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Our final stop of our travels was Singapore, although originally we weren't even planning to go there. It was simply the cheapest place to fly home from, so we made it part of the plan, and it turned out pretty well. Most people will tell you that Singapore is incredibly expensive, but having spent two months in New Zealand, we didn't find it so bad, especially for only four nights and because being our last stop we could splash out as much as we wanted.
We made good use of the three days we were: we spent one day visiting the amazing zoo (seeing our first polar bear!), another exploring the interesting parts of the city and watching the incredible, if slightly ridiculous, light show in Marina Bay Sands. Our last day was spent in true Singapore fashion trawling through the malls and treating ourselves to our first ever Singapore Slings in the original Raffles Hotel. As the sun set we had yet more cocktails on top of one of the tallest buildings in Singapore unable to believe that we were about to go home.
While travelling we'd heard a lot about Singapore, and we had a lot of our own ideas about it too; it's true it's hard to categorise in the same way as the usual backpacking countries. It's a meeting point of worlds: backpackers, jet setting holidaymakers and wealthy expats all converge here. It combines outrageous shows of wealth and random pieces art wherever you look with the Chinese markets and food courts, making you feel like you could be in a back street of Beijing. All in all it was a perfect way to spoil ourselves on our last few days while also getting to explore an amazing new city.
Then came the date that we'd been dreading all year: Thursday the 4th of June. As we did the seventeen-hour journey home, it hadn't yet hit us that we were going to England, it just felt like another of the many flights we'd taken. But before we knew it we were back with our parents and the adventure was over. It's hard to believe quite how quickly things feel normal again, and even though it was only a week ago it feels like a lifetime. We were both very excited to be home and see everyone we love again, but to be honest we would both go back in an instant. We're curing our traveller's blues by throwing ourselves into jobs and planning visits to the friends we made on the other side of the world.
When we chose New Zealand and Indonesia to travel to almost a year ago, we didn't know much about them, and mostly chose on whims. Though having said that we definitely planned the trip a lot more than most of the people we met travelling. As we got more confident in our abilities to get ourselves around, we planned things less and less and started to see the benefits of both types of travelling. Knowing exactly when we were going home meant that we could fit in as much as possible and really make use of our time, but sometimes it was fun to wake up and not know exactly where we would be by that evening. In terms of the countries themselves, they couldn't have been more different: not only in culture, but in the way we travelled around them. In New Zealand, thanks to the Kiwi Experience, we were travelling with a large group of people from all over the world many of whom were around the same age as us, and quite a few other Brits. This meant that the friends we made will hopefully be easier to keep in contact with. In comparison, in Indonesia we made friendships for an evening, or if we were lucky a whole day, as everyone moved off to their different destinations. We never cooked for ourselves either, as supermarkets didn't seem to exist, let alone hostel kitchens and eating out was fairly cheap. It was nice to be able to afford all the things that had been out of our budget while in New Zealand. Both countries we grew very fond of and there are so many places in both that we're still desperate to visit. We've also added many other countries to our list of places we want to visit, and are already planning the next trip (or five).
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