Did a last minute tidy, showed our friend who is looking after the cats some final stuff then the Uber arrived to take us to the airport. We usually get the Skybus but the timing wasn’t right so decided to get an Uber – my second, Song’s first. Much easier, door to door and the app is really good, I suspect we’ll start to use them more. The app said we’d get to the airport at 11:25 and we arrived at 11:25.
I don’t think I’ve seen the airport so quiet; we’d already checked in online, and we only travel with hand luggage, so went straight to security where it was empty. Through in about 5 minutes and into our seat at the gate, 90 minutes to the flight. Relaxed, had a coffee ($7.71 – airport prices) and it’s now only starting to hit me that we’re on holiday.
If you ever want to avoid the airport when it’s busy, the 13:35 flight to Singapore is the one to pick – the airport was empty, only 12 flights on the board between 12:00 and 15:00.
We’d booked Scoot Plus, which is the Premium Economy offering, so early to board and nice big seats. We left on time, the in-flight meal was a bit meh – I had beef in black bean sauce with rice, Song had an Asian dish that she said looked like dog food.
Flight was 7.5 hours, I watched some downloaded stuff and read a bit. Arrived on time at about 18:00 local time and got through immigration in about 5 minutes (another benefit of only having hand luggage). Got a taxi with the worst driver in Singapore. He kept pressing and releasing the accelerator pedal so the car would lurch forward, then slow down, then lurch forward. Really annoying, but luckily it was only 20 minutes to the hotel (Holiday Inn Express Katong). The hotel was decent enough, the room small but clean and comfortable. We’re only here for one night and we don’t really care about the hotel as long as it is close to where we arrive like the train station, or near some shops and cafes. This one was next to a couple of shopping centers.
We dumped the bags in the room and went out for something to eat. We got in the lift with a Chinese girl who was talking on the phone, and Song recognised the dialect, she was from the same area in China. Small world – although with 1.4 billion Chinese people I suppose they are bound to bump into someone from the same area now and then.
It was very humid, we went up and down the road to see if there were any restaurants that looked decent, but there were steak houses, burger bars, Italian and Indian – not really what we were looking for. The humidity was getting to us so we went to the shopping centre and there were loads of places to eat, including a Hawkers area with noodles and local food, so we stopped there. I had a Hong Kong style noodle with prawns, Song had a chicken and rice bowl. Both were good, not huge servings but we didn’t want to eat too much since it was about 23:00 Australian time. Cost about $15 all in, not bad.
Went back to the hotel into the wonderful air conditioning and read the internet for a while and then turned in.
Tomorrow is the flight to Paris, it leaves at 14:00 so we don’t have to get up early.