We arrived back into Vancouver on the evening of Thursday 14th October to spend the next two nights with Mike & Carolyn before flying out on the Saturday. The next day or so were spent working out how to pack all our stuff into our backpacks for the trip home because over the course of the trip we had been mailing stuff back to Mike & Carolyns to lighten our load. It was also nice to sit down to a home cooked meal again and have a few drinks while telling tales of our travels. The blueberry pancakes for breakfast were another of Carolyn's wonderful treats and we will definitely miss them!!!

Unfortunately as with the rest of the trip the time went past too quickly and we were soon boarding our Singapore Airlines flight in Vancouver. The flight back to Singapore via Seoul was long but uneventful. The highlight was the view from the window as we flew in the afternoon sun past Anchorage. The mountain ranges visible above a sea of cloud were spectacular. From what I could work out from our flight path I am pretty sure that we again got to see Mt.McKinley. I will stand to be corrected on this but there was one peak that literally stood head and shoulders above the rest. Very impressive indeed!!

After an 11 hr and 6 hr leg with an hour transit in Seoul we touched down in Singapore to 32degrees and 95% humidity and headed to our hotel (The Peninsula Excelsior). Despite it feeling like morning we desperately needed some zzz's so we crashed pretty quickly.

The next day we explored the local area including a visit to Fort Canning Park and a tour through the Battle Box which was the underground bunker network used by the allies during WW2. We also managed to find a few shops to pass some time in ;-) The weather was certainly a stark contrast to what we had left behind in Canada. In the evening we caught up with Michele's Uncle Terry and Kath who had arrived from England on their first trip down under. By a combination of luck and planning we were catching the same flight into Adelaide from Singapore and were staying at the same hotel.

Tuesday 19th October was the last day of our holiday and we spent the day visiting the sights of Singapore with Terry and Kath. We started with a city bus tour then headed off to the Raffles Hotel for a look around before catching the cable car over to Sentosa Island. On the island we took the monorail, getting of at a number of stops to visit the Orchid Gardens and Fort Siloso. If you thought we were struggling with the heat and humidity spare a thought for our english rellies!!!
Image of Raffles Hotel.
View from cable car to Sentosa Island.
One of the locals on Sentosa Island.
An image from the Orchid Garden.

That was it. Our time was up. There was nothing more to do but head out to the airport for our late evening flight out of Singapore to arrive in Adelaide at 7am on Wednesday 20th October - exactly 70 days after we had left. We had experienced an amazing holiday. The weather had been very favourable to us, our accomodations had been great, Michele had ticks in the boxes for all her bears and whales and the people we had met were fantastic. We had spent over 65 hours in various types of aircraft, driven over 6000km's in rental cars, spent 60+ hours on trains and 9 days on various boats as well as walked countless km's. We were ready to come home from the point of view of putting our bags down for a while and seeing our dogs again but it was hard to accept that it was over. All the planning and all the build up and excitement was no more. I could no longer come home from a bad day at work and say I don't care because I'm going on holiday. But we do have lots of amazing memories and stories to tell. Oh and we also have 2800 photos and 10hrs of video to sort through :-)

I have now been back at work for a few days and am suffering heavily from PHD (post holiday depression). They may try and beat me back into the monotony of working life again but one look at the screensaver on my pc and I am transported back to a better place. Haha!!!

Farewell from our weblog and I hope that at some stage along the journey we may have brightened your day and flickered the flame of adventure that burns somewhere within all of us. Failing that I hope you had a good read and enjoyed the photos!!!!

Cheers to all,
Kim & Michele

P.S. If anyone reading this site wants to ask any travel related questions regarding the places we have been or the stuff we have done feel free to ask. I am quite happy to try and help out with details such as prices we paid, where we stayed, where we ate, what we thought of accomodation and food etc. All those good questions I wanted answers for when I was putting our trip together!!!