Our final day in Singapore. I hate last days, those transitions between holiday and normal life, the flights home, usually long overnight journeys.
The others stay in bed late, finishing a book, a series on Netflix. I don’t want the holiday to end like this. In the constant state of motion I feel like something has been missing from this trip, but spending the morning in this small room is not it.
We eventually check out at 11 am and walk to the Albert Food Centre, which has mostly reopened after Lunar New Year. I can’t find exactly the right brunch. I buy some apom balik from Grandma’s Pancakes, then some not-so-great tandoori chicken, lamb curry and roti from an Indian stall.
Not a good choice. I don’t know if it was that, but I barely make it back to the hotel before my guts explode. Then, after collecting our bags, to the bathroom at the train station.
We are headed early to the airport. The Jewel provides an early check-in service so we can get rid of our bags and explore.
The Changi Jewel is a giant faceted glass torus between terminals. At its centre is the world’s largest indoor waterfall and the Shiseido Forest, a multilevel planting of tropical greenery.
We’ve done the activities at the top level, but not the Changi Experience the level below. It takes you through Changi Airport’s history and operations, using interactive displays and games. The trolley collection game was my pick, others were up and down in quality. But it was an interesting thing to do once.
Unfortunately it took us a long time to escape, leaving little to enjoy the Jewel’s other culinary pleasures or to just sit and enjoy the forest and waterfall view, along with the John Williams music played over the sound system around the forest.
It would be possible to spend a whole transit in the Jewel without seeing anything else of Singapore. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Alex is desperate to spend time in the Qantas Business Lounge thanks to my Club membership. It’s a lot quieter than last time.
He and I both have showers. The food on offer is pretty decent and I really enjoy the Signature laksa and fresh fruit. A little bit of luxury is appreciated.
It’s quite a walk from the lounge to gate D47 where our flight is boarding. In Changi security is at the gate and with a whole A380 that means a lot of passengers to screen.
Once we are finally through security we find seats and then have to wait until the last group to board. It’s okay, we’ve nothing to put overhead and it’s the three of us together.
Our aircraft is a familiar one, Nancy-Bird Walton, the first A380 in Qantas’ fleet and my first A380 from almost 16 years ago. This will be my sixth flight on the aircraft type, all but one with Qantas.
The green seat covers are gone from the interior, economy is all red, but otherwise seems exactly the same. There are even controls hidden away in the armrest. You can’t make phone calls or send an SMS any longer, but they do come in handy because the touch screen is terribly unresponsive.
I switch the seatback screen to the tail camera. I assume that there’s no audio tracks, but later discover an underwhelming section of soundtracks.
The screen is rebooted once during flight, showing its Linux back end.
The A380 windows are terrible at night, the big gap between the inner and outer panes leading to a lot of reflections.
We leave late, as the plane was late inbound, and taxi out for a takeoff to the north. The ponderous whale jet slowly rises with glimpses of the lights of Singapore and Johor, then we turn back south out to sea.
It’s a fairly smooth climb, though once the seatbelt light goes out it feels a bit bumpier.
The crew come through handing out bottles of water and Australian immigration forms. Later, supper is served. I choose the vegetarian pasta, B the Singaporean roast chicken rice with oyster sauce vegetables, definitely the winner, though she doesn’t like the chicken breasts. A hot pesto ciabatta is also served, along with mango and lime slice, a proper dessert!
Alex doesn’t want food. Alex feels airsick and throws up. This continues throughout the flight, poor kid.
The same thing happened on Alex’s last A380 flight out of Singapore. Except that was gastro and he was less than 2 years old and tossing up on my lap.
There are some unpleasant periods of turbulence near Indonesia and off the Western Australian coast. The seatbelt lights are not switched on for either, but I don’t enjoy it, watching our altitude go up and down on the moving map.
I am trying to watch Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. It’s at my mental level right now.
I get through it and the air calms down a bit in the Australian interior. I switch to the Nigel Westlake score to Blueback on the IFE. I’ve never heard it before, don’t listen to many of his works, but I do enjoy this and nod off for a little while. I don’t know for how long because it seems to loop.
With about an hour and a half to go, I can see the crew getting ready to serve breakfast. I’m not interested in a pastry containing mushrooms. Just have to keep finish that kuih lapis legit!
I do accept a cup of apple juice.
I can see the first signs of light on the horizon. Others near me also seem to want the view and open the window shades we were asked to shut.
We seem to be cruising above a sea of cloud in a pastel sky. It’s difficult to tell exactly what is going on below due to the A380’s giant wing getting in the way.
The first officer announces our descent, mentioning only scattered cloud over Sydney. Sounds good!
There are a few cloud layers on our path. The first, thin and wispy clouds that produce a rainbow of light at our windows as we pass the sun. Then some tricks clouds below, but nothing substantial enough to produce significant bumps.
With my screen on camera mode I can’t follow our path, get confused when I see Sydney’s CND and famous landmarks out of right windows, see the Olympic sites at Homebush, then see it again after another turn.
We’ve actually turned north over Western Sydney and then a sharp right so we are on final descent over the usual north to south flight path.
Down we go, over the IKEA and past the International Terminal before a smooth touchdown, airframes deploying like a billowing petticoat behind the skirt of the wings.
We’ve made it! A little bumpy, but otherwise a good flight, unless you are Alex, who is still feeling hot, cold, stuffy and queasy all at once.
He’s fine once we leave the plane.
Baggage collection is a bit slow, with our checked-in-early bags coming out late. Fortunately, we are waved through quarantine without a physical check.
At the International Terminal train station we run into friends from karate who have just arrived back from Indonesia.
A reminder that we are in Sydney is waiting almost an hour for the bus back home.
Sadly, our algae fish died during our absence. He was the only original in our aquarium and I was looking forward to seeing him again after all the aquariums we had visited. A shave, a shower and a short sleep, because my day isn’t done. Off to the city I go for a concert!
The highlight of the trip? For me it was Taiping, which had a grimy beauty about it, access to great local food and a nice hotel. Pealing Jaya was nice too, and the train journey was scenic. I do wish there had been more time to take things easy and enjoy more nature and quiet routines rather than rushing around everywhere with Lunar New Year crowds.
Tomorrow, normal life starts again, work on Monday, karate, school on Thursday. Refreshed? We’ll wait and see. It’ll be a while before the next trip.
