drinking fountains.
We made it to an underpass, that also had a Seven-11 - thank god! In less than five minutes, we’d all finished our drinks. Not exactly fully rehydrated, but at least enough to subdue complaints (myself included), we bought our tickets for Flower Fantasy.
Inside was a combination of fresh, dried, and artificial flowers, that were turned into beautiful works of art. There were birds, a chicken, and an amazing red dragon that had wrapped itself around a tree.
Further in was a massive troll-like creature, with a colourful spray of flowers for hair!
There was also a wonderful water feature, with single line waterfalls positioned in random angles, one of which had been programmed to display a fan shape as the water fell!
At the end of the exhibits we sat in a 4D ‘flight of the dragonfly’ ride, which took us around the whole of the Gardens area. We’d been on some amazing 4D rides in Universal Studios and Disneyland, and unfortunately this one was a bit of a let-down. The video footage was at times rather blurry, and the seats were too close to the screen, so it was rather hard to focus and get the real effect.
Once it was over, we went to another part of the Gardens where there was a gigantic sculpture of a seven-month-old baby boy! He looked impossibly balanced on his fingers, which was a marvel of engineering, never mind the skill in the sculpting!
By that stage, Abi was yet again losing the plot with her usual foot stomping, “I’m not doing that” attitude and comments. It was almost 5pm so we went to Lau Pa Sat for dinner, a hawkers market that had been in operation for 130 years.
Inside was a crazy mix of noise and smells that bombarded the senses. So many people walking, talking, eating. So many different options to eat! I had a typical Singaporean dish of Hainanese chicken and rice, which was delicious. Dan had some Peking duck, which was also delicious. Abi had a pick-your-own steamed vegetables and noodles, and Alex had dumplings then a prawn and noodle soup. Each meal was between $6-9NZD! Fantastic!!
After dinner we went back to the hotel so the kids (and us) could get an early sleep. At least, that was the plan. It was just past 10pm when Dan asked me where Alex’s Nintendo was.
“Isn’t it down by the bed? He was charging it this morning.”
“It’s not there now, he must have taken it to his room.”
“He can’t have! They were barely in here this morning.”
“It’s not here though.”
“They were only in here for a couple of minutes this morning, and went straight to their room when we got back. He couldn’t possibly have it. If it’s not here, it must have been taken.”
“It won’t have been taken.”
“Well, you’ll need to go and wake him up to check.”
“I’m not waking him up!”
“It’s either wake him up or go and ask reception for another key.”
“That won’t work because they’ve locked the door.”
“Well! Go and wake him up!”
One minute later, Dan returned.
“F*cking little shit! He had his Nintendo. AND he’s been playing on it, FOR THREE HOURS!”
“But that means he’s been playing on it since we said goodnight until now! It’s only been three hours!”
“Yep. They just cannot be trusted.”
“At least it wasn’t stolen…”
Day 377 - 3 Jul '24 - Singapore to New Zealand. On 1 May, while in Ankara in Turkey, we received some terrible news from home; my father had been diagnosed in February with stage four lung cancer. He had started chemotherapy and immunotherapy the day he called us, but it was just for palliative reasons. We were told by my parents that the oncologist wouldn’t say how long he had left, but a stage four diagnosis is never good, and a quick internet search on the five-year survival rate was instantly sobering.
After many discussions between Dan and I, we booked tickets back to New Zealand for a three-week visit, for us to spend time with him while he was still ‘fit and healthy’. We were under strict instructions not to cancel our world trip, and dad was actually not happy about us even coming back for a visit, but he was mollified by the fact we had other things we needed to do at the time, and that we would be leaving again.
The news from home really reinforced the reason we were doing this trip in the first place - you never know how much time you’ve got, or when you will get blindsided by the unexpected.
Our alarm was set for 4:45am. By the time it went off, Dan and I had had about three hours’ sleep. Both our minds were whirring with, well, too many things to list here! And every time we seemed about to drift off, we’d hear some noise from neighbours in the hallway. The rooms were lovely and quiet, but for some reason the door was made of what could only have been tissue paper.
No matter! We got a taxi at 5:30am, and once we’d checked in our bags and ourselves at the self-service counters, spent the next three hours wandering around Changi airport.
It is a tremendous place to spend some time - it’s seriously ginormous, with stunning gardens dotted around their three terminals, all connected by skytrains.
