Singapore for a day

It sounded like a good idea - a free day in Singapore. What I didn't consider was that we have already been travelling for over 50 days and so were very tired, it would be extremely hot and humid in Singapore and importantly, when you are travelling home, thats pretty much all you want to do - travel home.

We got off the plane in the dark Mary left her Oakley sun glasses behind. The Singapore Airlines staff said that they would look for them and have them ready when Mary boards the plane later that night - they didn't find them.

There were two things we wanted to do - see the butterfly enclosure and take a free tour of the city. We found the butterflies okay and decided to go there later, we also found a huge pond full of enormous Koi! Changi airport must be one of the cleanest and most friendly and interesting airports in the world - lots to do and see.

The first free tour was fully booked so we signed up for the midday tour ... ahhh. We had to get a day visa - but no problems. Getting on the bus was like herding cats - how some people travel around the world when they are so unorganised and vague astounds me - people showed up without their passports, others asked the whole group to wait because their partner was still shopping!!! Get out of here.

The tour of Singapore covered all the usual things, the old part of town, the gardens by the sea, the modern city, rows and rows of hi rise appartments, the Buddhist and Muslim Areas - it brought back memories of our last trip, and the heat!

Back to the airport and Mary meet the most official offical. A short man in uniform - highly strung and totally unreasonable. Well Mary's sweaty finger print wasn't working and I could see that she was about to blow her top, luckily a customs lady heard Mary's mumblings and call her over, putting her through the gate after a manual check of her passport - fair to say that Mary wasn't best pleased with the experience.

The rest of the day we spent in the butterfly enclosure, visiting all the exotic gardens in the airport, shopping, drinking beer, sleeping and watching the world go by. Buts that's not all, the Changi airport has a hotel and a "day" hotel in the building. In the "day" hotel you can enjoy meals, comfy chairs and hotel quality individual bathroom/showers. For $17 each, Mary and I had time to freshen up - I think this was the best part of the day for Mary, she said that she would have gladly paid $50 for that shower!

Eventually we were on our way to Melbourne. A midnight meal on the plane - again not much sleep and in no time (well about 7 hours I think) we were in Melbourne. We had a chance to buy some duty free and went through the "Something to Declare" line, the Border Control officer asked us whet we had - biscuits and tea leaves - and let us through without checking which was a pity as they were filming Australia's Border Control - so unfortunately we didn't get to be famous.

The flight to Hobart was easy, although we had tons of luggage, heaps of hand luggage and duty free - but we made it. So good to be picked up at the Hobart airport and to see Sara and Jeremy again.

That was the end of our long and adventurous journey - plenty of people to thank and the question is, where do we go next time?

Cheers,Read more