Kings Night Celebrations in Amsterdam!

Last weekend myself, Trig and a friend, Chris, decided on a whim to drive to Amsterdam to catch their Kings Day weekend celebrations.

Kings Day as the name suggests, celebrates the monarchy. Amsterdam celebrated King’s Day (Koningsdag) for the first time in 2014, after the inauguration of King Willem-Alexander on 30 April 2013 (what was then still Queen’s Day).

One of the best and most striking things about Kings Day is that everyone wears orange as a show of pride for the Royal family.  The streets are absolutely filled with the colour and everything and everywhere becomes a street party.

We arrived on the Saturday night at 1am, having underestimated driving time and completely overlooking the hour time change from London to the Netherlands. I'd booked us to stay in an airbnb at the last minute for around £40 each for two nights - outstanding value, since even shared dorm rooms were around £50 per person per night. We found a host called Paul,who owned a canal boat with a sailing boat next to it, that was to become our home for the next two days. I must admit, at first I worried that the three of us would not fit into it, especially since Trig is so tall. But it was loads bigger on the inside! 

The boat itself was warm, had facilities, a kettle, a little cabin double bed and a third bed. It was really comfortable, if a little amusing trying to climb on and off of. We used the main boat for showers etc and it really was no bother at all, we also made friends with his really funny boat cats. Paul was the coolest guy ever and stayed up with us till the early hours supplying us with beer! His friend Ezther was great fun, too. I retired at around 4am and the boys followed at 6, a little worse for wear the next morning.

Sunday was the actual Kings Night celebrations which meant everyone was in high spirits everywhere. I'd never been to Amsterdam before, so it was nice to explore the city in the day. 

We then randomly bumped into an old friend from Peterborough, Marco, who had moved to Amsterdam the year before. It really is a small world! Marco arranged to meet us that night and took us to some cool street parties and bars. We invited Paul and Ezther too, who joined us and celebrated with us.

Sadly we had to drive back on the Monday, which was the actual 'Kings Day' itself. Being in the festival mode I think we were all a bit sad about this, but commitments dictated otherwise. Next year we'll stay for the whole party!

Exploring Wales, Cardiff and the Valleys!

It is a little known secret that whilst I am a self proclaimed city girl through and through, I actually do love a good dose of the old country air from time to time. I also love the Welsh accent, though until now, I'd never been there. That's why when my good friend Andy said he was heading to Wales for a few days, I gratefully accepted the invitation to run around some castles, breathe in the valley air and check out the famous capital city and what it all had to offer.


Cardiff


Apparently, Cardiff was voted by Europeans last year as the best city to live in, and after spending just three days there, I can see why. Cardiff reminds me of a mixture of some of my favourite cities in the world. For me, a great capital city is not necessarily the biggest or most cosmopolitan, like London, Paris or New York. I'm comfortable being just a tourist in those places. I get the buzz out of being in a fast paced space and then at the end of it, retiring in a smaller pond, comfortable that I can walk outside and see people that I know. I'm happy in the medium of having the amenities of a city, yet still have that sense of familiarity and community.

That's the main reason I liked Cardiff. It's not often that you find a capital city where you can walk from one end to the other in a few hours, yet find so much going on in between. Exploring the city kind of made me feel like I was being hugged by an old friend. The beautiful architecture is reminiscent to me of Prague or Cambridge and it's archaic buildings, mixed up alongside new and innovative spaces. You get a balance of green spaces and nature, so you can run away to the hills, or be an urbanite in the centre, whatever takes your fancy. It's also really cheap living for a capital city. The shopping there seemed on a par to any other large cities, and the bars and restaurants were frequent and plentiful. Basically, Cardiff seems to have struck a perfect balance.

You can also tell a lot about a city by it's people. The friendly and warming nature of the people I met there reminded me quite a lot of the warm welcome I received in Dublin, where people will open their doors to you, buy you a drink, and take a real interest in who you are.

Despite my comparisons, Cardiff doesn't appear to be emulating anyone else's game, or following the lead of other places in order to generate a tourist trade. She seems confident in herself, with plenty of secrets and hidden spaces, and lots of imaginative and unique elements in the city design and the way she interacts with her people. By far my favourite space was Cardiff Bay, which transported me into a peaceful mood, where I could quite easily imagine myself sitting and contemplating life for hours.