They even have a butterfly garden! We went there first before breakfast, but it was still dark and the butterflies were still asleep, so we popped in again once the sun had come up.
We got on the plane and were met by flight attendants that can only be described as pensioners. I’m not exaggerating. The youngest person I saw was at least 55, and the eldest looked around 85 if she was a day. Their weights (and I hate to say this) also caused half of them to have to walk down the aisles in an angled fashion, bumping into passengers rather frequently.
Their service was also a huge letdown. The ‘English’ that was spoken was at times dreadful. “Yous” was a frequent word used, as in “if yous want a drink”. The person reading out the menu made so many mistakes it wasn’t funny. Actually, it was funny.
For some strange reason, even though it was a daytime flight (both in Singapore and New Zealand) they turned all the lights off! They were also still going on about covid-19 (even though the rest of the world has moved on), and how they couldn’t have the used trays in the same place as the unused, so please don’t return the trays.
Out of all the flights we’ve taken in the last year, the service from Air New Zealand has got to be the worst out of the major airlines, and an embarrassment. They were not efficient in the slightest, often making multiple trips up and down the aisles carrying two or three trays back and forth.
But, to give them their dues, they were the only airline to hand out sucky sweeties as the plane descended.
When we landed, we were met with the sloooowest luggage arrival yet. We stood at the carousel for 20 minutes waiting, watching the same 24 bags go round and round and round. Eventually there was a message on the loudspeaker saying there had been a technical difficulty.
“With what?” I muttered to Dan. “The carousel is working fine! Maybe the technical difficulty was the man loading it having a break?”
After our luggage collection was the rigmarole of bio security. We have been in 38 countries, and New Zealand is the only one that has asked and checked what goods we have.
We’d declared the gluten free pasta and porridge oats, as well as the tea bags, tin of tuna, and some muesli bars. Then we met with stupidity.
“You declared that you’d been in wilderness with hiking boots.”
“Yes, we were on a safari in Tanzania and have been in Nepal.”
“I need to check your boots.”
“Sure. We’ve just been to Singapore for four days, so they’re pretty clean having been walking around a city.”
“There’s an outbreak of Foot and Mouth…”
“In Singapore?!”
“Yes, in Indonesia.”
“Singapore isn’t in Indonesia.”
“The Foot and Mouth disease is in Singapore and Indonesia, and your shoe has a bit of dirt in it, so will need to be cleaned. Go to queue number three.”
For the love of god.
“Why are we going to this part?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know. New Zealand is just being ridiculous, like usual. We haven’t been to any farms, we’ve walked around a city for four days, and there’s no Foot and Mouth in Singapore!”
Right at that moment, another bio security officer came up to us and asked us all the same questions again: what food we’d brought in, where we’d been, to look at our shoes. She seemed satisfied with our answers and scooted us to the front of the X-ray queue, and said she didn’t see the need for us to wait in the long queue.
I can only assume it’s because we had children.
Or perhaps the thunderous look in my eyes.
(Probably just the children).
We’d gone from 30°C and 80% humidity yesterday, to just 7°C today. We’d packed our jumpers in our carry-on bags, so they were quickly put on before we walked outside.
We got our taxi, which had been another experience in ridiculousness. Dan had booked one while in Singapore for $45NZD, then got an email saying we couldn’t have a car because we had four bags, so needed to have a van. He’d replied saying we didn’t need a van, just a large sedan, but they spouted some health and safety bullshit and cancelled the booking! Dan found another guy who would take us for $65NZD, which in incidentally turned out to be…a minivan! Ha ha ha!
Still, $65 was a helluva lot cheaper than the $160 one guy quoted. For a 25 minute drive.
And so, we got to our motel, with nobody in reception. We called the after hours number, and the lady couldn’t find our booking, asked if we were at the right address, didn’t want our booking number, and told us to wait outside. In the cold.
She arrived about 10 minutes later, and once we were inside in the reception, she went back outside to the lockbox to retrieve our key, then gave it to us. I’m no genius, but I’m pretty sure they could have emailed us the lockbox code, like EVERY OTHER PLACE WE’VE STAYED IN FOR THE LAST YEAR!
Welcome back to New Zealand!
And with that, I will sign off for the next three weeks.
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