John's Travel Blog

It is Saturday 12 October and my last day in Singapore. Time to repack my bag and get ready to leave. My flight is not until 12.15am so I paid for an extra half day at the hotel and will leave at 6pm, giving me a full day in Singapore.

A quiet day today seeing as I have a long flight ahead of me. I take the MRT from City Hall to Somerset on Orchard Road. I would normally walk but don’t want to risk my knee with too much walking, and it is it hot outside. Somerset is about where the main shopping area on Orchard Road starts, so it’s a pleasant walk up as far as Tangs on the corner of Scotts Road. They are already starting to put up the Christmas decorations in Orchard Road, though Singapore Christmas Light Up does not officially start until November 16th. The Christmas lights on Orchard Road are usually spectacular and well worth seeing. I’ve not been here for the Christmas Lights since 2002 and really want to see them again one day.

I head back to Bugis where I am staying, and have lunch at the Albert Food Centre just behind my hotel. I always stay in the same hotel and eat at this hawker centre. No need for me to tell you what I had – yes, Hainanese Chicken Rice, my favourite.

At 6pm I check out and head for the airport. I thought about taking the MRT as there is a station near the hotel, but the sky is black and a storm threatens. If it rains, the humidity will skyrocket and it will be chaos with drenched people seeking shelter and trying to get home. I opt for a taxi instead and have a leisurely journey. The rain and storm never came. The skies cleared and all went back to normal.

On arrival I head straight for check in to get rid of my bag and get my boarding pass. As predicted in an earlier post, there is no upgrades to business class unless I am prepared to pay a king’s ransom for the privilege, so I am condemned to sitting up all night but at least with a smidge more leg room as I am travelling premium economy. I loathe night flights but I had no options here unfortunately, as the day flight was fully booked.

I have six hours to kill at the airport, but I have allowed time to see Jewel, the newest attraction at Changi Airport. It does not disappoint. The huge waterfall in the centre is spectacular as is the sound and light show every hour. The trees and gardens are a wonder in themselves, and I would have liked to explore more, but tiredness was getting to me by this time along with knee problems. The rest of Jewel is a shopping mall – how Singaporean! It was hard to find somewhere to eat as every place was packed. Jewel is not in the sterile area of the airport, so non-travelling Singaporeans come to shop and eat and visit with friends like they do at other malls.

One of the places I wanted to go to was the A & W Restaurant, an American fast food joint which I have never been to on any of my visits to the US. This is their first store in Singapore. Well, Singaporeans seem to love all things American and A&W is no exception, the lines to get into this store were miles long. I’d be half way to Paris before I got to the counter judging by the number of people waiting in line. An interesting phenomenom.

Eventually I head back to Terminal 3 to await the wheelchair to take me to the special assistance lounge and then on to the gate lounge for my flight nearer to flight time. Readers who have been to Changi will know how big an airport it is and just how much walking you have to do. It is now getting too big for me to walk those distances.

I am first to board the plane and get settled before the rush starts. The flight attendants are very caring and helpful and make sure I have everything I need and are settled comfortably. During the flight they come by regularly to check that I am ok and ask if I need any assistance etc.

Next stop Paris.

I only have two short days in Singapore on this trip. It breaks up the journey and gives me a bit of respite as I cannot do the 20 odd hours flight time to Europe in one go anymore.

It’s Friday and I am off to have lunch with a friend at the Raffles Town Club which sounds very nice. My friend is a lady who knew one of my uncles and his second family after he divorced my aunt many years ago. I had spent quite a long time looking for his second wife and eventually found her via a little bit of genealogical serendipity. The lady in question had since passed away, but I am now in contact with one of her daughters.

The Raffles Town Club is a very pleasant place, and we had a most enjoyable lunch and chatted for several hours talking about family history and many other things.

It is late afternoon when I get back to the hotel and I need to have a walk and get some exercise. The streets and shops are crowded as usual as people shop on their way home from work, or are heading out for the evening to meet friends and family.

