2025 England – Brighton
This was a strange year for travel. It started with us being determined to cut down on the number of places we visited and to make journeys as easy as possible, with our usual requirement of sun, sea and sightseeing. We also liked quiet places whilst still being able to walk into town at night where it was lively, but not too lively. We went to Thailand in 2013 and enjoyed it so much that we thought it might be good to return but were put off after reading how tourism had destroyed a lot of places, so it was difficult to know where in Thailand to go. For example, when we stayed on a small island called Ko Jum 12 years earlier, ours was the only decent hotel. Looking at it now, the island was full of resorts. At the same time, we had wanted to go to Bali for many years but were put off by January being the rainy season. We did a lot of research, and the general opinion seemed to be that although it did rain most days, it was only for short periods and most of the time it was warm and sunny so we thought we would take a chance. That was when we got a bit carried away with our itinerary.
A direct flight to Bangkok was £1000 more expensive than stopping over in Delhi for a night so even with expenses it would still be £600 cheaper, and it would give us a night in a hotel in Delhi to recover from the journey. There was no direct flight from Delhi to Bali, so we decided to stopover in Singapore for a few days before going on to Bali. I had booked all the flights when our daughter suggested that as we were already in Bali, why not go to Perth in Australia for a few days as it was only a three-hour flight? It all sounded exciting so I changed things around and before I knew it we had gone from the desire to travel and change hotels as little as possible to an itinerary of, Dubrovnik to Brighton to New Delhi to Singapore to Bali to Perth to Bangkok to Phuket to New Delhi to London and back to Dubrovnik. We knew it was a bit much, but we reasoned that they were all direct flights, and we always had at least one night in a hotel to rest. It was such a complicated itinerary, but I must admit I enjoyed organising it.
A couple of weeks before we were due to leave, we started reading posts from people in Bali who said it was raining nonstop and there was even some flooding. We had booked two weeks in Bali, so I cancelled the hotels and booked one for four nights. If the weather wasn’t too bad, we would stay for two weeks, if it was bad, we would leave for Perth early.
At last everything was settled and we were looking forward to the trip when the anxiety and depression I had managed to keep under control for the last 16 years suddenly took hold of me for a couple of days. I could hardly get out of bed and the prospect of travelling halfway across the world wasn’t helping.
It started in 2006 when an irresponsible employer pushed me so hard that I had a nervous breakdown. Fortunately, it coincided with me being made redundant, so I was able to take a very early retirement. It took me a couple of years to recover but anyone who has suffered from depression knows it was always there in the background. For no apparent reason and with zero stress or problems in my life, it came back. I went back on antidepressants and started to feel a little better after a few days. The thought of going away terrified me, but the best advice on the subject was given to me by my brother David, “Beware of your safe space.”
As usual, we were due to spend the first week in Brighton, and Federika was booked to stay with our daughter a week before me. She cancelled that and although I knew she was disappointed, she assured me that it didn’t matter if we didn’t go away at all and stayed home. I knew she meant it and the lack of pressure was a great help to me. It looked for a while that I wouldn’t be able to go but we reasoned that as the UK wasn’t far, we could go, and if I didn’t feel well, we could return home. In the back of my mind, I knew that although it would be very hard, going away would be good for me. I took a diazepam a couple of hours before our flight and I felt fine. The strange thing was that I had no fear of flying but I did get anxious about travelling which made no sense to me.
I had booked again to stay at the Grand Hotel in Brighton for the Christmas week. The year before I had made a small complaint in a booking.com review and I was surprised when the hotel contacted me and offered me a 10% discount for the next year and an upgrade to a sea-facing suite. We hadn’t intended to stay there again but couldn’t resist an offer like that. We checked in and although I wouldn’t call it a suite, it was certainly a large and lovely room. It was nice having a sea view but being on the main road we were woken up every night by drunks on the street below. 
I felt pretty bad in the mornings so after breakfast I did some mindful awareness meditation which was always a great help. If things got too bad, I took a diazepam which soon brought me back to normal. Although I was managing to control it, I was still very anxious about our holiday. Two days before Christmas I made up my mind not to go away and was waiting for the right time to break it to Federika who was half expecting it. I never found the right moment to tell her and the next morning I didn’t feel too bad so I changed my mind for the 100th time and told Federika we would definitely go.
I did a search for “Entry requirements for Singapore” and on top of the results came what I assumed was the official Singapore government website. It said I needed some kind of health declaration, so I started filling in the forms and before I knew it, I had applied for all the documents I needed including a visa. As soon as the £130 payment was made, I realised something was wrong which was confirmed when I never received anything in reply and saw there was no way of contacting them. Instead of the Thai government, it was a company called ivisa.com. I was always very careful about these scams but in my defence, my mental state was very fragile. I contacted American Express and despite being an obvious scam they told me I had to wait until the payment had gone through before I could make a claim. It turned out that we didn’t even need a visa for Singapore and the health declaration took two minutes to complete and was free. I really couldn’t understand how Google could allow scammers to advertise on their platform at all, let alone be placed at the top of their search results. If someone searches for “Entry requirements for Singapore,” top of the results should be the official government website and not the company who pays the most to advertise.
Getting visas for Bali, I accepted as a personal challenge as everyone was saying how difficult it was. After the first failed attempt, I realised what bugs the online form had and succeeded by giving the answers they were looking for rather than the correct ones.
2025 Singapore
