Our last leg… on our way home

Sad to say but this is our last blog for our SE Asia trip for the Schmuland Family…

Right now as I type we are in San Franciso and it is 2:30am local time. THE KIDS ARE BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS. It will be interesting getting their time schedule back on north american time.

All my stress about our long haul flight with the kids from Singapore to San Fran was for nothing. They all slept a full nights sleep without a scream. I could not sleep in case one of them woke up… so I caught up on my movies. I was able to watch 4 movies I have not seen yet, it was great. (love Singapore Airlines)

From my last blog you know that we left Phuket last Sunday which was pretty hard. It did not seem real that we were actually going to be leaving and then the departure day came pretty fast. We did not waste a minute! Our last afternoon was spent with the Olynyks (whom we are going to really miss) celebrating Jaidyn’s first birthday, the kids had a great time & us to of course. Happy birthday Jaidyn.

All the kids are growing up so fast. The highlight of the day was the night swim for the kids… they loved swimming in the dark.

The morning we left Trent took the kids to give away our possessions we aquired while we were on Phuket. Everett was sleeping so I did not have a chance to go (wish I could have)… Trent said it was wonderful. We had all the blankets and sheets from our beds, toys (the kids were only allowed one thing to come back to Calgary with them) beach stuff, snorkel & masks and all the baht (thai currency) change we had.

Emma said the little girl was sooo happy, Em gave some barbies and barbie furniture Santa brought her. Easton gave another football away again this year and was again not wanting to part with it but he knew it was the right thing to do….Trent said it was the best when he pulled out all our snorkel & masks… the big guys eyes lit right up. We had a lot of clothes to leave… the kids grew, Easton even grew out of his runners. There is still very poor people here so it is great to know some of our items could be useful to other people and help brighten their day.

Officially we left our house at 10:30am on Sunday, Jesse came to see us off. I have to say it was a sad moment but we know we will be back sooner than later….

In Bangkok for one night and we stayed at the Miracle Grand Hotel, it was very nice, almost to nice for us with kids. We stayed on the Executive Floor and the room had all the nice extras. Staying here you would never know you are in Bangkok if you didn’t step outside the hotel. All I can say is the internet has been a great friend.

Next day departed to Singapore and Everett was not liking the idea of sitting in one spot. Thankfully I had a very understanding lady sitting beside me so she was very patient… but I don’t think I can say the same for the person sitting infront of Everett after he seemed to kick the seat for the 100th time. All I can do is smile 🙂

Singapore was great, it is a very clean, extremely organized, very efficient, I liked it alot! We stayed at the Furama Hotel in China Town and again I love the internet. I found a great last minute deal at this hotel and I booked a suite, we had just over 800 sq. feet and two bathrooms for pretty much half price. For those of you who are nervous about the internet don’t be it is great, I have never booked through a travel agent and we have had great success thus far.

Here is a veiw from our living room window in Singapore, it’s very beautiful and very colorful at night. Each morning Everett sat and watched all the buses and cars go by, they looked like minis, we were on the 21st floor.

Emma snapped this picture of me as I am figuring out what we are up to. Ohhh my husband, he does not like to take public transit but it is fun entertainment for the kids and the cheapest mode of transport for a family of five. Call me crazy but why not spend over an hour hopping trains and buses to get to the same spot that would take you 25 min by taxi. I think you can not get a feel for a place until you try the trasit system. Singapore’s transit system is a dream, it’s beautiful and very user friendly.

Ev loves looking out the window to see what’s happening outside, a great little tour guide on spotting trees & birds.

Singapore has a world famous zoo and night safari. The zoo is an open concept zoo and we were amazed by what they meant by open concept. The animals are not in cages they are in sections but no chain link fences or barriers. There is a ditch between you and the animals and it is great. Obviously there must be an electronic fence that is not highly visible. It was pretty wild, we really had to watch Everett. There were creatures like this roaming all over the place… Easton was in his glory.

