Singapore,
in a long weekend.

Two children, eight and eleven. The studio had us at a Marina Bay hotel with a pool floor the children would not get out of, plus a Universal Studios day, a Bird Paradise morning, and a hawker-centre dinner with a Singaporean food writer who walked our kids through which stall to try in what order. We left wanting to come back next December.

Three nights of Singapore (Marina Bay), one of Kuala Lumpur (Petronas at sunset, dinner at Atmosphere 360), three at Langkawi (a beach resort we would never have found alone). The handover between Singapore and KL was a half-day drive that Tibro arranged with the right driver. A man who has been doing this run for twenty years and stopped us at exactly the right roadside stall.

Two pre-cruise nights in Singapore at a hotel two stops on the MRT from the Cruise Centre. Tibro had the embarkation paperwork sorted before we arrived; we walked onto the ship in fifteen minutes. The post-cruise night the studio put us at a Tiong Bahru boutique hotel. The perfect counterweight after five nights of buffet.