View at night time of Cardiff Bay, the home of Dr Who 

We visited Andy's favourite bar there, Porters, twice in three days and I could sense why it felt like home to him. We saw a jazz band, I met some great new people, and explored the city centre in the rain. Not that the weather mattered, I was enamoured enough that I wouldn't have traded it for a day in the sun in a heartbeat.


We left on a big match day where everyone had come out to celebrate Wales vs Ireland in the Rugby. Everyone was in such high spirits!












The Valleys & Caerphilly 

We explored a few different areas in the valleys, which I found fascinating. Each one was a different size, and had a different personality. The view was also breath taking. I loved the thatched roof pubs with roaring fireplaces, the small village shops with quirky names (we found one called 'the nicest shop in the world' - i'm not making that up). We also witnessed a Welsh pub brawl between a landlady and her cook!

Lots of the villages have an interesting historic background, if you dig deep enough. Llangynwyd is known for the legend of Anne Maddocks, a young maid who fell in love with a man called Will Hopkin, but was forced to marry someone else. Her true love was sent away, and she died pining for him. Legend has it she requested to see him on her death bed, and when he arrived she died promptly in his arms. She was buried here, so we went on an adventure looking for her.

Caerphilly was probably one of my favourite highlights. It's stunningly beautiful and the town itself is wrapped around it's historic castle, which sits proudly as a centrepiece. I'm quite outdoorsy at heart, I used to love climbing on rocks and running around outside as a little girl, so exploring the castle was great fun. We learnt a bit about the history - of which spans hundreds of years, and many occupants. I found a spot overlooking the lake and just breathed in the valley air. It was one of those moments where everything just felt serene and beautiful, and nothing else really mattered too much. Taking the time to stop sometimes is really the best thing you can do.

Overall, Wales completely won my heart!

Alice x

Alice's Adventures in Thailand

Thailand has always been a dream destination for me, and before I went, I could only imagine what it might be like through postcards with photos of beaches and paradise. I've blogged quite a bit about my travels through Asia recently, but I've not yet shared my thoughts on Thailand, where we spent 2 and a half weeks of our holiday. Now here's the practical bit, price wise, we discovered that if you book through agoda.com on a Friday you get huge discounts, so we did that and stayed in 4 star hotels for a fraction of the price. They seemed even better than my usual go to site whilst travelling which is almost always airbnb.com. You really can live like a King on next to nothing if you do it right! For internal flights, go with Thai Airways  or Airasia, they seem to do the best deals.

How did I feel about Thailand? Well we can't say we didn't cover some ground, having spent time in the east, west and north and finally landing ourselves in Bangkok, the capital. We did have some wonderful times there, the most magical thing about it being that we had crossed paths with one of my oldest best friends in Kuala Lumper (there's a post about this here) and subsequently, she and her brother changed their plans to travel on with us. But in all honestly, Thailand didn't quite live up to the utopia it was in my mind, and whilst we had some good times, we actually had some really awful experiences there as well. Here is the breakdown of the different areas.

Ko Samui / Koh Phangnan

We started off exploring the little islands on the east side of Thailand. After a very long journey, and a mix up at our hotel (whoever it was staying there before us had decided to extend their stay and not tell people) so we decided to give up the ghost on exploring for that evening and instead stop at a little restaurant nearby called 'Orgasmic'. It sounded cheesy, but needless to say, we ended up with champagne overlooking the beach and some really amazing seafood. It was one of those moments where you realise you are exactly where you're meant to be at that precise moment.

Exploring Ko Samui was great fun. We rented a scooter for the first time, and after a wobbly start, drove almost right round the island. We nicknamed the little bike 'Ron' - and Ron really did do us a great service. In all honestly, with the local standard of driving I did fear for my life a few times, but Trig was surprisingly good at controlling the bike, even though neither of us drive at home. After our expedition we explored some of the local stalls and shops and spoke to the locals. I can't fault Ko Samui for it's beauty.

We chose to stop at Koh Phangnan next to experience the Full Moon Party. Koh Phangnan is a bigger island than we ever realised, and we were staying at nice little beach hut on the other side of the island. Not to worry though, they loaded us up with rum buckets and we sat on a 'song thaew', a converted pick up truck, that they filled to them brim with people, the unlucky ones standing up and hanging off the back of the car. We were going pretty much downhill the whole way at a crazy speed, but we all survived the journey!

