Day one - Singapore Next Stop

Well, here we go—the first day. I'm writing this on Saturday as we were pretty tired when we arrived in the early evening.

Friday 23. Out of bed at 3 AM to finish packing, checking, and getting to the airport for 4:45 for a 6:15 flight. I'm not a morning person and 3 AM is so early even morning people would struggle. Thanks to Mike for being our chauffeur.

The flight to AKL was uneventful, apart from viewing the sunrise. (Note: us experienced travellers always use the international airport codes.) Getting on to our 787 was also straightforward, although it took a long while to get to the (new) far end of the airport.

10 tedious hours later, we arrived in SIN. The flight was good, and Tricia didn't suffer airsickness. Even the food was edible.

We did have one hiccup. We hadn't pre-filled out the arrival form! This is all online now in Singapore, and there is no paper option. So we were directed to a shelf with 4 or 5 tablets mounted on stands. So we spent a stressful 25 minutes form-filling. Note to self—do these before travelling. This did have some benefits, as when we got to immigration, there was almost nobody going through. However, we all needed help to get the facial recognition to work - maybe we Europeans all look alike to the SIN computers. Once through, we went to the luggage conveyor to find it stopped, with six suitcases tidily lined up at the end. Three of these were ours, so we weren't last out. No passengers were at the Customs area, and the Customs people looked very bored and waved us through. Then we got to the taxi area and figured out the webbing maze - again, nobody but three airport staff. They guided us to the large taxi rank with one taxi left. We took it,

Got to the hotel and checked in. We unpacked, and I found the bar and settled my nerves with a medicinal Guinness. We were asleep before 9 and didn't wake up until 6:30. Day one done.Read more