Living Our Best Life Crazy Rich Asian Style – Prologue

This trip was not part of the great holiday rearrangement of 2025, but it still went through some evolution. It was always the plan that this trip would take us back to the far east for the first time since the pandemic. We had originally planned to spend 5 days in Singapore and then do a back-to-back cruise. My favourite ship is in Singapore during the winter this year. The first cruise was three nights and was going to Penang and then had a day at sea. The second cruise was 4 nights and was also going to Penang and had a day at sea but was additionally going to Phuket. The positive aspects were that this gave us two stops in Penang including one on my birthday and that it was really good value. The drawback was that on both port calls, the ship did not arrive into Penang until midafternoon. However, at the price point of the cruises, I could overlook this. With this year being such a bumper year for travel, we did not do anything about this until we got back to Alaska. By then, the price of the cruises had jumped up to a price we were no longer willing to pay.

Graham had a look what other options there were. He had found a package holiday to Sri Lanka and another to Singapore. The one to Singapore sparked my imagination. Of course, the former travel agent in me saw this at a challenge. The offer that Graham found included a hotel in Sentosa. Sentosa is an island located off the southern coast of Singapore’s main island. It was originally a British military base and then later a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Since the 1970s, it has been a popular tourist destination. Apart from various hotels, Sentosa is home to a wide range of attractions, a casino, a water park, and Universal Studios Singapore. I priced a couple of options up and shared them with Graham. He then asked about the hotel we stayed at in 2019, which is located between Clarke Quay and China Town. Although we both loved the hotel, in 2019 it was a bit of a hike to the closest MRT station. Since then, a new MRT station has opened pretty much opposite the hotel. This made this a much more interesting proposition. The price was fair, too. I decided to book this as it only had to be paid on arrival.

As much as I love Singapore, I was keen to add something else to this trip. Penang instantly jumped to mind. I checked out flights and found that they were very good value and only take about 90 minutes. I then had a look at hotels. I found some very nice hotels that were a bit of a bargain. The issue was that a lot of them were beach properties that were quite far from all the sights. I started to look at hotels in Georgetown. I found a real gem. The Eastern and Oriental Hotel is a five-star British colonial hotel that is very centrally located. To those of you who have watched the movie Crazy Rich Asians, this may look familiar. The opening scenes were filmed in lobby of this hotel. We got an amazing price for a suite on a bed and breakfast basis. Better still, this is where I would be spending my birthday this year. 

When we travel, things tend to go down to the wire. This time, I was ultra organized. Quite early on, I put a list together of things that were a must do, that would be nice and things that would be a backup if we found ourselves with extra time. I did this for both Singapore and Penang. I also had a preliminary look at how this may all fit together, but on the whole, we had decided to go with the flow. I learned that Uber does not operate in Singapore or Penang, but that they have something similar called Grab. I downloaded this app and set it up. My former boss and his husband had done a documentary about Singapore in conjunction with the Singapore tourist board. I was kind of on the fence about this, but in the end, curiosity got the better of me. I did watch the documentary, and I actually really enjoyed this. 

We left booking the flights until relatively late. We had always planned to spend one more night in Singapore once we returned from Penang as we were always going to book the Singapore Penang Singapore flights separately. In the end, the flights worked out much cheaper if we flew out on the Monday rather than the Sunday. I found an amazing eco resort on Sentosa and we decided to book this.

With a week to go, I compiled a to do list. This had fifteen items on it. Some of them were directly related to the holiday like packing, doing online check in and submitting the electronic arrival card for Singapore. Others were routinely due like having my hair cut and my nails done. The final category was things that I wanted to achieve before I left for this trip like typing up the remaining instalments of my trip report for the September trip. This got a little derailed as I felt a little under the weather the day before we were heading to the airport hotel, but ultimately, I got everything done before the holiday officially started and I felt much brighter, too.