We then met up with our friends from England. A few more rum buckets later, and all the advice we had been given about staying safe, and about how tourists are targets just became a distant memory, I am ashamed to say. The last thing I remember is dancing on a stage, and then suddenly I was in a taxi home without Trig. Piecing the bits together the next day, I had wandered to try and find my taxi ride home (which we'd already paid for) and ended up being taken to a cash machine in a taxi, paying two men and a taxi driver way over the odds, who told me the rest of my journey was paid for. It sounds completely irresponsible to get into a cab with strangers, but it seemed commonplace for taxi drivers take an address from each person and put strangers in the back of their cars together. I was then put into his friends taxi, who demanded more money and tried to scare me. Trig on the other hand, woke up on the beach being kicked by strangers. It could have been so much worse.  If anyone warns you about a Full Moon Party as a tourist, from what we've learnt, its not an exaggeration. It is a vipers nest, we heard stories of people being drugged and having all their belongings stolen, or seriously hurt, or worse. Obviously we had just had too much to drink and a few opportunists decided to fleece me for a bit of money, but we were fine. We just kicked ourselves afterwards for losing each other.

We spent the next few days chilling out and trying to lose our hangovers, before heading to the West coast islands.



Phuket

Our journey to Phuket on a private transfer was supposed to take 6 hours by bus and boat, BUT in actual fact took 14. We were taken onto a bus after leaving the boat, which stopped again shortly after picking us up by a roadside cafe, where we had to wait for four hours for a transfer. During this time, they tried to convince us to pay significantly more money before they took us on our way. When we refused, they took us to a public bus, which confirmed that we'd been well and truly duped. We were with two Australians who needed to catch a flight from Phuket, and we felt so sorry for them! Phuket itself was OK, though my card got cloned, so my memories there aren't necessarily the best. We felt threatened by some of the local lady workers who were quite aggressive with us, and decided to stick to a safe looking bar. A woman approached Trig and asked him to play a board game with her. Trig being the big kid he is played along, as he always sees the best in people, but I knew something was up, and asked him to stop. Turns out the same woman did that afterwards to an Irish man we met, who then was threatened with a hammer when he didn't hand over his cash to a man working with her. So far Thailand was teaching me to be very, very on guard.

Koh Phi Phi

We took a day tour out to Koh Phi Phi and this was truly the most stunning part of our whole time in Thailand. Koh Phi Phi is famously where they filmed 'The Beach', starring Leonardo Di'Caprio. We chilled out in the sun, did a bit of snorkelling and had some lunch, before a storm decided to hit. Getting on and off one of the little boats to the main ship was the biggest challenge!

Chiang Mai

On our first night in Chiang Mai, we rocked up to our hostel, and met a really friendly lady-boy who ran the establishment. She gave us some great tips on where to go out, and after a frustrating amount of time on the phone trying to resolve my card cloning issues, we headed out for some food and to one of the bars she recommended.

The bar we went to was called 'Zoe in Yellow', a really cute little establishment all lit up by tiki lights. The night started to pick up, when we bumped into the hotel manager again. She bought myself and Jon (my friends brother) a drink, and we returned the favour. Julia wasn't feeling the night, so Trig offered to walk her home. What happened next was indescribable really. I went into a complete blackout, and I was alone in a city in Thailand, 20 minutes walk from home, with no comprehension of how to even function. Now I am never the type of girl to get drunk and not accept responsibility. I am convinced I was spiked, because I've never ever experienced such a thing before in my life, and I hadn't really been drinking that evening. I was completely lost, and completely vulnerable. Trig spent the rest of the night being propositioned by the manager of the hotel who wouldn't leave him alone. Luckily, I was alright in the end. I may not have been though, and the whole experience shook me to my core.

For the next few days, I was incredibly ill. We had booked a trek to see the elephants, but I really shouldn't have attempted it! I pulled myself together and convinced myself I could go, despite still being quite ill 3 days later.

If you ever visit Chiang Mai and go to see the elephants, please visit a humane place, like the Elephant Sanctuary. You have to book in advance of your visit but the majority of the tourist targeted places are cruel to their elephants. If I had understood this beforehand, I wouldn't have gone. The Mahoot who was 'driving' our elephant kept hitting the elephant with his hook, and even drew blood at one point. The elephant seemed to spend the rest of his time tied to something. Afterwards I researched it, and it turns out the procedure for training an elephant literally translates to 'breaking his spirit'. They are taken away from their mothers at a young age mistreated, beaten, and starved so that they as wild animals learn how to respect and listen to their trainers. For more information on this, PETA explains it well here. I don't think I've ever felt so guilty in my life.

