Our one day in Indonesia

Slept like a rock Saturday night, and up Sunday morning to write an interesting blog post about Singapore. If you missed it, you can read it here...

https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2019/05/singapore-to-bali-indonesia.html

Then, we went out to get some breakfast.

Singapore to Bali, Indonesia

Saturday morning, we checked out of our AirBnb apartment at 8:30am because Singaporean blog readers Han and Michelle were coming to show us some parts of Singapore that tourists wouldn't normally see.

And besides the tour, they gave us some interesting insight into how Singapore survives and thrives.

Singapore at night

This is the second blog post of the day! If you missed the first one, you can read it here...

https://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2019/05/the-more-natural-singapore-and-we-are.html

Friday evening, we went to the light shows at Marina Bay. There are two of them... one behind the Sands hotel at the "Supertrees", and one in front of the Sands hotel in the bay itself.

The more natural Singapore, and we are going to Hawaii!

This morning, we didn't leave the apartment until after 10:00am... because I was busy booking our return to Canada in August. I had no plans to book it today, I was just doing a random check of the prices and I spotted something.

Normally, one way from Australia to Canada is about $1,000 CAD per person. And I would have been happy to get it for $700 each. But I saw a deal from Sydney, Australia  to Honolulu, Hawaii for $274 CAD each. Then, I saw a deal for three days later from Honolulu to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan for $312 each one way. So, $586 per person and we get to spend 3 days in Hawaii to break up the distance!

Singapore - Our feet were done, but it was still a good day.

Singapore is the 20th smallest country in the world, with a population of about 5.6 million. It's located only 112 kms (70 miles) north of the equator.

It's a clean, modern, and very safe city.

It's also a global financial center with a tropical climate and multicultural population. Almost all of the signage is in English, despite the fact that 75% of the population have a Chinese background. And there are four official languages... Malay, English, Mandarin, and Tamil.

Arrived in Singapore!

Singapore is country #35 for us!

It's the first new country since we were in Barbados is October of 2017.

Let me tell you about the last 24 hours or so...

Next stop, San Francisco, and then Singapore!

We called our Uber driver  from our AirBnb in Calgary at 3:30am yesterday morning. Yes, silly o'clock!

I was a little worried that there wouldn't be many Uber drivers around at that hour of the day (or night!), but it turned out that we only had to wait about 8 minutes and there he was, ready to bring us to Calgary airport for our 6:05am flight to Los Angeles.

First stop, Los Angeles!

Yesterday we returned our car rental to the south end of the city of Calgary. Then, we walked the 5 kms (3 miles) back to downtown and wandered around for a bit.

The weather was still not great, but at least it didn't rain.

Exactly the way you would get them in Mexico!

It would be nice if somebody would tell the weather gods that it's supposed to be springtime. Because there is certainly no global warming happening here in Calgary just now!

Yesterday felt like March in Canada, not May in Canada. Pretty sure it must have been snowing in the nearby mountains.

And so, we were looking for something indoor to do. And apparently so was the rest of the city.

Sometimes I think we must be a little bit crazy...

Just a little bit though!

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day finalizing our trip plans to eventually end up in Adelaide, Australia where we will now arrive on May 27th... only 10 days later than originally planned.

But it's still a bit of a convoluted route as to how we get there.

Through the hoodoos to Calgary, Alberta

Well, despite a few rough patches over the last week or two it looks like everything is coming together.

Yesterday, we made our way from Cabri, Saskatchewan to Calgary, Alberta. Originally, we were going to have to be in Calgary by 11:00am to drop off the car rental, but now that we are not leaving Canada until Monday I managed to extend the car rental until Sunday.

Great news!

I opened my email this morning to find my Australia visitor visa approved!

The whole situation sucked though. It never should have been an issue to begin with. But, what's done is done, so there's nothing to do but look at the bright side. And the bright side is that we are now going to be seeing Singapore and Malaysia as well. It feels like we're getting a whole new trip out of the deal... which essentially we are, however it has cost us quite a lot more money as well.

When life hands you lemons...

...you need to make lemonade!

So yesterday, we made our way to the fancy new medical center in the town of Leader, Saskatchewan (pop 870). About an hour drive, but worth it compared to having to go back to the hospital in Swift Current!

Well, where do I start?

Lots to talk about today.

Let's start with our Australia trip. I still don't have a visa to travel to Australia, but of course that could change at any moment. Still, we're now planning on it not showing up in time. So, our inexpensive Australia trip is about to become an expensive Australia trip.

What a circus this has become. And complicated more by the fact that Ruth is still not feeling well and may not be well enough to travel on Thursday anyhow.

Back to the pharmacist

Well, Ruth felt quite a bit better yesterday, but she was complaining of a debilitating headache that just wouldn't let up. We finally decided that it was one of the side effect of the antibiotic Trimethoprin that she had been prescribed.

But we really didn't want to go back to the emergency room at the hospital. And since the Trimethoprin had been available at the pharmacist without a prescription and he had said there were other substitutes available we decided to drive back into the city and get something different.