Travel Diary – To Singapore and Home

Checking in at Rome was strange. The woman found it strange that I had a ticket to London, and then a separate one to Singapore. Once she realized that it was because of ticket types and schedule problems she was able to check my bags through. Until then it was going to be an issue.

Rome is an airport that seems to be locked in the dark ages. It has machines to wrap your baggage in plastic wrap. This is despite the fact that it is probably the latest country in ‘western’ Europe to have a terrorist incident – although to be fair it was an attempt to blow up their prime minister, Belisconi, so probably 75% of the population would be supporting the terrorists.

Arriving in London Heathrow I found the transfer system intelligent. International arrivals transferring from one of the EU flights get shunted into an area with a security check, and then a chance to check in to get a boarding pass. You then take a bus to the right terminal. Very quick and civilized. The security people even let a child see his Teddy Bear on the X-Ray machine.

Flying from London we flew back over several interesting places. We came went about 100km south of Kiev, and then flew over Afghanistan. We also flew about 100km south of Kandaha I think it was. I tried to get the pilot to make a short detour for sight seeing and refueling, but he did not take me up on the offer


I found this flight a whole lot better than the one from Rome to Italy. Part of that was that I fell asleep for a few minutes during taxi-ing before taking off, but I think the pilot was better, and most of the flight was over land. As an example the landing at Singapore was the best I felt for a while. I was impressed.

Changi Airport impressed me too. There was no-one in front of me in the lane I chose to go through passport control. Very quick. Then my bags came off the carousel about 2 minutes after I arrived there. And there was no delay getting out with any sort of customs issues.

I am not sure how much sleep I got on the journey, but it was not enough. I think I slept maybe two hours on the plan, and the flight got in about 1AM Rome time, and I had woken up at 4AM. One long day.

I have worked out how you can tell you have been on too many flights and have had too little sleep. Basically if you feel that the world is spinning in time with turbulence, God is probably telling me that it is a good time for a sleep.

My hotel is next to probably my idea of heaven… It is a shopping centre called “The IT Shopping Center”, and is about double the size of the MLC Center shopping centre in Sydney. It also has food and some other stores, including a decent Christian bookstore. And did I mention that there is wireless access there too.

Well, the wireless access is supposed to be free. There are at least 10 access points set up there. Most are private for the shops. The one provided by the centre for free does not actually work, so I need to use the SingTel access point. This comes out about $8 per hour. This is not cheap but the connection is fast, and you can pay that much for dialup with a roaming account. And I know of a whole lot more expensive internet access methods.

Sunday I did a bit of walking around in the morning. Firstly down to Chinatown, and this is what I expected. More of the Singapore of old. I went back to my room about 11:00 to have a shower before checking out. This was essential considering I had been walking and Singapore is on the equator.

Then I went to the Suntec Shopping center and found the local Cinema. They proudly pronounce that they have Digital projectors. So I decided to see the only movie that was in English and suited my timeslot – A Cinderella Story starring Hillary Duff. This was not a bad movie. I think I would see it again. Strangely the cinema assigns seats even though it was less than 25% full.

I could tell that either the projectors were not digital or they were scanned from the edit marks. In a film there are marks – circles- on the film in the top left corner when they need to change reels. I learned about this on the TV show Columbo. Anyway, films that are delivered on film are delivered on many reels and are edited into one. Digital films are usually delivered through satellite or some other digital form.

But this movie had the crop marks. Worse, it had grease pencil markings just after the edit point. So easy to fix. And so much of an indicator that it was not a digital feed.

Following the movie I decided to visit another shop that I had not been to before – “The Rock”. Turns out it is a christian bookstore. Wow. I am impressed. I seriously thought about buying a teddy bear. This one was on it’s knees praying. Wow. They had the complete collection of Hillsong CD’s and DVD’s there it would appear. And a lot of Sermons on tape. Eh?

Going out the other door I found out that this is actually attached to a church here in the center of Singapore. Although I seriously considered it, I declined to attend the service. Things would have been too tight with my schedule. Besides they had a sign up saying that priority to get inside is given to first time attendees. This is a sure sign that maybe they need all the seats that they can get


Anyway after some more window shopping I got my lift to the airport. Checkin was strange. It must be the only place in the world where there is one queue per checkin lane. Anyway I did not even need to wait so it must work. The woman also put priority stickers on my bags which she should not have. I did not complain

Changi is a nice airport. They have a movie area, life music, free internet, shops open 24/7, and even a special hotel inside immigration called the “Transit Hotel” where you can book a room by the hour. No, not for that. To sleep and have a shower. They have thought about things. I was concerned about security as only about 1% of the people were x-rayed before going through immigration, but then I found that there were also x-rays at each gate.

Qantas Club beats the world in Singapore too. The showers are fantastic, particularly when you have been out in the Singapore heat all day. And they have attendants to clean the rooms between use. Wow.

The flight home was quick. We got in at 5:05AM, and then I was straight though immigration, collected my bags quickly, and then went though customs without issue. The slowest thing was waiting 20 minutes for my train. Cest La Vie.

You know that you need to clean your wallet when there are notes in four different currencies, and receipts in five currencies. And when none of them are for the country you are actually in.

Anyway this is being written on my way from the airport on the train. I am looking forward to being home, but have enjoyed my time away. In closing I will just quote Dido…

Two weeks away, feels like the whole world should have changed

But I’m Home Now. And things still look the same

How True…

2 Comments on “Travel Diary – To Singapore and Home

  1. Oh and i guess i forgot to mention that we do have overflow rooms situated just 2 floors above.. so next time no need to worry about not having enough space.. although the experience is way nicer inside.. hehe..

    I am a member of that church and i’m serving in the youth ministry(Video), specializing in Lights

    I’m Joshen by the way.. =D