After this, we visited a local village tribe, where everyone embarked on a trek to a jungle waterfall. I unfortunately was still very ill, so I stayed behind with the villagers. We obviously couldn't communicate with each other verbally, but I actually felt really at peace lying on one of the surfaces of what seemed like the local meeting point / wooden hut. One of the local men shook some lychee down from a tree and opened them up to give his children some fruit, which they all shared with me. They all sat around talking for hours, and it made me think about how far removed we can be in the western world from simple pleasures like this. I don't think I can remember the last time I sat around and just talked to my neighbours for hours.

Bangkok

Our last and final stop was the big city itself. I was probably the most excited about Bangkok because I had heard so much about the crazy lifestyle. As a group, we did some sightseeing, but the explorers in us quite frankly were a bit knackered by this point, so we instead decided to spend our last few days checking out the night time activity, as that does seem to be what Bangkok is known for. We got lost in chinatown, and invited into more than enough dodgy back alley bars (no thanks!)



Highlights were seeing a thai boxing match, visiting the poshest cinema ever, where we got to lie on beds, and were given a gourmet buffet, and silly tuktuk rides complete with 80's dance classics. All in all, Thailand was a good mixture of good and bad adventures, none of which I will be forgetting any time soon!

Have you ever been to Thailand? What did you think? x

New Blog Design! And Brighton adventures..

So I've decided to streamline my blog by adding pages along the top bar to separate out my posts, seeing as I blog about various topics. I'd love to know what you think!

I happened to come across an amazing blog designer on Twitter called Trisarahtops Smiles, who did me a swift re-design for £20!! I'm so happy with it - it's pretty much exactly what I wanted and she managed to work that out without much prompting from me either, which must either make her a psychic or a genius. Anyway, I would recommend you check her out - not only did she do a fab design, she also installed it for me too.

In other news, lately I've been doing a bit of travelling for work across the Country, which has enabled me to catch up with a few friends whilst I'm off the clock! Last week I covered Norwich,  Cambridge and London all over the space of four days so it was certainly an adventure. I also popped over to Brighton in between all of this for fun to see my friend Nansi, after I managed to get a cheap bus ticket on the National Express. We've been cooking up a madcap business idea that I hope to be sharing with you in the near future, which we're both very excited about. Hint; if you're a dog lover you might love this!

Anyway with business planning comes the need for creative prompts, and by creative prompts, I actually mean prosecco. We may have had some prosecco.

I helpfully forgot my ID and it turns out they ID check everyone in Brighton, so we slunk into a bar in the early evening with a lady on the door who took pity on me, and could clearly see I wasn't a teeny bopper trying to sneak in. I cheerfully ordered us a bottle of wine, and they looked a bit shocked to be honest (perhaps that doesn't happen often) and ushered us into our own booth.

Unfortunately, said bottle of wine turned out to be the worst thing we had ever tasted on earth to date, (here is me looking very sad about having to drink the offending article).

So this is where we decided to up our game and splash out on some bubbles. This practically in-sighted a fanfare from the staff, who asked us three times if we were sure we wanted it, and that we generally understood it was £35. We re-assured them repeatedly that we were okay with this, so they brought the much anticipated bubbles out with sparklers, which was good fun.

Anyway - one thing led to another and we may have accidentally ordered a third one. I can't help  but think that this decision may have affected the business planning talk somewhat.

Still, it's always nice to catch up with friends! Even if that does mean a slight headache the next day :)

Alice x

Kuala Lumpur - Unexpected Adventures

It's been quite a few weeks now since I returned from my little stint around Asia, and the all too familiar nostalgic sense of what already feels like some sort of past life carefree adventure has already piqued my deep set desire to explore the world even more. In other words, I'm itching to get out of here, but my worldly responsibilities and the voice of reason in my head reminding me that I have a tax bill to pay by the end of the month has thus far stopped me from booking some new flights. It's all far too easy when you know how to get them on the cheap! But enough about my desires for new adventures. I've yet to update properly on the last one!

Kuala Lumpur was only ever meant to be a three day stop, but it ended up being so much more. It was our crossover point between Singapore and Thailand that would be 'kind of nice to see' on the way to our island hopping adventures, but what I didn't realise when we were planning was just quite how much I would fall in love with Malaysia in such a short space of time. This has resulted in me promoting it to near the top of my travel list, in order to explore surrounding areas and Borneo too.

