After quite a party the night before Soran and I ended up rushing to get out the door. As we sat down in the car ready to go it soon dawned on us with our hangovers that we had to make our way across Brisbane city in rush hour traffic and drive 150km to the Gold Coast airport when we both didn't have the foggiest idea how to do either of those let alone one. And we had all but one hour to do this in. By some miracle we arrived on time after rushing to fill up the tank and drop the car off, rushing to our gates and saying goodbye. I really hope that I won't get heap loads of Australian speeding tickets coming through the post in 6 weeks as I didn't see one speed camera in 5 days and that's probably not a good sign.

As I boarded the flight for Sydney, Soran boarded his for Japan; we were going to two opposite places in more ways than distance. I caught the train and the ferry to Manly and waited at the bow of the boat to catch a glimpse of Ellice who was waiting for me. There was such an old war time feel about being reunited with someone you hadn't seen for months coming off of a boat. We both just broke down on the dock, hugging and sobbing in each others arms; we both had hardly slept the night before and were both already emotional for various reasons. The scene was priceless none the less.

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Manly which surprisingly reminded me of parts of Torquay where Ellice and I are from so it must remind her of home in a way. Manly feels like an island isolated from Sydney but has all the amenities you could ever want of a city. Friday night was 90s night at the hostel which I thought could have meant getting out the platform shoes and Adidas poppers but was more of a drunken sing a long of Oasis and Blur.

Ellice must be one of the hardest workers I know, waking up to start cleaning the hostel at 6am in exchange for free rent, half an hour for breakfast then starting her day job as a waitress until 6pm. Even when she told her managers her best friend was coming for 4 days they wouldn't give her the weekend so I spent my days relaxing in Sydney's cafés and soaking up the café culture which I think is just as prominent as Italy's. They take coffee very seriously and treat it as an art form. To even work in a café you need to have taken a coffee making course and trained as a barista.

I also took the ferry into the city to explore the very limited sights they have and Bondi Beach. It seemed very much like London where you would be hard pressed to find an Australian voice in central Sydney; you would most likely hear Chinese or Vietnamese and also saw a massive protest march of Greek people campaigning against the Turkish occupation of Cyprus. When Ellice was free in the evenings we had some lovely dinners together with her new French boyfriend Julian and delicious cocktails all around Manly, we've got exactly the same taste which unfortunately happens to be expensive. She says it's so hard in her hostel to find people that want to do nice little things like that as appose to wanting cheap all you can drink nights and eating kebabs.

We rented a car for the day and drove up to the Unesco Blue Mountains. They were absolutely beautiful. I never made it to the Drakensberg Mountains surrounding Lesotho in South Africa but I imagined them to look very similar. We drove all day up and down, in and around the mountain roads. We made our way back to the city in rush hour traffic and tried to find the tequila bar Café Pacifico's outlet in Sydney. I've spent my 18th and 21st birthday meals at the one in London and had a quest to visit the one Sydney. After making our way across Sydney in rush hour traffic, finding parking and walking a mile only to realise the close on Mondays. Nevertheless I will get back there one day and drink my Margarita one day.

So after the failed visit we made our way back to Manly and decided to have a late 21st birthday celebration drinks as we both missed each others this year. We went to a place on the seafront where Ellice knew the managers there who were able to hook us up with some nice deals and many drinks and some nice shots, we then proceeded to befriend a group of Swedish guys buying us drinks with the promise that we'd party with them later before making a quick exit to another bar.

On my last day with Ellice we rented roller blades to ride along the sea front and had a lovely lunch with Julian before I made an 18 hour journey to Singapore from Sydney to Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur. I met mom and Lara at the baggage claim carousals which was a great surprise but surprisingly I wasn't the only person from Australia meeting people in the baggage halls. I saw a few people from Aus who met friends or just random people they knew off the flight from London. Because KL airport is a hub and many people change flights it was just like a bus terminal with friends coming off of flights meeting other friends going somewhere else.