Did I tell you how much I love Singapore, yes, I’m sure I did. The streets are clean, almost everything works exactly as it says on the tin, and it’s a fun, ever changing, and vibrant multicutural melting pot. But on the flipside there is the heat and humidity, not easy to deal with, and despite it costing more to get a licence to own a car than to buy the actual car, traffic can be horrendous in this tiny city state. There is a lot of wealth here.

But not everything is good. Apart from most Singaporeans wandering around like Brown’s cows with their faces buried in their mobile phones, there’s a yet another menace on the streets – electric scooters. Please God, can we never have these in Melbourne. So picture this, crazies zooming around on electric scooters and pedestrians wandering around with their faces glued to mobile screens. Disaster waiting to happen. And being electric you can’t hear them coming.

I’ve been coming to Singapore now for about 35 years. Over that time, I have noticed significant change. This city never stops building and modernising. But one thing I have noticed, Singaporeans seem to have become a little less caring than they once were. I feel sad about that.

Well, as everyone knows, Singapore is one of my favourite places. You will rarely ever hear me say a bad word about the city state or indeed that most fabulous airport at Changi – and no, they are not paying me!

But, and yes, there is always a but… I have the melancholy duty of telling you that Changi Airport let me down on this occasion. As I said earlier, we arrived 20 minutes early and I was thinking that I could get to my hotel, dump my bag, and be out on the streets exploring a bit sooner.

It was not to be. I was off the plane fairly quickly, my wheelchair assistance was waiting and I was on my way. That was until we reached immigration. Now those of you who have experienced Changi will know that service runs almost impeccably. I say almost, as nothing in this world can ever be perfect, but Changi does try hard to reach that Nirvana. Usually Immigration is a doddle, there are lines, but they move quickly. Just not today.

It seems we had two problems, firstly, non-eligible people using the “Special Assistance” line and not being challenged by officials, and secondly, we appear to have had a “trainee” immigration officer. I am all for learning on the job, but not at peak hour when the airport is running at full capacity with flights coming in from all over the world. Once I got to the Officer, he had several goes at trying to record my thumbprints, and gave up. His minder did nothing to help. So we got shunted off to another desk to be dealt with. Their machine worked flawlessly. All this malarkey took almost two hours! So my early arrival was squandered. Finally found my bag and the wheelchair guy got a taxi sorted for me and I was finally away.

Fortunately, it doesn’t take too long to get from the airport into the city and I was soon at my hotel, checked in and ready for a short walk after eight hours of sitting on the plane.

The journey started well. I had been planning to take the train to the city and then the airport bus out to Melbourne Airport, but as usual I had a packing crisis. I really wanted to do this trip with cabin bag only, but it was not to be, given that I had to deal with cold weather in Europe as it is Autumn there now.

So it was a taxi to the airport. I am lucky enough to have my own personal taxi driver – well not quite, but it sounds good. A couple of years ago when I was in hospital having my angiogram, the taxi driver who picked me up to bring me home gave me his card and said I could call him whenever I needed a taxi – very infrequent for me. As I was flying to Hobart the following day for my graduation ceremony for my Diploma of Family History, I arranged for him to pick me up as I was not allowed to drive for a week after the procedure. I have used his services a couple of times since then.

So once again I called on him to to take me to the airport. He arrived on time and had a nice new Mercedes Benz car. It was a very pleasant ride though the traffic was awful. But I always allow plenty of time for such contingencies. Once we got to the airport, I was calm and relaxed. On this trip I was flying on Qantas, my least favourite airline, but had a travel credit to use up so I had to grin and bear it. I booked Premium Economy for this leg of the journey as I just cannot manage the cramped economy seats that Qantas has on it’s planes for eight hours – specially with a wonky knee.

However I got lucky, and and an upgrade to Business Class was on offer which I took. Probably overkill for a day flight, and Premium Economy was sufficient, but with it came the use of the Business Lounge at the airport where I could relax and read the paper, have a cuppa and chill out before the flight. In the air, it was ok. The plane was an A380, one of my favourites and I was on the upper deck. First time for me on the upper deck. It was the old Qantas Business Class as they have so far only refurbished one of their A380’s with the new configuration. Still it was a comfortable eight hours of relaxing, eating, a glass or three of wine, and reading my way to Singapore where we touched down about 20 minutes early.