July and August 2026 Newsletter – Mauritius, Bali, and Singapore

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Summer is over, and autumn is here. I hope your summer was full of sunshine and relaxation. Ours was, so much so that I am woefully late with our July and August newsletters. In this newsletter, I am combining those two months.

What We’ve Been Doing

Exploring Mauritius

Steve and I spent July in Flic-en-Flac, Mauritius. Perhaps your geographical knowledge is better than mine, but I had never heard of Mauritius until I started researching African countries to visit.

Mauritius is a small island off the coast of southeast Africa. It’s 700 miles or 1,100 km further east than Madagascar.

In Mauritius, we had wonderful weather (only the tiniest bit of rain and warm, but not hot, days), saw some beautiful sights, and met some cool animals.

We also spent a lot of time on Flic-en-Flac Beach. The beach is about 6 miles or 10 km long, which makes for a nice stroll. You can see photos of this gorgeous beach in our post, “The Beauty of Flic-en-Flac Beach.”

A post about the highlights of Mauritius is in the works.

Enjoying Balinese life

In August, we headed to Sanur, Bali, Indonesia. Again, we were in a beach town with amazing weather.

Bali has so much going for it. Not only is it inexpensive, but the food is fabulous, it is easy to get around with Grab, and since we were in a tourist area, English was everywhere.

Much of our time was spent at the beach and trying different restaurants when we weren’t busy planning our future travels.

A side trip to Singapore

During our stay in Sanur, we took a five-night side trip to Singapore. Three things I particularly wanted to see there were the Gardens by the Bay, the Marina Bay Sands hotel, and Jewel at the Changi Airport.

The Gardens by the Bay was everything we expected, with delightful indoor gardens, relaxing outdoor space, and the iconic Supertrees.

We opted not to go up to the Marina Bay Sands hotel’s observation deck since we saw the city from the Singapore Flyer and from the observation decks in Gardens by the Bay. Unless you are a guest of the hotel, you cannot swim in the rooftop pool. At around $1,000 per night while we were there, that wasn’t happening.

Jewel was a disappointment, made worse because this was one thing that was high on my bucket list. Basically, it is a mall with some cool features, including the Rain Vortex, the tallest indoor waterfall in the world. There are mazes and a glass-bottom bridge, but those cost extra. Compared to the malls in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, where all the enhancements are free.

We loved strolling through Chinatown, taking an evening river cruise, and learning about Buddhism at the oddly named Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. And of course, no visit to Singapore would be complete without a ride on the Singapore Flyer, one of the tallest Ferris wheels in the world.

We didn’t love Singapore’s heat. It was hot and humid every day from morning until evening. We did our sightseeing in the morning, returned to our hotel for an afternoon nap, and headed back out in the evening.

Nor did we love the prices. Singapore is expensive, as we knew it would be. We’ve been spoiled by low prices in Mauritius and even more so in Sanur.

What’s Next?

Our time in Sanur will continue into September and will include a two-night boat trip to Komodo National Park to see the Komodo dragons. Then it’s off to Kuala Lumpur to store some of our luggage before we head to Japan. Japan tightly controls what you can bring into the country, and we don’t want any problems, so we’ll be leaving some medications and personal products in KL.

We’ll spend about five weeks in Japan. There is so much to see and do there, and it’s a project just planning which cities to visit and what to do in each one, but it should be worth it.

Because we’ll be spending more than a month in Japan, we are required to fill out an import form listing all medicines, medical devices, and topical treatments we’ll be carrying. To say it was challenging would be selling it short. It took both Steve and me at least eight hours each to figure out exactly what they wanted and how to navigate the website.

November has us heading back to Vietnam. We chose Nha Trang, a city on the southeast coast that has mild weather this time of year. We’ll be there for eight weeks and will use the time to recover from the intense pace of our Japan trip and get serious about deciding where we want to settle.

Then it’s Christmas in Budapest. We have great memories of the two-plus years we spent in Budapest during the pandemic, and the city pulls out all the stops at Christmas.

Of course, while we’re there, we can’t miss a chance to revisit the thermal baths at Aquaworld Budapest. You can read about Aquaworld here.

That’s our July and August update. Steve and I would love to know what your plans are for the rest of the year.

Happy Traveling,
Linda

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