Two hours later we were in Singapore where we met Sarah at the airport so in the space of 24hours my mom had collected all of her daughters, one in London, one in Malaysia and one in Singapore! It was the first time we were all together on holiday in 4 years. I never expected to have this excitement of seeing my sisters and there we were the 4 of us all together again in a strange place but were not kids anymore. I still feel like it when we all get together reminiscing about holidays, quoting movies and referencing everything from The Simpsons and other shows that we were brought up on.

Singapore was an amazing city, everyone spoke English, gardens were preened and manicured, and buildings were new and gleaming. If Disney had built a city it would look like Singapore where nothing is run down or dirty, all of the citizens are equally represented whatever their ethnic background and where you feel like you could leave $100 on a bench and it would still be there an hour later. It was almost too perfect.

We spent our 3 days in our fancy hotel which I just went crazy about. Pure luxury, I thought yes I'm travelling with mom again! I didn't have to worry about whose picking up the bill, how were going to pay for the hostels, do we even have enough money to go on this tour, decisions like do I really need this over priced airport sandwich etc.

We ate ourselves silly at the lunch buffet sampling New Zealand salmon, Spanish jamon, tiger prawns, beef carpaccio and seared sea bass. I was in heaven. I hadn't experienced this kind of life style for years. Even when we were going on holiday we would always go for the cheap package deals staying in musty rooms in the Greek isles or damp humid hotels in India or Kenya. Sarah on the other hand is very much accustomed to be treated, as she lives the life of a high flying expat in Beijing being wined and dined by professional business men working in China, she stays in 5* hotels frequently and has eaten in all of Beijing's top restaurants. I've been trying to warn her how the bubble will burst once she's just like any other student living in London; she's going to be in for a BIG shock.

Sarah and one of her German boyfriends who's working in Singapore took us to the zoo one night for a night safari. It was pitched black and we were walking though the enclosures of tigers, tree bats, bush babies and giraffes. So instead of seeing all the animals sleeping doing nothing they were out and about wide awake, it was one of the best zoos I've ever been too.

We also visited Raffles Hotel, an old colonial hotel from the 1800s where the Singapore Sling was invented in 1915. We sat down at the Long Bar and ordered a couple. We were served monkey nuts and following the tradition here you just sling the empty shells on the floor in one of the fanciest bars in Singapore, and as I looked at my feet the floor was about an inch deep in peanut shells! I was really disappointed with the mass produced Singapore slings they only mix up in milk cartons so we got some mixed with tanquerey which were 10 times better.

We headed off to a fancy yuppy bar on the 71st floor of the Swiss Tower which had the most gorgeous city views. There was even a lightning storm going on over the ocean which we could see perfectly. However it was not my kind of place at all; luckily we were prepared and packed a bag before we left the hotel packed with our high heels to change into because you can't get in without high heels. Sarah's boyfriend had got ourselves on the guest list so we avoided paying the ludicrous £30 cover charge for entry to a BAR! And spent the rest of the night people watching as the Asian girls flirted with the "smart casual" dressed western business men while everyone else sipped over priced cocktails and just stared at each other round the room wandering if they have any chance of taking anyone back to their hotel rooms.

As we headed off back to our hotel we stopped at McDonalds for a midnight snack going from 5* lunch buffet to dirty MaccyDs. It was fun in our fancy dresses and heels coming from a place where they served £20 cocktails. We had one more of the lunch buffets in the morning before catching our flight to Bali. Although when we arrived we thought we ought to have stayed in Singapore longer we were glad we didn't. It seemed too perfect, almost irritatingly so. Singapore has always been an anti backpacker type of place where you can get a $200 fine for just eating on the subway. However, the writers at lonely planet scathe at foreigners who find Singapore too boring as they write a long the lines of why does a country have to be revenged with poverty, hunger and corruption for it to be interesting for Europeans? "Incredible India" anyone?