A breakfast of Janggut nonya laksa and roti canai from the hawker stalls. We must be in Singapore!
Going to take it slow today. Yesterday was pretty exhausting, no make it the last month. Taking it easy in the Katong area, listening to music as we relax in the Grand Mercure Roxy and just popping out for local treats. It’s kind of a fantasy come true.
We converted the points from our cancelled US trip to school holiday flights to Singapore and Japan. That meant a bit of a roundabout routing to Singapore via Melbourne.
We caught our first refurbished Qantas A330-200 down to the southern city late in the afternoon. It was a pretty good flight until the gusty turbulence of the final descent. Even B didn’t like that bit.
Transiting in Melbourne was pretty easy and we were all able to use the smart gates at immigration. Fortunately none of the huge queues that I’ve previously experienced at the airport.
The Qantas Business lounge was kind enough to let us in with our club membership despite us holding Emirates tickets. This was to be our first flight with Emirates and Alex was terribly excited.
It’s been about six years since we last caught an Airbus A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the skies. Initial impressions of the Emirates economy cabin were positive. Tasteful desert inspired decore and lots of space, including legroom, mood lighting and big seatback screens with separate controllers.
There was also cheap ($1 for 500MB), though somewhat flaky, internet on board. I loved the three external camera views, from the tail, the belly and the nose and this provided my seatback entertainment for the flight.
The initial climb and cruise was smooth, taking us over the southern parts of the mainland and up past the northern tip of the Spencer Gulf. We were served a very large and quite delicious hot dinner. Alex had pasta, B a beef ragout and me butter chicken.
Towards Western Australia, as the Sun set, the seatbelt lights were lit by the German pilots as we hit the high cloud of the monsoon, whisps of misty cloud like grey spectres reaching up to grab us.
The lights were lit twice more and it didn’t make me feel good. I could see us approaching flickering storms on the tail camera.
However, it wasn’t always scary. Crossing Indonesia we passed alongside on huge puffy storm cloud with barely a bump but a spectacular show of lightning.
I was very tired, we all were, our scheduled arrival corresponding to 2.30 am in Sydney. I really couldn’t wait to be on the ground and had quite enough of flying.
Fortunately we were about 20 minutes of schedule and the descent into Singapore was without any of the turbulent scares of some previous arrivals.
I picked up a local Singtel tourist sim card for the phone then it was a familiar taxi ride through the amber corridor of trees to the hotel.
For once we didn’t go on a late night food hunt. We were all too tired.
So here we are again in Singapore a year later. This time ready to relax!