 We opted for an Airbnb and rented a really luxurious apartment in a condo, which barely cost us anything. One of the best things about it was its incredible view infinity pool, which was on my list of things to tick off as we traversed through a number of hotels across Asia.

Kuala Lumpur is a city undergoing a lot of regeneration, and never have I quite been in a place which looks so destitute on one street and so cosmopolitan on the next. We met a lovely man called Colin in (our new favourite) bar in Istanbul, who told us we needed to visit an Irish pub in KL called 'The Green Man'. He told us a story about the owner, a Scottish man who had been offered millions to give up the pub because they wanted to regenerate the area, but refused to budge. So effectively his little run down Irish bar was surrounded by swanky venues. It sounded perfect for us as we love little bars with character! More about this later.

The first thing that we discovered really was that the food in KL is incredible, if not a little too deep fried after a while. There aren't many vegetables in sight, but if you're only there for a few days a little indulgence isn't a bad thing! We stumbled across a restaurant called 'Opium' in a plethora of classy establishments along the lit up, newly renovated side of the city, and it ended up quite possibly being one of the best places we have ever eaten in. I'm never one to go into too much detail about food in writing, I believe you have to taste it to believe it, but you'll just have to take my word for it on this one. We ordered food of a Chinese/Malaysian fusion menu that just completely blew our little minds. Drinking beer out of a bowl also amused us greatly.

What followed this was probably some of the most 'random' and 'spontaneous' days of my life to date.  We started off by looking for this 'Green Man' establishment that Colin had told us about. We found it, but there was no sign of a Scottish man in sight, so we wandered further up the road to see what we could see.

Settling at a bar, I noticed there was a Scottish man sitting on a bar stool next to us and struck up a conversation. We'd come all this way, so I had to know if it was him! Turns out it wasn't, but he ended up telling us about his huge multi million pound water project that he was running for Shell. His name was George and he was such an interesting man, it ended up being one of those encounters that we'll probably never forget. He wiped our bar tab (despite my protests) and had the sambuca and rum on a constant supply from the bar whilst we chatted about our lives, his project, our lives in England, his family in Scotland, and his life in Malaysia. It was fascinating.

The next day, feeling a little worse for wear, we booked a tour to visit some of the local sights. Our tour guide took us to the Batu Caves, a local sacred beautiful temple. On the journey up the steps (which believe me, was not easy considering the amount of rum we had consumed the night before) we encountered quite a few monkeys, who were not shy creatures. One tried to steal my bag! We were warned that they were vicious and prone to attack, and I don't think I've ever run up so many steps that quickly before in my life.









Inside the Batu Caves, I felt really peaceful. Our tour guide really kindly took us to a few other temples on the way to our next stop, and the intricacy in their architecture was just completely stunning.





















Luckily we had a tour arranged for the evening, and met some much more friendly silver backed monkeys at that one who were more than happy to make friends in exchange for a banana or two.

Later that evening, we went on a boat ride alongside a river which was surrounded by fireflies. It was pretty magical!

The next day we visited a converted Helipad bar to try and catch the sunset. We missed it, sadly, but struck up a conversation with two really lovely people. Andrea was visiting her friend Souna from Chaing Mai, and Souna was a local who had lived in KL for the past 6 months. Our conversations ended in Souna offering to show us some local secrets, which we gladly took him up on! He took us to see some dancing lights and a water show in KL, and showed us a great spot in front of the absolutely stunning Twin Towers where we could get a picture.

By a stroke of complete luck and synchronicity, it turned out that one of my best friends from the UK and her brother had travelled to KL at the exact same time as us, on a pre adventure stop before moving to Australia for the year. We'd told them to meet us at The Green Man, and Souna and Andrea offered to walk us there. On the way, we bumped into a group of Irish people who were a bit lost and were heading a a bar right next to the Green Man, so we offered to walk with them. You can probably imagine what happened next. I'll blame it on being half Irish! Now this may be generalising, but it is widely known that the Irish, like the Scots, can really drink. The problem with KL, and equally the great thing about KL, is that the drinks are actually very reasonable. Having travelled from Singapore, where the drinks cost us the price of a small mortgage, we were really ready to take advantage of cheap beer. Julia and John joined us later and we ended up sharing travelling stories as a big group, laughing lots and just making some great new friends. They had to catch a flight at 6am the next morning - we were praying for them!