We spend a few hours walking around the Singapore Zoo and then we headed over to the Night Safari. As we entered the gates there was a traditional dance performance going on with men playing with fire. These guys were really amazing to watch, they would put karosine in their mouths and spit it on the the flames to get the maximum flame possible. We watched these guys perform twice, Emma and Easton loved it.

You can see how lush and beautiful Singapore is, here is Everett walking around the zoo.

I thought this was interesting information …. A species of only females, I wonder how the managed that. 🙂

For the night safari it is an open concept also, except you board a tram and they take you around to see the animals at night. There is very dim light so I was unable to take any pictures. It does make sense though, because during the day it is way to hot for the animals and alot of animals are noctunal anyways.

We went to Sentose Island two day in a row, it is a small island south of Singapore (20min from our hotel) and you can either reach it by cable car or bus. It is a very efficient island, there is three bus lines.. red, green and blue which takes you to diffrent points on the island, you just hope on your desired bus line and off you go. We had a lot of fun navigating ourselves around.

Here we are at the cable car stop waiting to go to Sentose and the kids are taking a rest in these nice cozy huts.

Sentose is an island of many attractions.

Here we are going to drive luge carts… Emma was so funny, she crashed twice and we could not stop laughing, she was going so fast, I was yelling as loud as I could for her to slow down. We were proud of her, even though she ran over and broke an orange cone and could not see though her tears, she got back on the luge and finished the course. Twice she crashed because she was going to fast… she likes speed. We had a lot of fun on these.

Our last day in Singapore we went to a water park and it was hoot, I was watching the kids and it was so nice and hot, all I could think was that in a few day this will all be a faint memory.

I was told that five days would be to many in Singapore… not for me I did not have a chance to do a few other things I wanted to like hit a few shops on Orchard Road and have a Singapore Sling at the Raffles hotel but I will be back….

My thoughts on Singapore, I really like it there.

pros – the crime is pretty much zero, if you are caught with drugs or a gun you are hung, it is very efficient, not as expensive as Hong Kong or Canada we found.

cons – very controlled, in every car you have a machine and you put your ID card into it. Where ever you drive it is monitored. There is controlls on how many cars can be in one district at a time so if you enter down town during peak time you will see on the machine a charge of $2.00. This is to try to reduce the amount of cars on the road at one time. Also vehicle insurance is very expensive if you want to drive your car in the day time extremely pricey but somewhat affordable if you choose to drive b/w the hours of 7:00pm-7:00am. Each person has a card that they put money on in advance and this card is your ID card, you swipe it at the grocery store, train station almost everywhere. I saw signs everywhere saying “Top up” and a card picture under it. Top up your card!

I did not take to many pictures in Singapore, I was just taking in the moments and not worrying to much about “getting the shot” so I don’t have to many to share.

I want to say again “Thank you” for allowing us to be apart of your lives and you apart of ours, it has been my pleasure these past three months to put together my blogs to hopefully educate you about some of the amazing wonders of Asia. I can not even begin to count the amount of hours I have spent typing and re-typing on this computer over the months so I have to say I am truely thankful that you have followed our story and appreciate the updates enough to comment on them.

Trent and I have been fortunate enough to travel and experience many places in the world so far and we still have many other places on our list. Each year we go away we are very thankful for the opportunity to be able to so and to be able to show the kids the world. I am so proud of our kids and there are time I wonder if they are getting anything out of what we do but to hear them talk and hear what they learn it is amazing.

Thank you to everyone who helps us when we are gone and in the crazy months before we depart.

Tom I do have to say we are all going to miss your blogs and if you do start a weekly or monthly column about anything let us all know please, my aunte is disappointed we are coming home just for the fact she will miss your comments.

We will be back to Calgary this afternoon. We look forward to seeing you soon!

This is a sad moment for me because I know that this chapter is going to be closed but a new one always opens. We are extremely blessed with wonderful family & friends!

Until next time…. ALL OUR LOVE!!!
Trent, Jody, Emma, Easton & Everett