We never did find the Scottish owner of The Green Man, but thanks to Colin, we met some amazing people and created the best memories in Kuala Lumpur!

A Week in Singapore

It has always been on my dream travel list to go to Singapore. I had a friend at university who used to live there and seeing her photos was enough - but something about the small, relatively new little Country has always intrigued me. We managed to score plane tickets to Singapore (via Istanbul) and back from Bangkok for £490 each, which is unbelievably good, through the wonderful STA travel.

Singapore was therefore our first stop on our recent Asia 'tour' - we opted to spend almost a week there to recover from the jet lag and get our bearings properly. Because the Country is quite small, this allowed us plenty of time to get to know the different areas within it well. 

All I can say is - Singapore didn't disappoint. We spent the first few days exploring Chinatown, Little India, Downtown, and discovered the wonderful drinking district of Clarke Quay. We also met up with Trig's friend Theresa who lives out there (I swear he knows someone everywhere in the world!) who gave us a great local tour of street food places and took us to the best view in Singapore at the Sky Bar, and we visited the nicest little haunts. Local secrets are always great. I will say that Singapore isn't the cheapest, a few drinks in Clarke Quay can set you back a bit - roughly £9 a pint, but the atmosphere is great and if you can get past that, it's a great place to party. We saved money by drinking 2 for 1's during happy hour, between 8-10pm, although this seemed to vary right up till 2am in some places, which made it a little more bearable on the bank balance!

We learnt a lot about the way Singapore has been built and has become prosperous whilst we were there. You could really see the difference between the financial district, where Theresa informed us that the average wage was around 13k (£6000) per month, and in some of the poorer areas, where there was no minimum wage. We met a new friend in our favourite Chinatown bar (which had nothing to do with it being called 'Knobs and Knockers') who informed us that in many places in Singapore didn't have employment rights for the worker, which he knew from experience working on a market stall in Chinatown. Poverty seemed to be relatively hidden, but it seemed that there was a disparate and vast disconnection between the working class and the prosperous. It was interesting to glimpse at the two very different ends of the scale.

Another highlight was definitely the 'Alive' museum - which puts you in various different scenarios. We spent a really great afternoon here in fits of giggles.

We stayed in an Airbnb off the beaten track, which saved us lots of money, but wasn't easy to navigate around. We arrived late in the evening on our first night and google maps took us miles away from where we lived. Luckily a kind taxi driver rescued us 2 hours into our expedition, when we were on the brink of melting in the humid heat - (we British don't get any of that) and took us to the right place. Our airbnb host, Gwen, was absolutely lovely and had a beautiful home with a huge swimming pool, so we soon adapted! We then found some local eateries hidden off the beaten track, which although we were initially skeptical of, I think were much better than the main places we found in the city centre. It is certainly true that everything is very clean in SP, the fines were stern and people seemed to obey the rules. People also seemed ridiculously polite everywhere we went, too, which was really lovely.

We also visited Singapore Zoo. I never know how I really feel about zoos, though it seems to be the thing to do when you're in a new place. I felt that they did seem to really care about their animals, and had large open spaces for them to roam.  We had breakfast with the Orangutang's, and they seemed utterly unfazed around people. They also had a river safari which looked fantastic, but we had no time left to go!

On one of our last nights we took a visit up to Universal Studios in Singapore to see Halloween Horror Nights. This was absolutely amazing - with monsters and scary creatures roaming around a ghost town. People were hanging off buildings and zombies were roaming the streets. Halloween Horror Nights was split into 'zones' - from a scary clown house zone, to alien UFO abductors and scenes based on Horror movies, such as Bogeyman (complete with that all important never ending hanging clothes scene). There was a New York zone which was overrun by demons, a Forest of Disenchantment with the re-telling through screens of fairy tales with a twist, the characters are now trapped in their bad endings. We queued up for two hours to visit 'Jings Revenge' - an Asian horror themed haunted house, which takes place in a Chinese secondary school. I was jumping all over the place, Trig, however, was less easy to scare.

We opted to fly out a day later because there was a Queen tribute band at the Expo. It would have been Trig's dads birthday, it was also nearly the anniversary of his death, and his dad was probably the biggest Queen fan, so we thought it was fitting to stay. This was a really touching way to end our stay in Singapore. Though there may have been a tear shed or two we also found some fake moustaches, so all in all a great Saturday night!

Singapore, we will be back!

Have you been to this part of the world before? I would love to hear your stories!

Alice x